I’m adding a list of common forum phrases to help new members. If you think of any others, feel free to add them to this list, or send them in a PM (see here for PM)
What Does OP Stand For? On forums, you’ll often see members refer to other people as the "OP". This is short hand for forum members to refer to the Original Poster (the person who started the discussion thread)
What is a Forum Troll? Whatever you do, do not feed the Forum Troll! A Forum Troll is a person who attempts to provoke other people in order to get a response from them. If at all avoidable, you shouldn’t cave in, try not to feed these Trolls. Also, try to remember, Trolls have feelings too. Insulting them is exactly the type of response they hope to provoke you to do, don’t bother, flaming can get your account banned (see here for flaming)
What Does "Check Your PMs" Mean? For people that often use forum software and post on forum sites, they will be use to sending Private Messages Surrey Forum does not use the convention of "Private Messages", instead we have "Conversations" which can be discussed ‘privately’ between individuals, or between a group of individuals. From time to time you’ll still hear members using the term "PMs" or "Private Message" since they’re still living in the dark ages, but that’s okay, we know what they mean now If someone is asking you to "check your PMs", then log in and check your conversations
What Does Flaming mean? Flaming on forums is posting a message / messages that is in some way insulting or hostile to other members. These messages are often referred to as "flames" and are sometimes posted in response of "Flame Bait". The "Forum Troll" (see previous) is often responsible for such "Flame Bait" … once again, do not feed the troll Flaming on Surrey Forum does have consequences, please be nice to each other Flaming on Surrey Forum can results in the following consequences: Your "Flaming" Post gets deleted You receive a warning Your account is temporarily banned Your account is permanently banned
What is Thread Bumping? "Bumping", or "Thread Bumping" is a term used on forums when a user replies to a thread purely to raise the threads profile to the top of this list. Often within Forums, threads are ordered by the most recently responded thread. By responding to a thread, or "Bumping" the thread, the thread will apear at the top of the list, gaining more exposure to forum users. People that bump threads often do so by replying to a thread with the word "Bump", and do this in order for people to notice the thread and gain some sort of response. This is usually fairly selfish and there’s often a good reason nobody has responded (nobody knows, nobody cares, or you’re simply just misunderstood). Instead of bumping threads with the word "Bump", we would recommend within the same thread, to give more detail, ask the question in a new way, or ask your self "why does nobody care?" Thread bumping under most circumstances is considered unethical and certainly frowned upon within Surrey Forum… Thread bumping, don’t do it here without good reason, but by all means respond to posts.
What is Thread Pinning? Thread Pinning is once again one of those old terms from older forum software, these days "pinned threads" are referred to as "sticky threads" Thread Pinning, Thread Sticking or Making a Sticky thread is the act of making a thread stay at the top of a thread list. A forum administrator and sometimes moderators have the ability to make certain threads stay permanently (or for a desired amount of time) at the top of a thread list. This is useful when form administrators wish to point everyone contributing in that particular form to an important thread (the thread rules for instance). … in fact, I might make this one a Sticky Thread
What do people mean by Off Topic? Really, you need to ask? Sometimes you may get the occasional Forum Poster that complains your post is "Off Topic", this is fair enough in a forum community. When somebody views a forum thread about a particular topic, they don’t want to read post after post of unrelated topics, they want to find an answer (or many answers) to the question asked. If you feel someone is going "Off topic", politely refer them to this post Try to keep threads "On Topic", if you feel you want to answer something, but it isn’t quite related to the OPs original question, why not start a thread of your own. It’s very acceptable to start a thread and answer your own question at the same time (If it’s not, I’m in a lot of trouble for this thread). Both asking and answering questions on a forum is helpful to the forum community. However, doing this in real life is a sign of insanity
WHAT IS FORUM SHOUTING!!!? Isn’t it awful, don’t do it on Surrey Forum! "Shouting" or "Forum Shouting" is when somebody writes forum content almost entirely in capital letters. The poster often shouts on a forum to gain attention to their own post. This sort of posting is unethical, if you want to gain attention on Surrey Forum, say something interesting, don’t shout On occasions, people do mistake capitalisations for shouting. It’s often the convention to write SQL in capital letters, and reading a post that is almost entirely composed of capitalised SQL may result in this common misunderstanding, so don’t be too quick to judge. Not all posts with lots of capitalisations are considered shouting, be sure before you close that door (and to avoid doubt, try to keep concurrent capitalisations to a minimum where possible) If someone is shouting on the Forum, REFER THEM TO THIS POST and consider them warned.
Spammers and What is Forum Spam? If you don’t know by now, this might be the first time you have ever switched on a computer… Welcome to the internet. The internet, a bewildering vast place, full of interesting articles, here to answer almost any imaginable question. However, some answers are often misleading and result in an amazingly reduced offer for Viagra, or that long sort after enlargement… Form Spam: Threads created on a forum where the only intent is to gain links or sell you something. Spammers hardly ever contribute constructively to forum conversations (although I did have a spammer ask the question "what’s the meaning of life" once, to this day people still add answers to that thread) Spam, it isn’t tolerated here, we don’t want it, you don’t want it, it gets deleted, the spammer gets banned, no questions asked. If you do notice a forum poster spamming the forum point them to this post and say your farewells to them a moderator, or an administrator will be along shortly to delete You!
LOL / ROFL / LMAO / ROFLMAO For the gigglers out there, you know who you are … These are abbreviations for common laughing expressions, usually used when texting, but also often used on forums ROFL: Rolling On Floor Laughing LMAO: Laughing my ass off ROFLMAO : A combination of the above LOL: Laughing out loud LMFAO: Laughing my Fren*h ass off (excuse my French)
