SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

Here the Author has spoken all about the useful thread titles in the Forum.

Lately I've been spending more time than usual searching through various user and help forums, and I can't help but notice the vast number of threads that break the cardinal rule of how to start a discussion thread. I’m not talking about the people who feel the need to type in all caps all the time, or the ones who apparently were never told how to use spell check, or even grammar that is so mangled it becomes impossible to decipher what someone was trying to say. No, I’m talking about the oldest rule of Internet forums. That one rule that has appeared in some form in the Forum Rules of almost every forum since around 1995 is this: Use Descriptive Thread Titles! This seems like it should be something so obvious that no one could screw it up, but spend even 5 or 10 minutes searching through forums for the answer to a question and you will quickly discover just how many people simply do not grasp the concept. Go ahead, give it a whirl. Pick pretty much any user/help forum out there and spend a couple of minutes counting up the number of threads you find with titles that don’t say anything even remotely useful about the subject of the thread.

By far the two most useless (and, ironically, the most common) thread topics are “Question” and “Help”. Nothing to indicate what the question is about or what the person needs help with, just a useless one word title that almost seems designed to waste people’s time or get the thread completely ignored (and no, adding a string of question marks and/or exclamation points does not help). Take it from someone who has spent a lot of time both searching forums and contributing to them, the people who are most able to help are also the people who are the most likely to ignore anything with a useless title and focus on threads where they know what the problem is and if they will be able to help. There may be no such thing as a stupid question, but there definitely is such a thing as a stupid way to title a thread.

So now that we've established what not to do, I'm going to give some advice on what you should do. Not only does this make life much easier for people who want to help, it also makes it easier for other people who are having the same problem to find a solution and greatly improves the chances of getting a reply to a question. First, before you post a question do a search of the forums to see if someone else has already had the same problem. If there is one thing that will drive a tech nuts it's answering the same question over and over again because people didn't bother to do a search first. In fact, it's best to do a couple of searches using different key words since you never know how someone might have phrased the question. "Video card" could just as easily be called "display card", "video adapter", "display adapter", "graphics card" or "graphics adapter".

Once you've done your own search of the forums (assuming you didn't find an answer to your question) it's time to start your own thread. Personally I use the method of writing the post first and then coming up with a title. Doing it that way helps me to make sure the title describes what I'm posting about. Keep the initial post focused on one topic and save unrelated questions for either later in the thread or a new thread. Be descriptive of the problem. More information is better than less. The general rule of thumb is to state what you were doing when the problem happened, what operating system you were using, what programs you had running at the time, and a copy of the error message (if there was one) and a description of what happened. Screen shots are nice too, since they can sometimes give clues that someone familiar with the problem might recognize. Also, it's a good idea to include any fixes you've tried that didn't work so you don't end up with people telling you things you've already tried.

When it comes to the title, essentially what you really want to do is take the core of your larger question and boil it down to a one sentence set of key words that will let everyone know what the question is going to be about. "Computer Crashing" is not a useful title. "Crash with error [insert error message here] when loading Steam" on the other hand, is a useful title.

So there you are, my little rant on the "dos and don'ts" of posting in forums.