Common courtesy

[FrankTrollman]

Deleted.

[Ballbarian]

I don't mind abbreviations (use them all the time myself), but it can be overdone.

[Nick_K]

I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to look up jargon in the manual just to use the forum. That's quite cliquey and will make it harder for new players to get involved online. In fact, I think Actuarian's point is well proven by the fact that I've been playing since Dom1 and reading these forums since they opened at shrapnel, and I still couldn't guess what 'FB' was without context...

[Nightblade]

I think a FAQ like the one that can be found in one of the Dominions 2 forum would be a nice and easy to find ressource for newcomers or users that are not forum regulars.

And other good side effect, it would help lowering the amount of "repeated same questions" problem that seems to overwhelm the patience of some regulars if i understood all well in this thread.

[quantum_mechani]

Nick_K said:
I think Actuarian's point is well proven by the fact that I've been playing since Dom1 and reading these forums since they opened at shrapnel, and I still couldn't guess what 'FB' was without context...

As someone who has read and written a lot about dominions, I can vouch for never having seen 'FB'... closest I can think of would be 'FoB' for fountain of blood.

[Nick_K]

As for Fordo Boggit... The Hoburgs perform quite well, possibly due to their small size. They're good against most indeps and small AI armies, but poor against missile heavy troops or heavily armoured ones.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think that for the purpose of the original post it was quite appropriate to come up with an acronym that even the elders of the forum would scratch their head over. Even if he didnt have an answer for what it was.

[Edi]

As one of those people who have been mentioned without naming names, I'll pitch in with a few words.

I try to post informative and helpful things and most of the time I don't even say anything if somebody else has covered the issue already. I know I can be prickly a times and sometimes downright harsh and sometimes I do get annoyed.

Actuarian is right about there needing to be common courtesy toward new people, such as the veterans avoiding too much jargon or explaining things out once before using acronyms as per Gandalf's, but it isn't limited to that.

Common courtesy is a two-way street and on the part of the new people, that means looking at the first couple of pages of the forum to see if there is a topic answering questions they might have before they post a new thread. It is completely unreasonable to expect new people to read all of teh forum or even a sizable fraction before starting, but anyone who can't be bothered to scan the topic titles for two pages on the forum as preliminary scouting is clearly showing a decided lack of common courtesy to start with.

This sort of thing is, or should be, a basic part of etiquette on ANY forum: Scout the basic lay of the land out first. If it is an issue that is relatively obvious, starting with "Apologies if this has been covered recently but..." is likely to mitigate any possible annoyance quite a bit.

As always, this is a personal opinion formed over the course of membership in a variety of forums over the net and does not necessarily reflect the policies of these particular forums on all counts. I welcome new people to the Dom3 community. Just that common courtesy should go both ways. If anyone new to this place has felt hurt by what I have said, I apologize. It is NOT personal and I hold no ill will.

Edi