I personally find SMS to be annoying. I think it makes even a highly intelligent person appear to be a 13-year-old chatting in some IRC channel. Most of us don't know each other personally, so our entire perception of each other is based on how we "see" each other in our posts. Using SMS or slang doesn't help portray a positive, educated image.

I would be tempted to implement the idea of having the forum translate SMS messages to true English, but given that this is a technical forum I don't think I'm going to try. I can just see "l8r" being exploded to "later" when, in fact, it was some cryptic variable name embedded in source code included in the post. :)

I don't think banning SMS on this forum is going to work. Many people already ignore my request to search the website before posting a message, are they going to pay any more attention to a request not to use SMS? The next time I post forum regulations, though, I will elaborate on the "English is the official language of the forum" item, requesting that people avoid using regional slang or other shorthand that might not be understood by everyone.

And everyone should spell "color" correctly, not "colour." :P

Best Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster