Forum rules
Apart from general good behavior and common sense, the following are important points when posting at any forum on the Internet.
Excessive use of capitalized letters:
Capitalized letters are perceived as yelling. Yelling might help you dealing with younger siblings once in a while, but when posting at a forum this will only lead to discontempt. It might increase attention to your topic, but not necessarily in the intended manner. It could attract people who are annoyed at your yelling at them, and people will be preoccupied with how you write instead of what you write. People will instead provide you with negative remarks. Many users could refrain from giving you a proper response if they feel that you're making too much "noise".
Excessive use of symbols:
Using too many exclamation marks (!), question marks (?) and other symbols is also something you want to avoid. Your post will not appear to be serious, and this will also draw the attention from what you're writing to how you're writing. Don't use more than one exclamation mark or question mark at once, and preferrably not together.
Excessive use of smileys:
Smileys exist today for several reasons: Some of them being to display humor, irony or perhaps to spread joy. Using too many smileys could result in the opposite of what you intended, especially when using a number of them at the same place. Excessive use of smileys could for instance make it more difficult to know if you're joking or being serious. Consecutive use of smileys could appear messy and unnecessary. Therefore, don't use more than two smileys consecutively, and don't put a smiley after every sentence.
Watch your spelling and grammar:
Take your time when writing a post, and keep an eye open for typos, spelling and grammatical errors, and misinformation. Don't use SMS language and preferrably not abbreviations, especially if it is one that is not commonly known. If at a later time you discover an error, you can use the "Edit" function to correct the error. A good practice is to include "Edit: 'Whatever has been changed'" after editing, in order for people to see why you edited your post.
Never yell at anyone because of a typo or spelling or grammatical error. If a question is poorly phrased, you can descretely ask the poste to rephrase the question. This can be a reply in the thread if it is a single occurrence, but if you're annoyed at repetitive misbehavior from the same individual, we recommend that you send a personal message where you ask the person to write more clearly. Remember to take into consideration that some people have reading and writing difficulties. Since this is a multinational forum, but monolingual (many nationalities, but one language), one cannot expect the same level of skill in English from everyone. If you do your best, no one can ask more of you.
What is poor usage of the subject field?
A good subject is hard to define. The most important is that the subject field clearly describes what the thread is about in an easy to understand manner. A few examples of poor subjects follow; please read them and understand them, in order to see what is allowed and not allowed.
This is a poor subject, due to excessive usage of exclamation marks, and capitalized letters. The subject also says nothing about the content of the thread.
- Problem with Total Annihilation/TA
This might seem like a good subject to a beginner, but an experienced forum user quickly reacts to the subject's failure to describe the exact problem. Saying only that the problem has something to do with Total Annihilation does not describe the problem itself, especially since a large part of this forum is about Total Annihilation.
Okay, so you're going nuts. That's great, but why? Explain your problem instead, so that people are attracted to your thread rather than running away, thinking you have developed a strange, but dangerous mental disorder.
Examples of good subjects from a computer technical support forum:
- Windows 2000 startup problems (INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE)
This is a good subject. It displays the error you're getting, plus the relevant information of your operating system. People who have had the same or similar problem should know immediately how to fix this.
- Does anyone have the xxxx.vxd file for Windows 95?
This is a good subject. It says you're missing a file, and to which operating system it belongs. Sure, Windows 95 is ancient, but there's no doubt what you want.
Poor usage of the subject field could result in your thread being locked or deleted. If fortune smiles at you, you might have your subject field edited for you, and receive a notice telling you to try harder next time.