Request for All Member's Thoughts on Small Talk

[DrQ]

I hope I don't offend any of the "Regulars" but I've observed an increase in "Small Talk" and "Off Thread" chatter on many posts. I wonder how some of the less frequent members are finding this and if it is causing a problem by making some of the technical posts lengthy and harder to search through.

The thing I love about EQ is the tolerance that is missing on some other forums. Some forums seems to bash you for simply posting a question. Secondly I like the sense of community we have, where all are welcome.

We have a lot of General and Off Topic threads that I feel are the place for chatter, but if a newcomer has to search through 2 or 3 pages on a technical thread to read 2 or 3 pertinent posts, they are going to get frustrated with the suggestion to "search first".

This is just an observation and suggestion. I hope we can hear from both active members and a few newer lurkers on how y'all feel about this.

Tony's language Post gave me the courage to speak up.

[rudeboy]

i mostly agree.... and know i am guilty of doing it. not always but in a lot of cases i try to not do it until the original questions is answered.

i will attempt to do better..

[PacoJr67]

As will I. Although coming from a forum (as I do) where searching requires manual leafing through pages and pages of threads (there is a search option, but it searches all of the motorola forums so a search for a common problem could give you results in the RAZR forum rather than the Q forum), simply having the option is quite refreshing. In addition, there is no off topic discussion to speak of (other than the occasional argument) on that forum either and still there are thousands of threads.

[Tony Bag o Donuts]

Originally Posted by PacoJr67

As will I. Although coming from a forum (as I do) where searching requires manual leafing through pages and pages of threads (there is a search option, but it searches all of the motorola forums so a search for a common problem could give you results in the RAZR forum rather than the Q forum), simply having the option is quite refreshing. In addition, there is no off topic discussion to speak of (other than the occasional argument) on that forum either and still there are thousands of threads.

I am guilty....Will try to clean it up...I should be purged.
No seriously, its my ADD, I will try and keep posts on topic.
I will lead the revolt!!!

[DrQ]

Thanks guys...I also like the chat but will try to put in in the General or Off Topic thread in the future. Thanks for taking my "observations" so well. We are lucky to have EQ.

[mike250rs]

noticed it sereral times, usualy try and wait until question was answered.

I've said before it's refreshing to be part of a board of adults and not grown kids. From what I've seen thus far, common sense does prevail here along with mutual respect.

[rudeboy]

Originally Posted by mike250rs

noticed it sereral times, usualy try and wait until question was answered.

I've said before it's refreshing to be part of a board of adults and not grown kids. From what I've seen thus far, common sense does prevail here along with mutual respect.

QFT, which i credit to our great users/members who by being that way make the admin/mods job pretty easy..

[n99hockey]

i think all of us are guilty of this from time to time...and i agree it should be kept to off topic or general discussion forums
at the same time if the small talk pertains to or talks about the question then i think its fine...but if its way off tangent then yes it belongs some place else

i like everyone else who posted will do my best

thanks Doc...
never be scared to speak up...

[KestrylR]

Originally Posted by DrQ

I hope I don't offend any of the "Regulars" but I've observed an increase in "Small Talk" and "Off Thread" chatter on many posts. I wonder how some of the less frequent members are finding this and if it is causing a problem by making some of the technical posts lengthy and harder to search through.

The thing I love about EQ is the tolerance that is missing on some other forums. Some forums seems to bash you for simply posting a question. Secondly I like the sense of community we have, where all are welcome.

We have a lot of General and Off Topic threads that I feel are the place for chatter, but if a newcomer has to search through 2 or 3 pages on a technical thread to read 2 or 3 pertinent posts, they are going to get frustrated with the suggestion to "search first".

This is just an observation and suggestion. I hope we can hear from both active members and a few newer lurkers on how y'all feel about this.

Tony's language Post gave me the courage to speak up.

Mostly, I don't mind it. It gives a sense of real community, but it can be frustrating when I'm searching for answers I know are in here **somewhere**, and I have to decide whether or not to see if there are answers on the 3rd or 4th page of a thread that has a lot of chit-chat on pages 1 and 2. 'Cause sometimes the answer I'm looking for *is* several pages down, but more often it isn't.

[Der Alta]

The off-topic chatter bothers me at points, and there are a few things to alleviate that. I've used these to a varying degree at another forum.

One is to have a "Chat" thread, that can contain various different conversations and add a feature to the site. It didn't work on the forum I run, as it's demographic is a younger age.

We at one point had a "How many replies can we get" thread. This became troublesome after a while, due to the thread reaching north of 200,000 replies. The owner shut it off at just over 253,000 replies. The server load from that one thread was enourmous.

My thought is that unless it's on-topic, keep it in a chatroom or in a specific thread in the Off-topic Forum.

Unfortunately, that confounds the idea of "Community" and discourages a bit of the familiarity necessary to build a community.

No real good way to solve it, other than to keep it to a minimum.