MacAllister
'Twas but a dream of thee
Staff member
El Jefe
Administrator
Super Moderator
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
VPX
Super Member
Registered
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2005
- Messages
- 22,022
- Reaction score
- 10,765
- Location
- Out on a limb
- Website
- macallisterstone.com
Start Here:
Hi new members!
I'm Mac. I own AW, the software licenses, archived articles, and the server we run on.
But no one owns a community, and that's what this message board is really about. Community.
We have a whole passel of moderators. These people selflessly volunteer their time and energy, they know the community, and I trust them. Be nice to 'em. They work hard. You'll notice they're designated by the user-title under their name, and if you have a question, a mod is always a great person to ask. You can see the names of the moderators for each room in the column on the far right side, here. If you click on a name, it will take you to the moderator's profile where you'll find a link to contact that person, either by leaving a visitor message or sending a private message.
The AW forums are pretty big, and there are a lot of people posting here about pretty much every writing-related subject under the sun. That can be overwhelming, so here are some guidelines just to get you on your way.
You don't have to be a member to read, but if you want to participate in the conversations you'll have to register. You can register here: https://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/register.php . It's free, and only takes a moment or two. If you don't get your email confirmation, check your spamtrap! If it's not there, either, send me an email and I'll help.
Okay, then! So now you're all registered, and ready to post!
Some forums have extremely strict guidelines about things like signature links. We'll ban sigline spammers, here, too - but usually only if they're spamming links to cell phones, shoes, cheap viagra, and the like.
We actually LIKE you to link your blogs, books, writing-interest sites, and so on. We firmly believe it helps build community, creates stable information environments, improves education, and strengthens relationships. Just don't join up solely to flog your own site and services. That's spamming, and it's exploitive, and it's not cool. Don't join up just because you think it's a good way to market yourself, your book, or your blog. Again, it's spamming, it's boring, and you won't be met with a lot of enthusiasm.
And we've had one or two accidental bannings, over the years - but a note sent via the "contact us" form at the bottom of the screen usually gets things sorted out pretty fast.
We'd love a chance to say hello and learn a bit about you, if you're not too shy to introduce yourself. Just visit the Newbies board and start a new thread to say hello, and tell us who you are, what you write, or get to know some of the other new members. (You don't have to, no one is keeping track -- but it's a fun and easy way to meet some of your fellow community members.)
________________________________________________
Basics of Posting:
To start a new thread, you just click the button that says "New Thread" -- it's towards the top, on the left side of your screen.
It looks like this:
To participate in a conversation that already has a thread, just go all the way to the bottom and click "Post Reply,"
It looks like this:
Or if you scroll down just a bit more, you can type directly into the "Quick Reply" box at the bottom of the thread.
If you'd like to respond to one particular post out of many, you should quote it. Just click the "Quote" button at the bottom of the post you're responding to.
It looks like this:
If you want to respond to several posts, you can use the multi-quote button, then click "Post Reply," and they'll all be automatically quoted in your reply box, when you click "Post Reply."
It looks like this:
Don't forget to trim the posts you're quoting so we don't all have to read the whole thing twice! You can just delete everything except for the sentence or two you want to reference.
Okay! Now you're posting. You're ready for some of the finer points of belonging to a large, online community.
______________________________________________
Getting Along on Absolute Write:
So there's only one real rule here: Respect your fellow writers.
If that seems sort of vague, it translates more plainly this way: Don't be a jerk.
Respect your fellow writers covers a lot of territory: It's also why we generally don't allow a user to have multiple accounts. If someone sneaks under our radar, creates multiple accounts for the purposes of arguing with himself, or posting from multiple accounts to make it appear multiple members are supporting a particular point of view in a discussion with other posters, that's called sock-puppeting. It has an old and well-established history on the Web, and it's not good netiquette. It's also grounds for immediate banning from AW. Don't do it, even if you do get carried away and it seems like a great way to get your point across, 'kay? It's extraordinarily disrespectful to your fellow community members.
We're not a wild-n-wooly sort of a message board. Flame wars just don't fly, here. Personal attacks on other members are right out. Just don't do it.
We do have a lot of heated conversations about everything under the sun. Writers can get into knock-down-drag-outs over something so obvious as the serial comma being Always Correct.
That brings us to language.
ON LANGUAGE - You might notice that this board doesn't currently **** out curse words. That's deliberate. This is a writer's board; we certainly should each have the minimal control necessary over our own language to know how civilized adults speak in public. We strongly urge you to use that knowledge and control.
Different rooms may have a different tolerance level for salty language. If in doubt, choose a different word. Otherwise, prepare yourself to have your post deleted, or to be asked to edit your post.
Our intention in turning off the profanity censor was never to make profanity more widely exploited. Quite the opposite: the intention was to throw the onus of responsibility for your language back into your very own laps.
When and if you choose to curse, please consider your words and choose them deliberately and with great care. Excruciating care, in fact. There may well be that rare occasion when a carefully chosen curse word is both effective and appropriate.
Please don't attempt to exploit that.
On a similar note: abuse or disrespect of any member via private message or rep point comment isn't tolerated, and if reported or discovered, will result in administrative intervention -- which may range from disabling your access to those particular features, and /or banning.
Primarily, the complaints I get about rep points or PM abuse are almost ALL either about heated disagreements taken private, or else they're about unwelcome sexual advances. We take that stuff pretty seriously. There's always a certain amount of flirting and joking around on any message board. It's pretty normal. But it also gets out of hand pretty fast, sometimes. If that happens, a mod will be along to ask you to display a bit more discretion. It's not personal.
Try to look at it like this: Say you went to a huge yard party, and some of the guests were single, and a bunch of them were friends, but a bunch more were total strangers, and some guests were married, and some brought kids --BUT a few people got a bit wild and thought it would be fun to take off all their clothes and dance on the furniture, and the host said, "err, hang on, folks. Not that kind of party, so please put your pants back on; in the meantime, does anyone want to volunteer to run the grill?"
That's what we have mods and admin for.
If it happens that there's someone you just cannot get along with, and your blood pressure rises every time you see them post -- then use the ignore function.
You can find the ignore feature in your User CP (User Control Panel), at the top left, in the dark blue menu bar.
More to follow.
Hi new members!
I'm Mac. I own AW, the software licenses, archived articles, and the server we run on.
But no one owns a community, and that's what this message board is really about. Community.
We have a whole passel of moderators. These people selflessly volunteer their time and energy, they know the community, and I trust them. Be nice to 'em. They work hard. You'll notice they're designated by the user-title under their name, and if you have a question, a mod is always a great person to ask. You can see the names of the moderators for each room in the column on the far right side, here. If you click on a name, it will take you to the moderator's profile where you'll find a link to contact that person, either by leaving a visitor message or sending a private message.
The AW forums are pretty big, and there are a lot of people posting here about pretty much every writing-related subject under the sun. That can be overwhelming, so here are some guidelines just to get you on your way.
You don't have to be a member to read, but if you want to participate in the conversations you'll have to register. You can register here: https://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/register.php . It's free, and only takes a moment or two. If you don't get your email confirmation, check your spamtrap! If it's not there, either, send me an email and I'll help.
Okay, then! So now you're all registered, and ready to post!
Some forums have extremely strict guidelines about things like signature links. We'll ban sigline spammers, here, too - but usually only if they're spamming links to cell phones, shoes, cheap viagra, and the like.
We actually LIKE you to link your blogs, books, writing-interest sites, and so on. We firmly believe it helps build community, creates stable information environments, improves education, and strengthens relationships. Just don't join up solely to flog your own site and services. That's spamming, and it's exploitive, and it's not cool. Don't join up just because you think it's a good way to market yourself, your book, or your blog. Again, it's spamming, it's boring, and you won't be met with a lot of enthusiasm.
And we've had one or two accidental bannings, over the years - but a note sent via the "contact us" form at the bottom of the screen usually gets things sorted out pretty fast.
We'd love a chance to say hello and learn a bit about you, if you're not too shy to introduce yourself. Just visit the Newbies board and start a new thread to say hello, and tell us who you are, what you write, or get to know some of the other new members. (You don't have to, no one is keeping track -- but it's a fun and easy way to meet some of your fellow community members.)
________________________________________________
Basics of Posting:
To start a new thread, you just click the button that says "New Thread" -- it's towards the top, on the left side of your screen.
It looks like this:
To participate in a conversation that already has a thread, just go all the way to the bottom and click "Post Reply,"
It looks like this:
Or if you scroll down just a bit more, you can type directly into the "Quick Reply" box at the bottom of the thread.
If you'd like to respond to one particular post out of many, you should quote it. Just click the "Quote" button at the bottom of the post you're responding to.
It looks like this:
If you want to respond to several posts, you can use the multi-quote button, then click "Post Reply," and they'll all be automatically quoted in your reply box, when you click "Post Reply."
It looks like this:
Don't forget to trim the posts you're quoting so we don't all have to read the whole thing twice! You can just delete everything except for the sentence or two you want to reference.
Okay! Now you're posting. You're ready for some of the finer points of belonging to a large, online community.
______________________________________________
Getting Along on Absolute Write:
So there's only one real rule here: Respect your fellow writers.
If that seems sort of vague, it translates more plainly this way: Don't be a jerk.
Respect your fellow writers covers a lot of territory: It's also why we generally don't allow a user to have multiple accounts. If someone sneaks under our radar, creates multiple accounts for the purposes of arguing with himself, or posting from multiple accounts to make it appear multiple members are supporting a particular point of view in a discussion with other posters, that's called sock-puppeting. It has an old and well-established history on the Web, and it's not good netiquette. It's also grounds for immediate banning from AW. Don't do it, even if you do get carried away and it seems like a great way to get your point across, 'kay? It's extraordinarily disrespectful to your fellow community members.
We're not a wild-n-wooly sort of a message board. Flame wars just don't fly, here. Personal attacks on other members are right out. Just don't do it.
We do have a lot of heated conversations about everything under the sun. Writers can get into knock-down-drag-outs over something so obvious as the serial comma being Always Correct.
That brings us to language.
ON LANGUAGE - You might notice that this board doesn't currently **** out curse words. That's deliberate. This is a writer's board; we certainly should each have the minimal control necessary over our own language to know how civilized adults speak in public. We strongly urge you to use that knowledge and control.
Different rooms may have a different tolerance level for salty language. If in doubt, choose a different word. Otherwise, prepare yourself to have your post deleted, or to be asked to edit your post.
Our intention in turning off the profanity censor was never to make profanity more widely exploited. Quite the opposite: the intention was to throw the onus of responsibility for your language back into your very own laps.
When and if you choose to curse, please consider your words and choose them deliberately and with great care. Excruciating care, in fact. There may well be that rare occasion when a carefully chosen curse word is both effective and appropriate.
Please don't attempt to exploit that.
On a similar note: abuse or disrespect of any member via private message or rep point comment isn't tolerated, and if reported or discovered, will result in administrative intervention -- which may range from disabling your access to those particular features, and /or banning.
Primarily, the complaints I get about rep points or PM abuse are almost ALL either about heated disagreements taken private, or else they're about unwelcome sexual advances. We take that stuff pretty seriously. There's always a certain amount of flirting and joking around on any message board. It's pretty normal. But it also gets out of hand pretty fast, sometimes. If that happens, a mod will be along to ask you to display a bit more discretion. It's not personal.
Try to look at it like this: Say you went to a huge yard party, and some of the guests were single, and a bunch of them were friends, but a bunch more were total strangers, and some guests were married, and some brought kids --BUT a few people got a bit wild and thought it would be fun to take off all their clothes and dance on the furniture, and the host said, "err, hang on, folks. Not that kind of party, so please put your pants back on; in the meantime, does anyone want to volunteer to run the grill?"
That's what we have mods and admin for.
If it happens that there's someone you just cannot get along with, and your blood pressure rises every time you see them post -- then use the ignore function.
You can find the ignore feature in your User CP (User Control Panel), at the top left, in the dark blue menu bar.
More to follow.
Last edited by a moderator:
