The word 'Charter'

Owen

Obviously newbies don't read Charters, you'll forever find Mods and admins complaining about this, and rightly so. I think honestly it's because the Charter is lumped in with all the stickies, but more so because it's called a Charter.

I don't know anyone who uses this word in everyday life apart from if they'd like to privately hire a boat, or aircraft. Why doesn't boards use something more transparent and simple like 'RULES OF THIS FORUM, without reading this, you may be banned' in red to distinguish that charter rules thread from the cacophony of other threads?

Wolfe Tone

Im going to be honest and say I never read a charter until I get a card and the mod says to go read it. I guess most are the same.

pickarooney

I wonder how many charters the average user has read? I think I've read 2 in 8 years.

Nodin

PaintDoctor wrote: »

Obviously newbies don't read Charters, you'll forever find Mods and admins complaining about this, and rightly so. I think honestly it's because the Charter is lumped in with all the stickies, but more so because it's called a Charter.

I don't know anyone who uses this word in everyday life apart from if they'd like to privately hire a boat, or aircraft. .......

Pirates?

Sad Professor

I don't think it makes any difference what the charter is called or how prominently it is displayed. Most people aren't going to read it until they have to. Which isn't necessarily a huge problem because I think most of the rules on the site are fairly common sense. The ones that aren't will quickly become apparent to anyone who familiarises themselves with a forum.

OldGoat

Charter: a document setting forth the aims and principles of a united group

Seems perfectly cromulent to me.

Dav

I'm inclined to agree with OldGoat, a charter is commonly defined as the document that states the rules and rights of what it represents (in this case a forum and it's members). Do people really not know this? I'm not trying to suggest anyone's poorly educated or anything, but honestly there's no better fitting word really. It's not just about "don't do this or you'll be banned" as charters include notes on what's commonly accepted discussion points on the forum and/or notes on the "culture" of the forum.

Wolfe Tone

Might be impossible, but could you have a window pop up with the charter of a forum when you go to post in it for the first time?

pickarooney

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

Might be impossible, but could you have a window pop up with the charter of a forum when you go to post in it for the first time?

Doubt it. It would just get clicked away anyway.

Owen

Dav wrote: »

I'm inclined to agree with OldGoat, a charter is commonly defined as the document that states the rules and rights of what it represents (in this case a forum and it's members). Do people really not know this? I'm not trying to suggest anyone's poorly educated or anything, but honestly there's no better fitting word really. It's not just about "don't do this or you'll be banned" as charters include notes on what's commonly accepted discussion points on the forum and/or notes on the "culture" of the forum.

Christ, I think it's a terrible word if you want people to actually read and interpret what's in there. I think if you lined up 100 people and asked them what Charter meant, they'd tell you about hiring something privately, rather than the derrivative that's applicable here - ie : ye olde worlde town charter.

Surely the Community Managers could come up with something a bit more accessible for the 'less educated' in Ireland and maybe make the threads stand out a bit more (Colour change, segregate them like announcements, etc) - it'd make boards a nicer place to be.

My humble, and half thought out 2 cents!

Wolfe Tone

OldGoat wrote: »

Charter: a document setting forth the aims and principles of a united group

Seems perfectly cromulent to me.

I had to google that

Tallon

imo it's always been an unwritten rule to 'thank' the charter of a forum to show you've read it... It's something, I always try do, but have lacked in the past few months

/runs to thank a load of missed charters

Owen

Surely* if there's ambiguity about the word and it's interpretation, it should be changed? If 5/10 people don't associate Charter with being a rulebook and roadmap for each forum, shouldn't we changed it so that more people do associate it that way? Because we're all established boardsies, we forget how odd the place can be to newbies.


*Don't call me Shirley. Jimmy, you ever seen a grown man naked?

AckwelFoley

ive never read the charter in the forums i more commonly post in, ironically somewhat i do skip through the individual charters of certain forums if i have a specific question to ask and fear it may contravene the rules, so i look at the charter before i post

Sad Professor

Most charters say "Read Before Posting", often in capital letters followed by explanation marks. In AH the mods add stuff like "free beer" and "hot local girls" to the title to try and encourage people to read them. If none of the above works then changing "charter" to "rules of the forum" certainly isn't going to work either.

Owen

Sad Professor wrote: »

Most charters say "Read Before Posting", often in capital letters followed by explanation marks. In AH the mods add stuff like "free beer" and "hot local girls" to the title to try and encourage people to read them. If none of the above works then changing "charter" to "rules of the forum" certainly isn't going to work either.

Additional to changing the word, I also suggested changing the colour of the charter to red/green/tourmaline-violet/polkadot, and potentially also segregating it away from the usual mass of stickies. Some forums have nearly 14 stickies and a Charter. No newbie, no matter how good is going to have the sense to look through the 14 stickies, and after that mental rape - he has to be one of the 5/10 people who associate the word Charter with it's intended meaning here.

One thing's evident in everyone's replies - users don't read Charters. So why not fix it?

-Chris-

Seems like a pretty simpe fix tbh.

Sad Professor

Changing the colour might be a good idea.

As for segregating the charter away from the rest of the stickies, it's already possible for mods to create announcements (like the one here). But I think they are just as easy to ignore.

I mean, look at Film Reviews. The forum is for reviews only, no discussion, and there are several stickies stating this along with a ban threat. You would think everyone would see this, right? Hell no! We regularly have to go in there and delete dozens of posts at a time for not being reviews.

Steve

I'm with snyper on this one - I generally only read a charter if I think what I'm about to post is maybe walking the line.
That said, general posting rules should be more in your face here, not just something you click yes to when signing up. How to do that? no clue..

bonkey

People don't read stuff.

Install a new piece of sofrware, and you get the big page of "Terms and Conditions", a checkbox to say you've read and understood them, and a button to move on once the checkbox is checked. For most people, this means skip the reading, check the checkbox, move on.

Even error messages get treated this way by an amazing number of people. "bonkey...can you help my fix <X>. Some error appeared on screen and now its not working". What did the error say? "I didn't read it...I saw that it was an error, clicked on OK, and now <X> doesn't work".

It doesn't matter what we do, most people still won't read the stuff when they should. Some will never read it. Some will get in trouble, then decide to read it to avoid the same thing happening again....some won't even do that.

Make it difficult enough, and it will turn people off using the place. Anything less, and we're into the territory of those Terms and Conditions dialogs....see "Terms and Conditions", look for a checkbox, click it, move on. Read the thing? Why would anyone want to do that?

The overwhelming majority of users don't get into trouble despite all of this. Of those who do, the overwhelming majority of them learn their lessons quickly (one way or the other). Pragmatically speaking, its hard to improve on that....

mike65

Some charters are just so long winded its hardly a surprise they are not read even if
clicked (if you need to scroll the page to read one its too long).

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056072863

"Dont be a prick and no text speak" would suffice in the more simply themed forums. With a simple outline of whats content appropriate (plus "Dont be a prick and no text speak") in the more thematically sophisicated/technical forums.

CrazyRabbit

Sad Professor wrote: »

Changing the colour might be a good idea.

As for segregating the charter away from the rest of the stickies, it's already possible for mods to create announcements (like the one here). But I think they are just as easy to ignore.

I mean, look at Film Reviews. The forum is for reviews only, no discussion, and there are several stickies stating this along with a ban threat. You would think everyone would see this, right? Hell no! We regularly have to go in there and delete dozens of posts at a time for not being reviews.

In this case, I would suggest that perhaps the forum is not meeting the needs of its users who clearly want discussion.

As for the OP's point about the charter...well, I've read the charter for every forum I regularly post in. Not to do so would be just lazy. Ignorance is no excuse when you break the rules here.

Sad Professor

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

In this case, I would suggest that perhaps the forum is not meeting the needs of its users who clearly want discussion.

There's already a forum for discussion of films. Film Reviews is just for posting reviews. Whether it's needed or not is another thing. My point was that a lot of people don't pay any attention to stickies or notices.

Owen

We now have more feedback in this thread from various mods saying "Users don't read things, whatcha gonna do?". If that isn't motivation for a colour change for the charter and a change of name, I don't know what is. None of what I'm suggesting will cost money, and it'll only take a small bit of time - and it could improve life around here for the very Mods weary from educating users. It won't get through to everyone, but no change ever does - but if it increases transparency for rules and guidelines, it has to be a good thing.

Rev Hellfire

No one reads charters, they're simply there as rope to hang people with when they act the maggot. (imho etc etc)

NeedaNewName

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

No one reads charters, they're simply there as rope to hang people with when they act the maggot. (imho etc etc)

Very true. Much like ignorance of the law is no excuse etc etc.

5starpool

Changing the colour would do nothing for most people. The vast majority of users fall into one of two camps:

1. They know they are there but don't read them.
2. They don't know or care and wouldn't read them anyhow.

If a new user navigates their way successfully to a specific forum then chances are they know how the internet works anyhow. From my point of view, it would annoy the hell out of me to have a thread in a different colour. Not much of an inconvenience obviously, but it would still irk me somewhat.

Owen

But even if it worked for 3/10 people, that'd be an additional 3 people who might follow the rules.

Regarding the colour change, it would probably be possible for Conor/Ross to make each Charter red in colour until it had been read by each user, thereby only upsetting retinas everywhere for a short amount of time.

But we're digressing away from the main issue I wanted to raise. I think the word's not actually ideal, and IMHO, it should be changed. It'd take feck all to do it. All the other issues could be hammered out in other threads.

LoLth

I honestly dont think it matters what you call the thread, if a user isnt going to read it, then they arent going to read it.

As for the word Charter, it does exactly what it says... its a set of rules and regulations as well as a "mission statement" for a community that forum mods can use to set the tone as well as define the paramters of the forum its posted in.

In the security forum we have treated it as almost a social contract a "here's what we expect of you and here's what you can expect of us" type of affair. In that regard, the mods of security are just as bound by the charter as the users.

I'm not sure there's actually a more suitable word for it tbh.

OldGoat

PaintDoctor wrote: »

But we're digressing away from the main issue I wanted to raise. I think the word's not actually ideal, and IMHO, it should be changed.

Please, don't dumb down the forums. It's difficult enough putting up with 'Unfollow'. The word 'charter' is the right word to use.

Steve

A lot of internet forums use the term "Posting rules". I think that's a good compromise.

That said, there's a difference between the rules of posting and a declaration of the forums raison d'etre. IMO, peeps in general would be more inclined to read something that says 'The rules' than 'The Charter'.