A Polite Reminder: Community Etiquette

Hello all,

This website was setup over 2 years ago to provide a window onto a working farm in Yorkshire. At this time this was a real novelty; with the streaming sights and sounds of Yorkshire countryside and nature never before seen on the Internet.

The arrival of LambWatch on the Internet was greeted with much enthusiasm and excitement across the world. It removed geographical, cultural and even language boundaries to provide people, no matter what their background, an opportunity to escape and breathe in some fresh Yorkshire air....

Let us not forget that this is what LambWatch was, and still is, and always will be all about.

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As more and more visitors "flocked" to the website to breathe in some of that air, it naturally began to grow, and quite naturally, due to the huge diversity in culture, geography and language of our LambWatchers, now and again sometimes the message of LambWatch can get lost.

This website now has a dedicated community section where keen LambWatch fans can commune. You can chat in real-time with fellow LambWatchers in our chat rooms and you can even have more structured conversations in the forum. If you want to keep up to date on what's been happening there is a community archive where you can keep track of all the hot topics in the forum as well as read the latest chunk of messages across both chat rooms.

The community section has been designed to cater for as many folks as possible. When the message of LambWatch is lost in the community, it is perhaps a good idea to remind it about some of those design choices which are put in place to help everybody make the most of their LambWatch experience.... These are:

1. There are two chat rooms... a LW chat and an OPEN chat. You can chat about anything on this website but if you feel the conversation is not really related to the message LambWatch, it would be much appreciated if you could use the OPEN chat.

2. Don't worry - you never miss anything! No matter what room you are in, there are design features in place to ensure you never miss a trick.... new messages posted in the other chat room result in a "flash" of the user box and if you hover over the user box, you will see the latest mesage. If you want to switch over, simply click the user box! You can even keep track of forum activity and fellow community comments on news and highlights at the top of the page.

3. Having two chat rooms is not intended to segregate, it is intended to facilitate: while this website is all about the message of LambWatch, it is understood that sometimes there may be members of the community that wish to chat away about anything and everything. At the same time, and please remember, there may be other community members who may feel alienated by such discussions and who would prefer to stick to the message of LambWatch. At any time,  all members of the community can keep track of what is happening across the wider community by non-intrusive notifications as described in point 2.

4. If you find that the peace is being disturbed by an individual you can ignore them by clicking their name in the chat room. If you feel the disturbance is worthy of being looked at by Lambwatch HQ, please use the contact page to send us a message. LambWatch HQ will call upon and investigate it.

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99% of the time, this works really well and everybody is happy! But now and again the peace is disturbed so it is worth reminding all members of the community about the following basic ground principles.. (I am hesitant to use the word "rules")...

1. Please be nice

2. Please use your loaf

3. Remember that people are allowed an opinion that may differ from your own

4. If somebody's opinion differs from your own, by all means engage in friendly healthy debate, but do not be rude, intimidating, selfish, offensive, unduly provocative, pushy, obnoxious or anything bad 'cause that's not being nice or using your loaf.

5. Please do not advertise unrelated websites, services or products without permission from LambWatch HQ.

6. Please remember that there are people watching this webcam other than just those present in the community.

7. Please remember that there could be people of any age or culture watching the website so please be careful when posting anything that some may consider offensive or anything listed in point 4.

8. Please use your loaf.

9. Pretending to be somebody else is not cool and pretending to be another member of the LambWatch community is even uncooler. Doing so will not be tolerated as this goes against all of the above.

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If you like using this website, you are urged to not disturb the peace. Nobody is perfect though, so everybody deserves a second chance

I would advise that anybody not currently registered at this website does so as being a member will entitle you to extra features and will safe-guard your participation in future developments should the peace be broken too frequently...

This site is not ruled with an iron fist. Instead it is managed with a friendly communal woolly glove that keeps us warm on cold winter nights but gets shorn in summer to allow us to breathe on stuffy summer nights!

OK, speech over, now let's remember that message of LambWatch and remember to use our loaves :)

Thank you Dan for your prompt action and many thanks to my lovely Lambwatch friends for their kind messages - this site means the world to me.

Thank you Dan for this thread. 

I believe we all need a little reminder every now and then about what this site is all about.  This is even more important when there are new visitors to the site on a very regular basis, even if they dont wish to chat.  Of course that is their perogative.

Like Cindy,  I love this site and I will support it, the people who run the site and the farm, the animals and of course the friends, of all ages, that I have made whilst being here.

May there be peace and friendships on Lambwatch for many years to come.

Thank you again for all the above

Fi x

Thanks, Dan, for this reminder.  It all made perfect snese to me, but being a rather slow Canadian, I didn't understand the term  "Use your loaf". 

This is either computer-speak for some bizarre bit of technology with which I am unfamiliar, or is Yorkshire dialiect for something which escapes me totally.  It only brings to mind children fighting at the dnner table over whose loaf of bread it is, and brings to my fertile imagination visions of children fighting over bread and butter with knives and jam and crumbs in every direction.  Mayhem and chaos!

I'm sure there's another sense to it.  Please help, someone!

Helen 

Use your loaf means use your brain, ie think about what you are doing/saying/writing.

Helen... It derives from Cockney rhyming slang... Loaf of bread..... head... Thanks Dan, for this informative reminder... I think it was due...

Good for you Dan! Well said.

And thanks Helen, I didn't know what "use your loaf" meant either. LOL

I think I must have missed something.

Aaah, I always thought using the loaf was Yorkshire dialect! I first heard it from dad. Didn't know dad "did" cockney rhyming slang!!

Thanks, Dan, not only for the etiquette reminder but also the language education -- "loaf." I was trying to figure out if it was an acronym.

Stephanie

It's also very inappropriate to ask someone in the chat room "Who was on the phone?" when he or she leaves Chat to answer a call.  Our personal lives are our own personal lives, and the only sharing we do is voluntary.  It's just a matter of good manners, that's all.  It could be that some folks don't know this.

Thanks for explaining "use your loaf".  So If I am operating with half a loaf, it also would mean "several bricks short of a load" and other colourful expressions.  What a strange language we have!  No wonder it's hard for people to learn.

Thanks, all, for this conversation on being on our best behaviour in this little friendly space.

Helen

And of course there is the expression, "Use your noodle" which we tend to hear over here.  Don't know the origin of that but it might be Irish.

And is "Half a loaf" better than none?

I know I missed somthing here...but I like the reference to "Loaf ". Or more common here.. Noodle, Noggin'  or "using your "Skull" or "Brain Bucket ". Straining your "Cran", as in crainum... or  "cooking with propane" !  Also known as thinking..as well as cooking with gas...Thinking again.  As in ..."Now you are cooking with gas !"...which would be using your loaf.  How about cooking your loaf  ! ...which may equate with straining your cran ??!! Or straining your brain ..or a pain in the Brain !...Over Load!

Oh dear ..way too much to Stew about...Deep Breath !.

Thats  for another day ...

Oh, well done, Canuchick!  I did think of noodle but couldn't remember the others.  My loaf is overcooked, I guess, or maybe only half-baked.