Confessions of an Electrician...

Chris Pearson:

Isn't that what forums are about? ?

Not necessarily Chris... Depends on the style of forum and how well it's maintained/moderated. Going 'off-topic' or hijacking someone else's thread on a forum to discuss something unrelated to the OP's question is considered really bad forum etiquette... ? If you have a comment or a question that's not truly relevant to the OP then start a new topic thread and in a relevant category.  With a 'support' style forum category where users come to ask questions and get answers (much like the Wiring Regs category) they don't want to have to read through irrelevant content not related to the answer they're seeking. For example, if a question is asked about RCD ratings and then midway through the post someone randomly starts talking about the Spurs/Arsenal match scores at the weekend which then results in 7 pages of discussion posts about the Goalkeepers lack of skills and how the Ref needs to go to Specsavers, then that's not appropriate and definitely off topic. A little bit of topic drift is only to be expected but a complete shift away from the title of the topic is not good practice and may result in a topic being locked. 


Chat rooms and the old school 'Newsgroups' i.e. online places where you just ramble on about whatever you want and where the 'topic' changes rapidly throughout the conversation, are a completely different entity with a different set of etiquette rules ... 


HTML - ah yes I learnt HTML coding way back when the internet had just become 'mainstream'. I was writing websites for people long before the WYSIWYG platforms of today were conceived and yes it's really handy to be able to work your way around the source code even if you are using a 3rd party WYSIWYG platform as even they don't always behave themselves! ?

Chris Pearson:

Isn't that what forums are about? ?

Not necessarily Chris... Depends on the style of forum and how well it's maintained/moderated. Going 'off-topic' or hijacking someone else's thread on a forum to discuss something unrelated to the OP's question is considered really bad forum etiquette... ? If you have a comment or a question that's not truly relevant to the OP then start a new topic thread and in a relevant category.  With a 'support' style forum category where users come to ask questions and get answers (much like the Wiring Regs category) they don't want to have to read through irrelevant content not related to the answer they're seeking. For example, if a question is asked about RCD ratings and then midway through the post someone randomly starts talking about the Spurs/Arsenal match scores at the weekend which then results in 7 pages of discussion posts about the Goalkeepers lack of skills and how the Ref needs to go to Specsavers, then that's not appropriate and definitely off topic. A little bit of topic drift is only to be expected but a complete shift away from the title of the topic is not good practice and may result in a topic being locked. 


Chat rooms and the old school 'Newsgroups' i.e. online places where you just ramble on about whatever you want and where the 'topic' changes rapidly throughout the conversation, are a completely different entity with a different set of etiquette rules ... 


HTML - ah yes I learnt HTML coding way back when the internet had just become 'mainstream'. I was writing websites for people long before the WYSIWYG platforms of today were conceived and yes it's really handy to be able to work your way around the source code even if you are using a 3rd party WYSIWYG platform as even they don't always behave themselves! ?