Reading your arguments Roo, perhaps we DO need some rules - but only rules mind you - not guidance, I don’t think even you would be so arrogant as to presume to tell members how to think, and that is what guidance amounts to.
Rules like - Don’t Troll - Don’t swear or be vicious to others - Don’t feed the Trolls - Don’t Spam - Don’t break the law - Don’t post Porno or anything that would not be appropriate for children to read…
However, there seems to be a recurring theme to your thrusts…
Would I be correct in thinking that behind your proposal is a desire to eliminate ‘Hijacking’? You repeatedly feature the activity as reprehensible.
At first I thought maybe someone had ‘Hijacked’ one of your threads, so I trawled back through all the boards and could not find a single thread that you might consider as being ‘yours’ to have been hijacked. One of your threads did have a lengthy reply from me (ca 15 lines on my screen), but I kept fully on topic, and later, Dan made an even lengthier reply but again stayed hard on topic.
From this I had to conclude that you are not aiming to protect your own threads - you are seeking to prevent hijacking of other peoples threads. This worries me, because it is a form of ‘Big Brother’, deciding for me what I should and should not want to happen to my threads !!
Two things immediately fall out from that position.
First, is that whenever I have started a thread, I have never thought of them as ‘mine’ - simply as ideas spawned, then set free onto the Forum to see how they grow and develop - once created, they belong to the Forum and the contributors who make them their own by adding their own thoughts and directions - ‘Poo Sticks’ cast into the stream of experiences and imagination.
Second, apart from Spamming and Trolling (both of which I think are despicable practices), I find the greatest value in posts which have triggered members into presenting wildly divergent perspectives to the subject that triggered the thread. For me, the most interesting posts are the ones which range over wild diversifications, triggered by other posters experiences and opinions.
Clearly, what I enjoy reading as content, you see as hijacking. This I think is a fundamental difference of opinion. You wish for Rules to prevent and remove such richness, while I would strive to encourage members to let their creativity fly. Clearly, there is no common ground for agreement on this issue - they are in opposition so no compromise is possible.
Decisions then must be made on rational argument. I would propose that the case for promoting creativity in posts rests on the fact that this Guild wishes to actively encourage today’s (and tomorrows) youth to be attracted to the Guild and to the field of Knotting. I suggest that while we dusty old farts might enjoy a bit of knotty minutia, younger members (should we continue to attract them) would be more likely to be engaged by less ‘dusty’ discussions. ‘On topic Experts’ can be totally foreboding and frighten ‘Newbies’ out of the discussion and even the board, whereas broadening a discussion gives a greater opportunity for other, less expert knotters, to join in.
I would strongly suggest that we reject any idea of straight jacketing topics to the subject title, and that we actively promote responses from widely differing perspectives - you never know, the old fogies might just learn something (maybe even enjoy themselves).
PS - have you played Poo Sticks lately?
Derek
For the trial run I would simply sticky it to all boards, and count the views.