I think this thread would be an excellent sticky for this forum. That way you wouldn't have to keep bumping it to the top.

I agree. Although I must admit I had a lot of fun figuring it out by trial, error, and observation before such a nifty information policy was coalesced.

brad millar wrote:I think this thread would be an excellent sticky for this forum. That way you wouldn't have to keep bumping it to the top.

Ah, but you see, it's a sneaky ploy. Paul has figured that stickies get ignored as people just get used to seeing them there. Plus they make the place look untidy. He figures that people will notice things better if they get bumped up every now and then.

If only was more organised and did it a bit more regularly...

Landon has the right idea though. Observe, observe, observe...

Hey all, I am a recent addition to Paul's team of Permaculture minions ( ) and I just wanted to say this thread was SUPER helpful trying to figure out the lay of the land with the forums! Thanks for the list Burra.

- Cassie

And, here is how the owner of another site explained something to his users:

Forums are not democracies. Forums may be publicly accessible, but they are NOT public spaces.
They are equitable to the front yard of homes, and any speaking that is done in them is at the
grace of the forum owner.
There are no rights on forums. Even as a member, you are a guest.

Here's a link to the Jargon Translator, something we came up with to help people know what some of the words mean in permaculture or on this site. It's a work in progress and does not claim to be comprehensive, and in fact its purpose is to focus on the small number of most frequently used words. It can help to get a bunch of clarity in a concentrated space.

In every group or discipline there are usually a fair amount of words that the people in the group know and may not be self-explanatory to people new to the group. But it's really a small number of words total out of the whole set of words people use, so a little bit of information about terminology can make a lot of difference.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11BOr98wBlXPtb501r2CKeEYHQurF4DPvjFJQbItfC6E/

(Also, if there are other terms you don't know and really would like added to the list, or want people to define supplementally to the list, you can post them on this thread for discussing/developing the jargon translator http://www.permies.com/t/39315/tnk/JARGON-TRANSLATOR-THREAD-post-words, and this will help it get more and more fine-tuned. Hope this is helpful for others, I learned a lot in the process of working on it.

Is there somewhere that explains all of the icons on the site? Like folders with stars, different colored folders, splats instead of folders in the thread lists?

You have to be looking at a subforum page, for example urban in the growies forum to see the legend/key. The key is at the bottom of the page of all sub-forums.