Small Forum Changes

[Admin]

Okay so we've been chatting with the regulars about a few issues and have collectively come up with the following improvements to make the place a nicer place to browse without needing to micromanage the place.

• Trainees and DIY Members will be marked as so. So the new group key is as follows, you need to cut the slack of those who are Trainees or DIY members - they're clearly not time-served skilled people so there's no need to belittle them and / or gang up on them about asking questions you as skilled tradesmen see as 'basic' and assume everybody knows the answers to:Administrator, Global Moderator, Moderator, Forum Sponsor, DIY Member, Trainee Electrician, Registered Member
  
  
• A reminder in the quick reply box will let you know on going that pointless or off-topic replies to posts are not welcomed. Repeat offenders risk being banned at some point. It can't go on. Doesn't matter how many posts you have, you're all members of the forum and share it together.
• So that trainees or those who have completed short courses to get various parts of various electrical qualifications (as apposed to being fully fledged and trained electricians) don't call themselves electricians in their "Occupation" area in the profile, the following message has been added.
  
  "Your job. Warning: don't put that you're an electrician if you're actually still training. Put that you're a trainee electrician here to ask basic questions that time-served electricians would clearly know the answer to. And consider gaining access to the electrical trainee access-only forums which is where you can ask basic electrical questions. More about that HERE."
  
  As you can see it also links them to the thread on how to gain access to the trainee area, which when actioned will change their username colour too. So you just need to cut them some slack until we've had time to action it, and until they're spotted or have applied for access. - Please update your profile accordingly now.
  
  
• The report post icon perhaps isn't too obvious, so a link has been added to the bottom of every single post. You need to be reporting posts that you think will cause a thread to go off-topic, or you think somebody might take offence to, and NEVER EVER REPLY to it unless you're being helpful and nice about it.
  
  
  
• Private Message storage has been increased from 100 messages to 500 messages to help keep general banter out of the forums. Remember you can add upto 5 members to a private message and all click 'reply all' so you all get all messages in replies. Get your cliques either off the forum or in PM's - but we want no cliquey groups in the public forums now
  
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• The Green Energy Forums have been restructured a bit and there's a new Renewable Heat forum. Take a look at those. You'll now find 3 sub-forums in one main category.
  
  
• The Forum Categories in general on the homepage. And we've added some "Lifestyle Forums" to discuss sports, pets, politics, that sort of jazz too.

 

[Admin]

You know what lads, I've removed the guideline about calling short course trainees 5 Week Wonders.

You call them that if you want. It's left with you. Seems quite a few didn't like the move and assumed we have NICEIC breathing down our necks about it (not sure why - we don't and don't need to answer to anybody).

So you knock yourselves out lads. Call 'em that.