Posting on forums.freebsd.org quite a hassle

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Am I the only one that feels posting on these forums is a hassle everytime. Only rarely posts are unedited/untouched by the administrators on these forums.

I get it that it all should look nice, but more often than not, I just skip posting here because it never seems good enough.
 
Just don't take any of it personal.

Heck, even my posts get edited every once in a while ;)
 
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In my opinion having such active administrators can only be a good thing for the forum. I understand the feeling though, you start thinking more about the formatting of your post than the problem or the answer that you are describing. However I am starting to appreciate it, as it makes a huge difference when following other people's posts.
 
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frijsdijk said:
Am I the only one that feels posting on these forums is a hassle everytime. Only rarely posts are unedited/untouched by the administrators on these forums.
In the beginning it was certainly something to get used to, but I don't really think it's that much of an hassle. Still, I'm a decently fluent typist which somewhat helps of course.

frijsdijk said:
I get it that it all should look nice, but more often than not, I just skip posting here because it never seems good enough.
You're missing out on something good I think.

I think there's a big difference in taking the effort to format your posts or simply not bothering at all. And if you pay some attention to the mistakes you made and act on them it might even make you a better typist in the end.

But to be honest I enjoy helping people out here a lot better than on other places like asp.net, which is another techforum I like to frequent at times. Sometimes you actually have to do your utmost best to decipher a question, and if you succeed then it remains to be seen if you picked it up in the way the OP meant it. Often you can still learn a lot from the process, but usually it's plain out frustrating.
 
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frijsdijk said:
I just skip posting here because it never seems good enough.

Conversely, when the Gods Mods (this should be written "moderators", see Don't use pointless and needless abbreviations!) edit my posts I take that as a challenge, bacause I always try to write my posts in the most correct way I am capable of. But despite the efforts and the diligence that I put in writing my posts, sometimes the frightening note "Last edited by" pops up. And yes, when I see this note I shout: "No! I'ts impossible! I've checked the post 1000 times!" but I know there's nothing personal behind that.

Since English is not my mother language (again, see stop apologizing for bad English) I always find some difficulties in writing my posts, and any correction helps me to improve my English.

Moreover, talking about the correctness of FreeBSD and writing posts full of mistakes is a quite evident contradiction.

Every correction is not against you, but is for the neatness of the forums. And trust me, even if I don't know any of the moderators personally, I'm pretty sure they have much more interesting things to do in their lives rather than correct our mistakes!
 
I remember the first time one of my posts were heavily edited. It's several years ago now, but I took it like a personal insult, and I stopped posting for a while. However, after some time, I realized that I was being silly. It's nothing personal; it's pretty good and constructive feedback. Instead of replying to my post or sending me a PM, the mods edit the post and add a note about the most important things. If I want to study in detail, I can go in and check the version history of the post. So I learned an important life lesson, because this was simply another form of constructive criticism.

There are some policies I disagree with, such as adding a space between number and unit (1 GB, 1 m[eter], 1 s[econd] etc). But the sum totalum of the moderating efforts on this forum: Both thumbs up. It's really nice not having to decipher rants which are riddled with l33t5p34k ("leet speak"), SMS speak ("y u do dat", "hru") and so forth.

I like being able to spend my energy solving technical problems. This forum lets me do that.
 
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It is my understanding, that most administrative post edits are to improve the overall reader experience. There are many forum customs that are not very professional. Many of those customs become natural habit. So, it might feel like a personal attack. One other thing to take into consideration, is the massive range of this forum's user base. In some countries many common forum habits might make content comprehension difficult. The forum rules are an attempt to standardize the forum experience for optimal efficiency, and encourage a professional atmosphere. Or, so I have heard. :)
 
Going over the thread again it just hit me; I think this thread alone is solid proof of the freedom we actually have on these forums. I mean; when you have a problem with a moderator (due to a change in your post for example) you should take it up with them personally and not in public. Sounds very reasonable to me.

Yet here we are discussing moderation of the forum in general, and we're still here.

I've been in fora where a thread like this would have been long gone by now.

Sure, I might be tempting Murphy in ways I can't possibly imagine :e Even so; I still think the situation as is also says something about this place, in my opinion it rocks.
 
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To the OP: To tell you the truth, as a lurker I hated seeing what DutchDaemon does, however when I actually joined the forum and realized that how much effort does it take for him to keep this forum amazingly readable, I started putting more efforts and thoughts in my typing. Thus a win for me, though I still falter sometimes, which I'm not ashamed of.

Regards.
 
I like the high quality standards and the attitude of the moderators/administrators that this forum has. Writing quality posts takes time and effort, and this is how it should be. If you want to write junk, there is always 4chan.
 
frijsdijk said:
Am I the only one that feels posting on these forums is a hassle everytime. Only rarely posts are unedited/untouched by the administrators on these forums.

I get it that it all should look nice, but more often than not, I just skip posting here because it never seems good enough.

You are not alone. I do get the goal of keeping certain style and level of professionalism here, but lot of times it feels like you can't express yourself and your thoughts have to be in the way moderator feels it's right. E.g. I do hate when articles are modified in the sentence in the way I would not use them. Also I don't get what's up with those random words in italics after modification.

If you search the forum you can find more threads to this topic already. There's no point of creating another thread for this.
 
We are actually already trying to cut down on highlighting edits using italics or bold, and to limit comments to PMs and the little edit comment below the post. We are trying to find a workable middle ground there.
 
matoatlantis said:
I do get the goal of keeping certain style and level of professionalism here, but lot of times it feels like you can't express yourself and your thoughts have to be in the way moderator feels it's right. E.g. I do hate when articles are modified in the sentence in the way I would not use them.
Hm, I don't quite share that experience. I also use styles like italics or bold (seldom) to try and emphasize the importance of what I'm trying to get across, but so far never experienced a moderator change the essence of my message.

Have you tried taking it up with the moderator who changed your message?

That would be my suggestion; if you really think something to be out of place then simply send them a private message to ask them and I'm pretty sure that under normal circumstances you'll get an answer too.
 
I appreciate the spelling corrections because I don't want to guess on the various spellings for a particular problem. It saves time and effort to google "problem", and not "prblm", "probm", prblem", etc. And for that I say, "Thank you, Moderators, for making the forums easily searchable."
 
CurlyTheStooge said:
I started putting more efforts and thoughts in my typing.
This.

Seeing edits in the forum helps me remember to try my very best to write my posts as clearly and understandable as possible.
 
Generally speaking I'm not offended if someone corrects my grammar or even typos. I do not speak English as my native language, typos are mainly due not using the autocorrect function of my browser, because if I'd use said function it would mark as red every Finnish sentence and word I use. And correction of grammar errors just helps me in refining my English skills.

I'm amazed that people have time to do this kind of service, and I'm quite grateful when they do this.
 
TiberiusDuval said:
I do not speak English as my native language, typos are mainly due not using auto-correct function of my browser, because if I'd use said function it would mark as red every Finnish sentence and word I use.
I have Dutch and English dictionaries, you can switch relatively easy between them ;)

And correction of grammar errors just help me in refining my English skills.
Unfortunately Firefox only has a spellings-checker. It doesn't understand grammar. And it's grammar that's usually a problem. It can be quite hilarious though (not you personally but in general). A sentence using English words and Dutch grammar really sounds silly. We call it Dunglish or "steenkolen Engels" (roughly translated, "coalminers English").

http://www.dunglish.nl/
 
There are a few more sites like that but I couldn't find them anymore. The Dunglish site hasn't been updated in a while :(
 
To be honest, editing here borders between obsessive and not really productive. And it is at odds with the usage of language of native speakers too. But that's not my time, so I'm not the judge here. I bet I'm not the only one thinking so.
 
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