1. Write coherently and intelligently.
2. While personal attacks can spice things up, if that is all you do, it gets really stale and boring after a while. Instead, attack the argument, not the poster.
3. Don't flood or spam similar messages.
4. Make sure what you are posting is pertinent and relevant to the topic being discussed.
5. You're never as funny as you think you are.
That's about all I got. If you keep those in mind, you probably won't be a "shit poster".
Suggestion #4 was used by corrupt staff members to stifle opinions they didn't agree with or that made them personally butthurt. Often, a post which seems to have little relevance to the initial thread topic will actually generate more valid and interesting discussion within the thread, and then the discussion eventually returns to the initial topic on its own. Point is, we should never try and "cattle chute" people's contributions and the way they wish to respond to a topic. As long as they're adding
something to the thread, that's the whole point on a BBS discussion platform: discussion. It doesn't necessarily have to be on topic. Topics can branch out into seemingly irrelevant topics, but still keep the thread alive, and other posts within can serve to satisfy the original topic. Now, if the off-topic post is kidiot garbage, that's a completely different story. That kind of posting does not add anything at all to either the thread or the entire forum in any case. Kidiot garbage isn't covered under free speech, because it's not speech, it's garbage, and should be deleted outright and the spammer warned. At the same time, the off-topic rule was the death of both Totse and Zoklet because valid content contained in off-topic postings were being used to stifle opinions and ideas which some staff members couldn't handle.
