Useful Guidelines for Posting

[Yellowfin]

As things are picking up here, it seems useful to have some guidelines for making things easier and more enjoyable and beneficial to read. We're going to have a lot of information here for everyone so quality is going to be important. Of course having fun is also every bit essential as well, so of course that can't be left out either. So let's do both fun and informative and allow folks to get as much of both out of it as we can.

1. Directly quote cited material as much as absolutely possible. Links to the stuff is good, but it's a lot better so we can pick it apart here and center discussion around it effectively. Having to have multiple windows open to look at what someone else is quoting to read it then reply to it and/or see what the rest of the others are talking about is HIGHLY ANNOYING at times!

The article's contents instead of just a bare link with none of the text of the article. Makes it a lot easier for us to immediately get the picture, doesn't it? We're trying to have discussion here in an immediate manner rather than roundabout yackety yack then read it all later and half the time look foolish for not having read it first.

2. Link your quotes. I could type in a few pages of The DaVinci Code and say it was from this week's Wall Street Journal and obviously that's not helping anyone, so it's good for everyone involved here to have reliable sources and us to keep as close to 100% credibility as possible.

3. BE SPECIFIC!!! A lot of the stuff we discuss here involves people in positions we should either thank and support or seek to influence and/or replace. We need to know who did what where and when, and if they say so, how and why. "The law says"...ok, which law, where, and what part of it? Does it really say what you say it did? Well if we don't have a section we can't really determine that, can we? This is with the understanding of course that I know this isn't always IMMEDIATELY possible, if for no other reason than for brevity, but I think you see the point. It isn't an iron clad rule as in do this or be thrown into a deep pit with sharp pointy stuff at the bottom, but a PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE with a cherry on top.

4. Check your spelling and structure as much as you can. OK, there's some stuff I'll miss here and there myself and typos happen when you're cranking out lots of material, it's the end of a rough day, late at night/ early morning, or all of the above. For the most part, though, we need to keep it reading smoothly.

5. Read the whole thread and/or related threads before posting! Accidental repeats can and should be minimized. Quoting stuff you agree with is OK to add yourself as a vote in favor of it, or maybe restating something for clarity on a detail that is important, but a lot of things just don't need to be repeated endlessly. There is, for example, exactly ONE way to take the slide off a Glock 19...it doesn't take 3 pages x 20 posts to instill this ONE detail in a new owner of said pistol.



Carry on, good folks, carry on...

[Yellowfin]

New info for videos:

When posting a video clip, please directly imbed it in the post rather than just having the link. To do this, the format is [video] The link address [*/video] , obviously without the * in the last [ ] set. This helps us see the video directly when we're discussing it here, also helps us keep track of whether it is still up or if the link has gone bad. This works for YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, and a few others, and that's a LOT of content.

Carry on...

[NY Shooters]

You can also click the filmstrip logo and insert the web address of the video and it will automatically imbed it.