Addressed To The Community,
I’ve been on this forum for quite a while now, seeing my Trust Level 3 come and go. I’d like to address certain behavior I’ve observed over the past weeks, or even months. By no means am I trying to act like a mini-mod, or something similar. I’d just like to go over some points, and hopefully help out some of the new comers to the IFC. With that said, I’ll try to keep this as short and straight forward as possible.
Keeping threads clean - how much is too much?
Take this thread as an example:
Lately, mods have been closing this thread a lot. Want to know why? There was, and still is a lot of off-topic chat. You can easily see what I mean if you take a scroll through recent posts. This is a development thread, not a place to speculate (more on that later), but a place to share your excitement with others, and track the development process, as the title discloses. Off-topic comments lead to clutter within the already large thread. Now this is by no means the only thread I’ve seen this problem with, I just chose this for an example. Keep it on-topic, the thread will stay open - trust me, it’ll be funner or all of us.
Speculation
This is kind of tied into off-topic comments. If we take a look at the development thread again, we’ll see quite a lot of speculation of non-confirmed features. I don’t want to point out anyone in specific, but here’s a comment I’ve seen quite a lot of in that thread:
“There are clouds in that picture, so are clouds coming with the 777 rework!?”
Leaving a message like that often is lead up to a a staff member/mods reply. I like this statement Tom made made here:
Questions require 1 correct answer, not 15 guesses
I’ve mainly been seeing this kind of behavior in the Support category. Let’s role-play here, you see a topic with a question you happen to know the answer to, but someone already replied with the answer. Would you reply again stating the same answer in different words, or just like the post. Well, the correct thing to do would be to like the post, showing that you support the question. If your are on the other end, about to ask a question, don’t forget that if you click on the little magnifying glass, you can search for a topic that might already have your answer. If there isn’t, and you make a topic, please give as much detail as you can, it’ll help us all. If the question is an Support one, remember to check out this topic before posting.
Violations and ghosts/reports
I understand that getting a violation or report could be frustrating, especially if you loose a grade, but you don’t need to let your anger out on the community. I’ve seen, and still see a lot of “Reported for no reason” topics. I’d say that a solid 90% of the time, you got reported for a reason. If you would like to talk to the person who gave you a violation/report, try this: check your logbook and try to find the controller/mod/staff member who reported you. Use the search tool (the little magnifying glass icon) to search up their name. If they have a display name of something like IFC - *Name*, that makes finding them 10 times easier. But please, don’t let your anger out on the community.
Duplicate Topics
Lastly, I’m going to talk about duplicate topics/posts. If you want to make a Features post about an aircraft, especially if it’s a well known one, there’s a big chance that there is already a feature request for that aircraft. Use the search function! Use that little magnifier glass, it’s there for a reason. If you do use it, and there’s no topic, feel free to make one. If there already is a feature request for something but it’s old, doesn’t have a lot of votes, or doesn’t have much detail, flag it for moderation and you can open a new one. Make sure your new one looks better and more convincing if you want it to stay open though.
By no means am I trying to say to stop posting, I’m trying to say make your posts better quality. If you genuinely have something useful to add to a topic, go ahead - add it. Let’s make the IFC a better place. Everything is useful… in it’s time.
Thank You & Stay Safe,
Infinite Flight Sims
