Words are important. What you say is important, but how you say it is just as important. The words you use shape how your message is interpreted and how people react to it. I always stress this to the staff at my community. Communication is key. We need to be able to communicate our objections and what we must get across, but we need to try to do so in a manner that is not unnecessarily combative.

For this reason, I’ve been known to study my words on meaningful private messages or conversations with well established members, as well as important announcements and policy changes in general. I’m human, but that’s not an excuse (we’ll cover that in a post in the future). You have to consider what you say.

I believe that a great way to showcase this would be to give you a couple of examples of a private message that you might send to a member who had made a spam post on your forums. Here’s the first one.

Ryan,

I pulled your post below because you were being a jerk. If you’d like to keep posting here, don’t do it again.

“That’s your opinion? OMGLOL. YOU ARE A FOOL!”

Patrick

Here’s another one:

Hello Ryan,

Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com.

Unfortunately, I have had to remove your post quoted below as it violated our User Guidelines as inflammatory.

“That’s your opinion? OMGLOL. YOU ARE A FOOL!”

Generally speaking, an inflammatory comment is one that doesn’t add much to a thread outside of hostility.

Please keep this in mind to prevent further violations in the future.

Thank you for your time and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Patrick
KarateForums.com Administrator

The first private message may not seem too bad. But, there are a few issues that jump out at me immediately. “Being a jerk” is very combative and basically makes the issue personal. “Inflammatory” means a similar sort of action, on their behalf, but it’s easier to swallow and understand.

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