The Small Woodland Owners Group have never really needed to have a lot of rules and regulations, we have mostly got along fairly well, most posts get published unmoderated as we have had so few problems.
However, there are good reasons to have some kind of ground rules about how to behave on the board:
The internet is a strange place and people's motives for joining are not always benign or transparent. It's sprung up a whole new vocabulary: spammers, spybots, trolls, flamers and so on .... we need to guard against malicious influences which may stop us enjoying and using this facility.
Over the last 4 years or so we have built up a valuable resource of information, we need to keep this well organised and easy to search.
We want to be as inclusive as possible, being polite and respectful while still disagreeing with another person's opinion is not too difficult and I think it will attract contributions from a much wider audience.
The Basics:
When starting a new thread/post, think about what the subject is about, then look down the list of forums and see if there is category which fits in with your proposed post. Only if there isn't a suitable category, consider posting it to the 'General' forum.
Think about the subject heading of your post, be as concise and clear as possible.
If you have more than one question start a new post with a new subject heading for this question.
When replying, keep to the subject heading, don't wander 'off the topic', start a new post.
Use the 'Quote' function and edit out the irrelevant part of the post. This really does help with readability, as it pin points the exact part of the post you are replying to.
Be courteous and respectful of other people's opinions even if you fundamentally disagree.
We don't want to be too draconian, but whilst we get used to the new system of posting, moderators will be sending out gentle reminders for people to keep to these guidelines, (I think the software calls them 'Warnings' don't take it personally though!)
