A note about posting guidelines

This is a post in response to something Coco wrote:

My apologies to Vili for what will seem a long preamble, but I hope will be “relevant”.

Perhaps I have recently come across as being a little bit too aggressive about the wish that we keep threads relevant to one topic, and one topic only. For this I want to apologise.

Here’s the deal. If possible, I would still like to see as little “thread hijacking” as possible — if you, while writing, feel that you are going into a completely new direction that isn’t directly related to what’s been written before, if it in other words feels like a new topic altogether, I would still ask you to create a new thread and link to it from the old one.

Yet, I wouldn’t want this in any way to hinder the discussion or anyone’s freedom of expression. So, if you at any point find yourself wondering whether something brilliant that your wrote is actually “relevant”, or whether you should instead delete it, yet don’t want to create a new thread for it, just hit the ‘submit post’ button. I’ll sort it out later, if I feel that the post should be given a new thread.

Again, I’m really sorry if I sometimes act too much like a moderator. I just have this urge to keep things tidy and organised. I am one of those people whose CDs are arranged alphabetically.

Hehe.

I’m another one of those alphabetically-sorted-CDs folks, and you know what? We are not maniacs.

Well- I think we are not, are we?

Anyway, CD arranging in one’s home affects one – or a few – people, and is essentially a practical matter.

Whereas, on an informative web site, topic arranging affects potentially millions of people, and is all about information’s structure and web architecture, huge and noble purposes.

(No exaggeration meant.)

When I come to forum contributing, I’m glad to be able to count on a moderator in case I made a mistake, or in case a subject gave birth to another subject and the umbilical cord needs cutting.

By the way, thanks for this forum and for your work.

Managing and moderating boards is not that easy a task.

I’m a painter-so, chaos is my raw material! On the other hand, the goal is to create order out of chaos. It’s just, in my case, a messy process to get there.

But, I second Fabien’s vote: “I’m glad to have a moderator in case I made a mistake, or in case a subject gave birth to another subject and the umbilical cord needs cutting”.

I’m aware that, more than most, I need that kind of intellectual shepherding. So, far from feeling that you have been heavy-handed, Vili, I think you’ve been a gracious host!

Oh, and I have blog-induced apophenia.