Nebraska Writing Project
Forum Netiquette and Forum Rules
What are the forums?
The NeWP forum is community of users from various educational institutions who engage in online discussions focusing on writing and other topical educational issues.
What is the suggested forum etiquette?
We suggest practicing the following etiquette to help you and others make the most of our forums:
1. Create a concise subject/title that adequately summarizes your topic.
2. Be patient. All the participants of this forum are using the forum and participating in discussions on their own time.
3. Help others. The forum is a community, and works best when people share information.
4. Give feedback. If someone helps you by answering your question or giving you feedback, try to add a follow-up response letting them know if it worked or not.
5. Welcome newcomers. Do not chastise them for not reading the forum etiquette. Make them feel welcome in the community.
6. Please refrain from posting meaningless threads, one word (or short) nonsense posts, or the such.
7. Be careful how you say things - It is often times very hard to write in a way that shows how you're feeling or how you mean something to come across. Even if your intentions are good, the way you write something may be taken the wrong way. A very popular way of making sure your feelings are expressed in the way you intend them is to use familiar abbreviations and symbols such as :-) (smiley face) ;-) (winking smiley face) :-P (tongue sticking out in jest) ;-( (unhappy face) LOL (laughing out loud) and many, many others. Although it may seem silly, it is a very good way to help show your feelings and intentions. It is also considered rude to use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS when typing. It's considered a way of showing that you are yelling and shouting and should only be used to emphasize that feeling.
If you do feel the need to be critical, make it constructive criticism. If you're addressing the behavior in the forum, do address the behavior, not the person. Personal attacks (flame wars) are bad form. Ask yourself: would you say the same thing if you were face-to-face in person?
Avoid profanity: you know what the words are. If most people wouldn't say it in front of their mothers, it doesn't belong in this forum. Even posts which are not flames and which may contain great technical information may be removed because of offensive language.
Remember: you can have a sense of humor, but maintain a professional tone. Your friends may be reading the forum, and there's no sense in giving them the impression you're too temperamental to ride with!
8. Since the forums are an educational space, please use Standard Written English as much as possible.
9. Please do not use these forums for personal disputes, heated debates, flame wars etc. You are expected to treat each other with respect in the forums and take any personal disputes to a private mode of discussion off the forums. If you should find that your discussion is becoming too heated or someone is becoming far too passionate about their argument, please take the discussion to private message or email.
10. Sometimes people can write something that you may find offensive. Before launching into a public condemnation though, please consider that the person may not have intended to cause offense. It is very easy to misinterpret a post on forums. There is absolutely no need to resort to insults. Respect others' views even if you disagree with them.
11. The best way to learn how to use the forum is to use the forum. Feel free to play with the different options and learn by watching others. When you quote another user, you can see the code that they used to make pictures appear, add links, and so on. You can't break the forum, so please don't be discouraged. And when you learn a new trick, share it with other members.
Here are some guidelines for sharing and responding to writing in your online group.
1) Help your group members give you the response you want by posting an Author's Note for each piece of writing. See description of Author's Notes below.
2) If a piece of writing doesn't have an Author's Note, then you'll have to guess what kind of response the writer wants. To cut down on guesswork, let's all use an advanced version of the "Three Stars and a Wish" response format. To use this kind of response, you do the following:
You point out three specific things you see in the writing that you really liked or that impressed you. These might be an idea, a particular word choice, or a "thinking move" the writer used, or anything else you really liked. These three specific things are the "three stars" of the response format.
You then mention one thing about the writing that you wonder about or wish you understood better. This might be an application of the idea or something you didn't understand or an organizational choice that surprised you. This one thing is the "wish" in the response format.
3) Since we'll all be corresponding with people we haven't met, feel free to share information with each other about why you are writing the pieces you are writing and why you respond the way you do. All our ideas and responses come from the full range of our life experiences, and writers often share this information in writing groups to help others help them. (Your group might even use the topic icons that show up at the top of the screen when you make new posts to help separate posts that are sharing contextual information and posts that are strictly writing response, but that's up to you.)
Here is a basic description of Author's Notes. We teachers will explain more about these in class.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
An Author's Note, oral or written, gives responders the crucial context they need to know how to respond. It should include three sorts of information.
1) A statement of where the text is in the process of development (first draft, ninth draft, based on an idea I got last night, an attempt to fix the second half by switching it to dialogue, etc.).
2) Your own writer's assessment of the piece (I like this about it because . . . I am worried about this about it because . . . ).
3) Any general sort of response you want, any specific questions you want answered. ("Today I think I need Support and Encouragement because I feel fragile about this piece." "Please tell me how you imagine the narrator of this scene, because I'm trying to create a specific kind of voice here and I need to know what kind of voice you get." "I'm worried about how I describe my grandmother here, so I want you to tell me how you imagine her from what I give you.").
Author's Notes are the primary way to focus on the specific TASK you, as writer, want accomplished during your small group time. Using Author's Notes well means knowing ahead of time where you are with a piece, and how response will help you. Often we will know this ahead of time, but just as often we won't. Consequently, in writing author's notes my advice is to provide as much information to responders as you can, and then to experiment with what response to ask for. Over a period of time, you can figure out what most often helps you.