IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ -- THINK before you post

hi all,

just an item I feel I should raise.

many, many threads that should really be posted under a different category are getting lumped into the "General" section of this bulletin board.

I would like to ask everyone to THINK about the subject of their post before they add it to the board.

a quick glance through the recent activity in the GENERAL section reveals items on atmospheric optics that really should be in "Did anyone else see?", club details that have their own area too, and supernova reports that should be in the DEEP SKY section.

I feel Bart would probably agree with me on this as everything is getting so messy . . . especially when people are complaining too about not being able to find threads, etc.

atb,

John

Very good point John and ys, you are right, I do indeed agree.

Folks, please do indeed try to keep our threads in logical places. Also could our new Moderators of General please move threads that are placed "innapropriately" to their proper homes from now on.

Thanks for your co-operation,

Bart B.,
IFAS Webmaster.

Because this is important I have made it a sticky

I agree wholeheartedly with John and Bart on this issue. However I would also raise the issue of 'conversations' developing between two posters in the course of a thread. To my mind that's what the PM system is for. Replies like " " are annoying, time-wasting and a tad childish. Take private responses elsewhere.

It can be difficult to fit things to 1 of the given (approx) 12 catogeries.
Perhaps there may/should/could be a different way of organizing things.
There are catogeries missing - where does 'history of astronomy' go for instance.

To raise an earlier point - if this was also a listserver then individual could take care of their own organization. One could then focus on substance without the need to worry about the appropiate place in the hierarchy.

Oops hang on I just fell off me soapbox.

fc

General is a catch all, if it has no other home then General is it's home. New categories get made when there is a sufficient volume of threads for them in general. Hence, to use the exaple used above, right now threads on "History of Astronomy" go into General, if loads such threads appear in General then a new board will be made and the History threads in General will get moved there.

The Categories are dynamic and adapt and change as the focus of these boards changes over time. That's how it should be.

I'm not going down the list serve road again here, we have an entire thread dedicated to that one already! IMO list servers are a giant PITA and I wish all the list servers I have to be on would be BB systems. We all have our preferences. I made a proposal to set up a BB system to the IFAs committee and they told me to go with it so I have and here it is.

Finally, the point on pointless posts like and nothing else is a good one. I have been very lax on this up till now because the boards have been small and hence DB size has not been an issue but it will become one in the future so now is probably a good time to lay down some posting guidelines that address this.

Bart.