The above line is from one of my favourite films, ‘Cool Hand Luke’. I have already ‘outed’ myself as a nerd, and now I confess that I am a bit of a movie buff, with a preference for film noir. And no-one has presented miscommunication as effectively as Paul Newman’s character in that seminal film.

One of the biggest problems facing the inveterate OLOer is getting our meaning across to others. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. I am as guilty as any when it comes to misreading or misunderstanding another’s post.

Also, irony is difficult even in conversation and it becomes even more of a challenge when in written form. Also we are often forced to use capitals when trying to place emphasis, which means that the post can appear ‘LOUD’.

Please OLO editors facilitate communication and provide the tools we need. The technology is out there.

Gentle OLOer, if you would like a more sophisticated editing system for your posts, please put forward your agreement here.

And if not: why not?

Cheers m’dears

Fractelle says:

"I am as guilty as any when it comes to misreading or misunderstanding another’s post."

wow.. you got that right :)

blessings.

Yes Fractelle. I very strongly support this.

I can’t see why we OLOers shouldn’t have access to all the facilities available in Word, such as bold, italic, underline, different font sizes, types and colours….. as well as a wide variety of emoticons.

As well as improving our ability to get the message across, it would brighten up the forum no end.

Fractelle,

Without meaning to be combatatively argumentative, with respect to the topic title, I have to say "no we don't".

That's exactly it. There is no facility on OLO for users, as opposed to lurkers or readers, to conduct a poll. Yet such capability is not at all unusual on other fora. That's not to say we must or should have such capability, but that such has now become notable by its absence.

I guess the point is that with a user-initiable poll, the all important aspect as to 'what is the question?' is in the hands of the user, rather than dispersed amongst forum administration, sponsors, article contributors, or 'dorothy dixers'.

OLO may well be able to turn this deficit into a 'surplus'. The software capability to provide this clearly exists. There are probably even freeware or open source programs available with which to do it, should OLO not wish to write its own software or incur a licencing liability. The seemingly big attraction is that it is user INTERACTIVE, and I suspect that the prospect of interactivity would raise forum participation levels.

This would be especially so if readers or lurkers could be easily enabled to vote in such polls. It may well provide the necessary incentive to turn a lurker into a user, and in the process raising the value of the opinionate represented or enabled by OLO. I believe it is possible to arrange that any particular reader or user can only successfully lodge one vote in any such poll, thereby guarding against hobby horsers or malicious posters skewing results.

Anyway, full marks for effectively keeping much of the subject of the previous thread "Suggestions for OLO" up on the default screens for another month.

OLO may even be able to turn this into a subscription-attracting idea. People become addicted to interactive opinionating. You could arrange it so that unless a certain number of posts and/or votes are lodged over a certain time, that money has to be paid to reactivate voting privileges.

More activity, more money, or both.

On the other hand polycarp, your passive-aggressive jibes are clear for all to see, though I suppose it's easy to be misunderstood when you redefine identities and attempt to conceal your motives via side-topics you can steer towards your prejudices.

That may have sounded blunt, but I didn't want to you to 'misread' it. Blessings to you too.

But to get to the subject... I rather like the communications here - I'm not a big fan of emoticons or smilies, and I'm glad they're not in posts here, I think they detract from the seriousness of the subject matter. Ultimately, all we have are the words on a page, and whilst I sometimes feel a degree of frustration when a 'failure to communicate' does occur, I tend to think that makes me think harder next time. I really can't think of anything that could be introduced to further facilitate communication - ultimately, barriers to communication can exist at all levels be it spoken, body language or text. Ultimately, all we can do to improve communication is practice, and as we know more about the communication styles and preferences of each individual, we'll understand them better.

... Unless you've developed some kind of telepathic mind-connection technology, in which case things may speed up, but alas, I fear we're not quite there yet.

I agree, with every word of our authors post.
But I will still seem to say things I did not want to.
Still wish I could explain I did not want to shout.
Other sites long gone had all the asked for things even polling.
And yes it was good but some how the written word in my hands at times fails to explain just what I am on about.