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Read me first (before posting)

Castril De La Pena...
Destination Expert
for Morocco
23,579 posts
93 helpful votes
Read me first (before posting)

[This thread is a replacement for the previous one that became overwhelmed with posts that were nothing to do with the topic.]

On behalf of the regular contributors, a warm welcome to the Morocco forum on TripAdvisor.

Morocco is a wonderful country to visit with an array of fabulous sights and there are many helpful volunteers on here to assist you plan your visit., several of whom have helped compile this ‘read me first’ guide.

A couple of important points before getting to the detail…

PLEASE DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD

In order that visitors can quickly scan this thread for tips on how to use the forum it is vital it does not get bogged down with comments and questions, so if you have any, please make these in a SEPARATE thread that you create.

USE A BROWSER IN DESKTOP MODE

If you are using a smartphone or tablet, you will be restricted in what you can see on the forum, so it’s best to access the forum via a browser rather than an app and switch to 'desktop mode'. You will then see TOP QUESTIONS and other interesting advice topics. 



When we describe how to use the forum we will assume you are using a browser in desktop mode. You can switch your iPhone browser into desktop mode as described below. SAFARI on Apple iPhone: click on the ‘aA’ icon in the top left corner of the window, then click on 'Request Desktop Site'. CHROME on Apple iPhone: click on the three vertical dots at bottom right, scroll down and click on ‘Request Desktop Site'. You may need to reload the page.

Edited: 2 years ago
8 replies to this topic
Castril De La Pena...
Destination Expert
for Morocco
23,579 posts
93 helpful votes
1. Re: Read me first (before posting)

———————— DO YOUR OWN BASIC RESEARCH ————————

INVEST IN A GUIDEBOOK

The volunteers on here are unpaid and are definitely not a travel agency, so we ask that you perform initial research yourself and then use the forum for specific questions. The best investment you can make is in a guidebook, both for planning a trip and also for reference once you are in the country. You will have a MUCH easier time with a guidebook at your fingertips and a much better understanding of the country you are visiting. Lonely Planet guidebook is good for travel information, Rough Guide is good for the more remote places. Visit your local bookshop and have a browse. Lonely Planet is available in chapter-at-a-time downloads which is useful if you are only visiting one area.

BEST PAPER MAP TO BUY

Many of the road numbers in Morocco changed at the end of 2018. The best paper map is the Reise KnowHow map of Morocco which can be purchased from Stanford Maps and Amazon, and shows both old and new road numbers. It’s double-sided to reduce the overall size, and is also on a non-tear material. If you are in North America, the National Geographic Adventure map of Morocco is a licenced version of Reise. 



ONLINE MAPS


Apple Maps shows the correct road numbers, but as of June 2022, Google Maps has yet to be updated and only shows the old road numbers, which of course won’t match what you see on the ground. OpenStreetMap (link below) shows both old and new road numbers but is not in such a friendly format, https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/31.6273/-7.9871

READ TOP QUESTIONS

Before posting a question have a check to see whether your question has been asked and answered before. Top topics include passports/visas, changing money, weather, security issues, airport taxis and so on. You will find these and many more listed under top questions.

READ PAST FORUM THREADS

If you read the trip reports on the forum you will notice the amazing trips are where the traveller has read up a lot, asked specific questions, and is aware of the hassles to avoid. The reports of disappointing trips are often from those who are now posting for the first time on the forum, having done no pre-trip research.

USE THE SEARCH FACILITY

You can also use the search facility to find previous threads. For example, if you want to find out about buses between Essaouira and Marrakech, switch to the Essaouira forum and type ‘marrakech buses’ into the search box. You can sort the resulting threads into date order if you prefer, so that the most recent threads are listed first.

READ HOTEL REVIEWS

If you have queries about a hotel you are more likely to get an answer by reading the reviews on TripAdvisor—many hotels have in excess of 1,000 reviews!

Castril De La Pena...
Destination Expert
for Morocco
23,579 posts
93 helpful votes
2. Re: Read me first (before posting)

———————— ASKING QUESTIONS ————————

DON’T SEND QUESTIONS BY PRIVATE MESSAGE

If you have a question, ask it on the forum so that everyone can see it and everyone can contribute answers. Please do NOT send PMs to Destination Experts or other prolific contributors asking for ‘private consultation’.

POST IN THE RIGHT FORUM

Are you posting in the right forum? If you have a question to do with Agadir, switch to the Agadir forum before posting. Similarly if you are interested specifically in one town or city, switch to that forum to read some of the back threads to help acquaint yourself.

DON’T HIJACK THREADS

Don’t ask unrelated questions on a thread and try to change the subject, it’s considered rude. Start your own thread with your question.

USE MEANINGFUL TOPIC TITLES

Choose your your topic title carefully to reflect your question, you’ll get more people looking at your post and potentially more answers. It’s amazing how many posts we get entitled just ‘Morocco’.

ONLY ASK ONCE

If you are asking about a trip from, say, Ouarzazate to Zagoira, don’t duplicate the post in both forums, just post it once in the Ouarzazate forum.

IDENTIFY WHO YOU ARE RESPONDING TO

The ‘reply’ button isn’t a reply to an individual post, it’s just adds your post to the end of the thread, so if you are responding to a particular post, mention the person’s forum name in your post.

PLEASE DON'T USE ABBREVIATIONS

Spell Moroccan place names in full as many actual abbreviations of place names are not the obvious choice, for example, ‘Chef’ is NOT the accepted abbreviation of Chefchaouen. This especially goes for airport codes—contributors cannot be expected to know the codes for airports all over the world, so questions asking about, for example, flights from MSY to RBA are meaningless and there is no way people are going to bother to look these codes up.

Castril De La Pena...
Destination Expert
for Morocco
23,579 posts
93 helpful votes
3. Re: Read me first (before posting)

———————— OTHER POINTS ————————

UPDATE YOUR PROFILE TO SHOW LOCATION

The response we give to quite a few posts varies according to someone’s location, especially about travel plans and climate advice. So please take a moment to update this.

PLEASE GIVE PRICES IN DIRHAMS

Please get used to thinking and writing in dirhams. This forum is used by visitors from many countries who won’t have any idea of the value if you quote pounds, euros, dollars or whatever. No matter which currency you’ve been quoted in, you will be paying in dirhams, so use xe.com if you don’t know the current exchange rate.

BE A CONTRIBUTOR, NOT JUST A USER

You may not be able to contribute before your trip but it would help terrifically if you come back afterwards and let people know how you got on, what worked well, what didn’t work so well. There is no restriction on mentioning which travel company, which hotels, which restaurants you have used. Such information is extremely helpful to other forum users who are researching their upcoming trip.

Many service providers put pressure on customers to write reviews. Whether or not you do so is up to you. The only restriction is that these reviews must not be written in exchange for personal gain, such as gifts, services, or money. Try to separate out what was good about the company’s services, as opposed to what was good about the locations you visited.

PLEASE BE POLITE

If someone is helpful to you they will undoubtedly appreciate a quick ‘thanks’. If you disagree with something someone else has posted it is fine to say so, but please do this in a polite and constructive manner.



BALANCED VIEWS

The best advice on a particular destination is often that which is gained from someone with fairly recent personal experience. It doesn’t really matter whether the person giving the advice is a one-time traveller, or someone who visits often, the advice they give will hopefully take into account their negative experiences as well as their positive experiences, and will provide what they see as a balanced view.

OK TO POLITELY DISAGREE

It may be that other recent visitors, having had a completely different set of experiences, might disagree with what the first person has written, and this is where it is useful for others to chip in and give their (also personal) view of a destination. It’s fine to disagree politely, everyone is entitled to their opinion.


RECENT EXPERIENCE?

So should you comment only if you have fairly recent personal experiences? Well no, all views are welcome, but in order for readers to give due weight to comments it’s important to qualify comments that are relate to personal experiences from years ago. For example, if I was writing about Casablanca, I might start, “It’s several years since I visited but….” The person then realises that things might well have changed since.



SECONDHAND INFORMATION

And it’s even more important if what you are relating are things you’ve read or heard elsewhere, rather than your personal experiences. Again, try to provide a balanced view rather than cherry picking all the positive comments about a place and ignoring the negative, or visa versa. When the experiences you relate are not your own it would be helpful if you make this clear.

PLEASE DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD

This thread has had to be recreated due to the number of numpties ignoring the request above. If someone does post on this thread, by all means report it as inappropriate but please DO NOT post a comment about their post as you will be making the issue even worse.

4. Re: Read me first (before posting)

Tripadvisor staff has removed this post because it did not meet Tripadvisor's forum guidelines with regards to off-topic chat.

What are forum guidelines?
 
penna
Destination Expert
for Marrakech, Morocco
39,502 posts
26 helpful votes
5. Re: Read me first (before posting)

Antonia you are hijacking a thread that has nothing to do with your question. You need to start you own thread.

Reported for not travel related / wrong forum.

Now to make my post fit better in this thread …

Do not hijack other threads with new and tangent questions. Rather start a new topic to ask these questions.

Also read the entire thread before adding a new question as often it had already been answered down thread.

Edited: 2 years ago
Oklahoma
86 posts
6. Re: Read me first (before posting)

Hello Sir. Can you advise me how to turn on desktop from an Android phone. Many thanks

7. Re: Read me first (before posting)

Tripadvisor staff has removed this post because it did not meet Tripadvisor's forum guidelines with regards to off-topic chat.

What are forum guidelines?
 
8. Re: Read me first (before posting)

This post was determined to be inappropriate by the Tripadvisor community and has been removed.

 
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