From my extensive lurking prior to joining (and I like this new system better than the older one) here are some pointers:
* NerfHaven, as far as I understand it, is a haven away from the masses. The point of NH is high quality mods and builds, not every second person who has a problem with reassembling their blaster. Numbers of members (active or not) or numbers of threads don't matter to the admins here.
* That high guest:member ratio can also be explained by NH being a repository for a lot of good mods. People come here for information, get it then leave. A guest:member ratio means nothing to the admins. The only ratio they're interested in is the signal:noise one.
* To use an analogy, think about special forces units in the armed services. Numbers don't matter to them, quality does. If no one passes the selection course, they'd rather that happen than lower the standards. So it is here.
On the spelling and grammar, this is one that gets to me. Spelling, grammar and so on is about being able to write clearly and concisely without making the reader's brain work too much on deciphering what you're saying so that the comprehension of information is done with as few errors as possible. Or in short: make posts easier to read. Good spelling/grammar is also a skill useful in all parts of your life.
Let's be deliberately obtuse for a minute:
And Nerf Guns are for ages 6+ and less
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The "+" indicates above, when taken with the "6" before it, meaning ages 6 or above. Yet your use of the word "less" indicates that Nerf blasters are for people 6 and above and less. If there's no age limit, then why make a point of it?
As someone who's spoken English for his whole life, I know you just made a typo and haven't put in any punctuation to separate one clause from another. On the other hand, think about someone who doesn't speak English as a first language or just has trouble reading, they might have enough trouble figuring out what all the Nerf terminology is without you making their life harder by being lazy with your spelling and grammar. You might say it's a bit unfair to think about people who have trouble reading English and not cutting some slack for people who can't type, but with the typist being inconvenienced vs all the readers having trouble, guess who I'm siding with.
Consider if someone put up a mod where half the steps were missing, and it was up to the reader to figure out what they had to do themselves. That's what bad spelling/grammar is like, unnecessarily making people fill in the blanks simply because you're lazy. Especially with the spelling/grammar checkers in your choice of word processor (OpenOffice is free) and sometimes even in your browser.
Edited by 238232, 15 October 2011 - 04:13 AM.