You Grow Girl™

Posted: 01-05-08 9:46

Welcome to the You Grow Girl Forums! To avoid confusion and possible misunderstandings we’ve collectively created this list of expectations and guidelines. We encourage new members to read them to get a feel for the community!

Special thanks and shout out to SHAY who was behind this initiative and who put this list together for us.

Gayla:
Spam: We have a no tolerance policy regarding spam and will revoke your account immediately... even if that spam is for a product, service, or organization we would otherwise support. The point is that this is a community, and not a promotional tool.

In the spirit of community, users are welcome to talk about and promote their own products or businesses once they've been around and contributing to legitimate conversation for a while.

And of course you may talk about products or services you like or dislike… but if we find a glowing review of a product as your very first post to the group, especially if it repeats in subsequent posts… we’re going to consider you a spammer and deactivate your account immediately.

Gayla:
Link / Traffic "Flooding" or "Poaching": Will get you banned no questions asked. An example of this would be joining the forums and posting over 100 links to your site in less than 24 hours under the guise of being "helpful" and "informative."

Sakura:
Search the forums first to see if your questions have been answered already in another thread... consolidates discussion.

When you're posting pics, be sensitive about sites that might not enjoy being hot-linked.

spaceistheplace:
This is fairly obvious, but I think attacking other members is a no-no.

abby:
My favorite analogy on internet forums is to think of it as a crowded room full of people having friendly conversations. Just as you wouldn't walk up to a group of strangers and start lecturing them or yelling at them, or talking about something totally different from what they're talking about, you treat an internet forum the same way. Try to "read the room" and get a feel for the people there; try to be polite; do your best to contribute positively to the conversation; if you're going to criticize, be constructive.

This is just me being pet-peevy but I do find that messages written in plain English are a lot easier to read than ones that are all in different colors and fonts and full of smileys and so on.

Brenn:
it's always a good idea to remember that sarcasm is extremely difficult to convey/interpret via the typed word.

Shay:
I'm asking any newbies to the board to please, post here for a little while before asking for stuff or asking to get in on trades. We've all seen people who just are so excited that "Hey, everyone here shares my passion," that they don't realize what for them is a transient hobby is for many others a lifelong commitment- and treat it as such! We'd like to get to know you, not your stuff!

When you're looking for something and you want it cheap- please tell members how much you're wanting to spend. A dollar plus shipping for seeds? Under twenty bucks for a full-grown plant? What's pennies to one person can be a bit too much for another.

If you want to quote two people in the same thread, please do so on one post. Especially if you're just agreeing with them.

Please, please please put more descriptive titles on your posts! I fix them wherever I can, but it's a little annoying to constantly be changing things that could so easily be avoided-

"I don't know what to do with these!" is a terrible title.

"Need help with Tulip Bulbs!" is to the point.

ShoMo:
let misspellings be. Unless it's really bad and you can't understand what it's supposed to say!

quant:
a handy hint from me is: if you're gonna post a link to a really long url, either change the link text to something smaller or shrink the link with http://tinyurl.com. links don't autowrap, so a really long url can make the thread wider than the average computer screen making it difficult to read. same for really huge photos. 500 pixels wide is a good limit.

Indefatigable:
My contribution will be: we all share one common interest, and we all have the right to be here. The world will not end if you refrain from sniping at the opposing political party, or if you just this once turn down a chance to convert someone to your faith. That kind of stuff creates bad feelings and doesn't help anyone, no matter how much you believe it does, so keep it out of the communal garden.

Trickdoor:
preview your post. especially if you're putting a link or some html codes or something like that. it just looks better.

Taryn:
I've been on a few other forums and what I've come to notice is that it's a good thing to pick your topics and threads wisely. If I can't add anything to a thread that's worth reading, then I try and pass.

Assertagirl:
When you type in a forum in all capital letters, that is interpreted as shouting. You probably won't get very much advice from the friendly people around here if you're shouting at them.

Abby:
I just wanted to add to this that even on a busy forum like You Grow Girl, not every single question is going to get answered within a day or two. Sometimes, people just don't know the answer. Hopefully, you'll get lucky and your question will be read by somebody that can help you. But the key is to be patient. (I remember once, someone posted a question about something and the very next day left a huffy, sarcastic note, something like "Thanks guys, real friendly! I'm outta here!" and never posted here again. S/he was so mad that the question didn't get answered IMMEDIATELY that she gave up on the forum. The day after that, someone answered the question--they just hadn't happened upon the post until then.) YGG is full of wonderful, informative people, but it's not an encyclopedia--sometimes, if you need a specific quick answer, it's best to get out there and do some research.

Kristine:
My feelings is that this forum is intended for adults. So, being adults, we should be able to conduct ourselves respectfully. Which means having consideration for others, by either being sensitive to the language we use, or by not leaping down another's throat for saying "damn". I really do swear quite a lot, but only when speaking. Writing, even in something very informal like chat or bulletin boards, it doesn't really leak through.

Auntiem:
It is difficult to convey sarcasm and irony, true....PM me if you have a problem with me - don't waste space on the thread. If I step over the line - and I have - I'll correct it and make amends.

I just have another thing - I don't mind if my threads get hijacked usually it makes it more interesting - I do mind if a thread I'm interested in totally degenerates off topic and I have to skip a bunch of stuff to get to the posts that are back on topic.
My favorite response to something like that is Shay's
She wrote (something like) "look over there... tomatoes!" with a link to a nice disscussion about tomatoes.
Maybe something like that just to let folk to start a new thread for the totally new discussions. The forum version of "take it outside".

Gayla:
this is a pretty open forum in that there is an extra section in which to discuss all sorts of non-gardening related topics. This is a really diverse bunch of people.... which is what makes it so good. We all have a lot in common (such as our interest in plants and gardening), but we're all very different too, with different lifestyles, experiences, and beliefs.

Honeysuckle:
Please only quote when relevent and only the portion of text that is relevent to keep individual posts from becoming unnecessarily convoluted. In particular, there should rarely, if ever, be occasion to quote an image residing in a previous post, especially if the image is a large one.

dogmelissa
Please post your question once and only once, in (what you think is) the most relevant section. Having the exact same post in multiple sections will likely lead to either missing answers, having other users upset at you (for your inpatient presentation) or possibly the one with the answers that are actually relevant getting deleted.

If you have any concerns or questions, you can pm the moderators of a forum (they're listed right under thr forum name on the main page) or PM Gayla, Assertagirl, or Shay.

Thanks, and enjoy the forums!

Posted: 01-05-08 9:47

I put the two about spam right up front since these are the ones that tend to create the most misunderstandings.