"Over the Fence" Online Discussion

Help and Guidelines

Introduction

The "Over the Fence" discussion forum will initially run for twelve weeks (beginning 29 June 2005). New topics or questions will be posted each week along with four or six responses from farmers across the Wimmera and Mallee. Please feel free to post your own response to the topic, or add a new topic of your own.

How do I post a comment about an existing topic?

If you click on any of the main topics you will be able to read all of the current responses.  Underneath all the responses is the "Add your comment" form. You can also click the "Add your comment" link which is displayed under each individual response.  The form itself is fairly straightforward.  As well as the main text of your comment there is room to add your name/nickname, email, a subject and an attachment. 

• The email field is optional but if you want to be notified of new postings via email you will need to supply it.  Your email address is not displayed as part of your posting. 
• The subject box may be already filled out with an example subject but we recommend changing this to something else which better describes or summarises your comment. 
• The attachment option allows you to attach a small image to your posting.  The image must be in .jpg or .gif format and be less than 200 kilobytes.  Images taken directly from a digital camera may be too large to attach and will need to be modified before attaching.

How do I create a new topic?

When viewing the responses to any topic you will see a link near the top of the screen called "New Topic".  This will allow you to post a new topic to the discussion.  The entry form for submitting a new topic is the same as replying to an existing topic so see the above section for an explanation of all the fields.

Guidelines for using the forum – Do's and Don’t's

Do's:

Do - Get involved in discussions, speak out, share your opinions!

Do - Respect others opinions.

Do - Use lots of line breaks and shorter sentences to make your posts easier to read.

Do - Remember that others can collect the information you include about yourself on the discussion forum.  In short, if you post your name and location on the forum, others may be able to contact you outside the forum.  You can always use an anonymous nickname to use the forum.

Dont's:

Don't… presume that because someone is responding to you on the forum they want to communicate with you outside the forum.

Don't… use the site to advertise your business or company.

Don't… attack other forum users on a personal level.  A personal attack is defined as comments that reflect on the person instead of their opinion.

Don't… use profanities or obscenities, even if you use punctuation &^@# to disguise it.

Don't… use ALL CAPITALS – it’s hard to read and considered to be the online equivalent of shouting.