Recently it has been noticed that material that is being posted by members on this site is finding its way, almost word for word, to other websites.

Where this information is repeated by the original poster there really isn't an issue. However if someone is repeating the information as a third party contributor then this activity is in breach of Section 3B of the Terms of Use. For the information of non-member visitors, the Terms of Use of this website applies to you in the same way that is applies to members. Breaches of copyright leave the offender liable to criminal prosecution.

So the simple reminder is this: if you are lifting content from this website without the permission of the person who provided the content then you must stop.

For the finer details of how copyright is managed here please visit the Copyright Policy.

Secondly, I recently gave members a reminder to be more accurate with postings with respect to the structure of comments though it seems that the 'gentle reminder' is not being heard. When posting comments what you say and how you are saying it is very important for a number of reasons. I am sorry that this reminder seems to be ad-nauseum however I am going to repeat it once more and only once before I start deleting offending comments.

Please start ALL sentences with a capital letter and end them with a fullstop. If you fail to do this then how can other people read what you are saying? Could I also ask that members proof-read what they have written after their comments have been posted. These forums have long had an edit feature that members can use to correct mistakes so if I go to the trouble of providing it I'll expect it to be used rather than me going through all 14 forums daily and correcting up to 20 posts at a time.

A few other points:

**When referring to yourself, the letter "I" is always uppercase.
**A fullstop is positioned adjacent to the last letter of its sentence. There is no space to the left of the fullstop.
**The shorthand of "I have" is I've, not ive or Ive - remember the apostrophe.
**When someone misplaces something they lose the item, not loose it.
**Some members have their Windows and browser language settings set to the default EN-US or other regional English setting. This is an Australian website so if you live here, please change your language settings to EN-AU, especially if you are using a recent version of a web browser which has a spell-check feature. Of course, it is not expected that those living outside Australia conform to this.

If this sounds harsh please remember that this is a precedent that has been set on the British and American vintage radio forums and the owners of those sites are known for deleting poorly formed comments. When the above is heeded, all the forums look much more professional and the credibility of the sources of information also rises.

Maybe you could "name and shame" those other websites which have been breaching copyright.

This is the first forum I have seen where grammar is of paramount importance. The other places I frequent only require that posts are in English and understandable.

I wouldn't say good grammar is of paramount importance, but it does ensure that there is no misunderstanding what is being said. This also applies to the use of slang and acronyms that may be obvious to the sender, but not the recipient.
I think the site is all the better for it.
Harold

Maybe you could "name and shame" those other websites which have been breaching copyright.

I have done this in the past though not on this website. I'd prefer not to go on witch hunts and in line with a very long standing tradition here, I would prefer to use my access as the administrator of this site as little as possible. In fact, it could be said that my opening comments are quite out of character though I felt that the issues raised were becoming commonplace enough to make a mention of them.

I should also use this as an opportunity to clarify my comments relating to content. The reason I tend to harp about spelling and sentence structure more than other things such as spamming and arguments and personal attacks between members is because the latter issues are seldom seen here. This site has no full time moderation staff and two people who I have known and trusted for more than a decade keep watch (mostly at a distance) when I am not close to a computer.

I think one of this site's greatest assets is that the members here do not need the micromanagement that members of other sites need. Discussions are mature, level-headed and usually straight to the point. Most members, particularly those who've been here a long time would know that I'd delete any comment that contained any serious transgressions so posting them is pointless.

With 19,000 comments made here since 2005 I've only seen a need to delete around 20. That's a good result.

There's plenty of reasons why members should strive to make their comments look professional. I've already mentioned a few though another is for the purpose of search engine optimisation. This site has been #1 for the search term 'Vintage Radio' for many years on all major search engines. I won't sit back and surrender that position. The reason the site is so prominent is due to the URL itself, the title of the site and most important of all, because the site contains lots and lots of top quality content. Questions get asked by those new to vintage radio and the experts in the hobby give good answers to those questions. Search engines know automatically by the site's physical structure that it contains discussion forums. So they scan the site for the qualities just mentioned. These scans look for relevant content, both text and images are checked, and if it all ticks the boxes the site gets a high score and is positioned well.

There's a lot of forums out there where the members belittle those who aren't 'in the know'. Where this happens there is little point in operating the forum because a question will be asked by an inexperienced person and they get slagged off for it instead of being helped. There's also cases where most comments are irrelevant to the site's purpose or comments look like SMS shorthand rather than the Queen's English. None of such sites score so highly and the derogatory or in-comprehendible dribble that populates the postings simply make the sites unworthy of a place on the Internet.

I don't expect every post here to be perfect. I'm not perfect and sometimes I make mistakes though I always try to check my comments and make changes where I've left something out. It doesn't take much time to do - the average posting here is about eight lines or around 100 words. So I am not asking for perfection but what I would like to see is members taking some pride in what they contribute and all this requires is a little effort. I, for one, feel better knowing that I've made myself as understood as possible so that I don't need to repeat any information I have given out.

For what it's worth Brad, I think your comments on grammar are timely and needed.

Personal pride should be enough motivation for good presentation.

How difficult would it be to include a spell checker on the site?

How difficult would it be to include a spell checker on the site?

The site's had a spell checker for many years. It forms part of the filtration function that most forum systems have to do things like correct common spelling errors, block foul language, process forumcode for text formatting and colours, convert certain strings of characters to mathematical units just as μ, ° and Ω and convert certain text patterns to the smileys that we all find familiar. Due to the nature of the English language, however, it is not possible to correct all mistakes. One common example is one of the words I mentioned previously. The word 'loose', to describe something that moves freely when perhaps it shouldn't, is often used in place of 'lose' when highlighting that something has been misplaced. It's not really feasible to make the filtering system powerful enough to discern when 'loose' has been used in its correct context and the same applies with 'there', their' and 'they're'; 'hear' and 'here'; 'where' and 'wear'; 'whole' and 'hole', etc. All those words are spelt correctly but forum software isn't acute enough to judge when those words are used correctly. It would slow down the best software available which is why web browsers are taking on this role instead.

The filter currently corrects about 60 common misspellings.in addition to the other possible functions. I don't worry about filtering foul language because I trust the membership to refrain, where humanly possible.

Apart from that, swear filters are pretty easy to evade.

On the subject of grammar, thanks to what I term the 'kumbayah' policies of education departments from the 1970s onward, there's a generation of people who were taught neither grammar nor punctuation. I have hired young university-educated people with English as their first language who could not write a grammatically correct sentence to save their lives. University teaching staff have had to put up with this problem for decades as they waded through incomprehensible papers submitted by students who expected passing grades -- and got them.

Thankfully, largely as the result of continuous complaints from universities and employer associations, education policy makers have recognised the need for grammar to be taught formally as it used to be, but that could not proceed until teachers themselves were trained in grammar.

...but that could not proceed until teachers themselves were trained in grammar.

This reminds me of my last seven years of employment. Between 2006 and 2013 I worked at a leading private school in their maintenance department. I won't ID the school because it's not my intention to have a go at them - after all they employed me for seven years and I parted on good terms.

The issue at hand was some of the correspondence I received from the teaching staff, including highly qualified English teachers with years of experience and in the prime of their careers. E-mails would be littered with spelling errors and at time typed in ALLCAPs which does look unprofessional, and to some people, indicates anger on the part of the sender even though most often that is not the sender's intention.

A lot of people can hand-write a perfect letter, yet put them in front of a computer keyboard they change mode and converse with the standards of a ten year old.