Meaningful Thread Title

[Cool blue]

I notice that this is in the guidelines but have you guys considered including it in the rules?
I think it would improve the quality of the forum.

 

[xenou]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion but I believe that opens up a can of worms. A rule on thread titles would imply that one must follow the given set of regulations. But our moderators (including me) would hardly have the time to keep up with evaluating the quality of thread titles and communicating with "offenders" to teach them how to write better titles: i.e., making sure everyone is following the rules. Plus it would be rather wearying on our members to be contacting them every time they have a poor thread title - I expect that would be hundreds of incidents each day.

Nevertheless, as a guideline it is quite true that using good title is a recommended practice in order to use the forum most effectively. As such, all members have a strong incentive to write quality thread titles. Doing so improves the chances of getting quality replies. Forum guidelines suggest a meaningful title relevant to the question is best. And I think that is good advice!

ξ

 

[Aladin Akyurek]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion but I believe that opens up a can of worms. A rule on thread titles would imply that one must follow the given set of regulations. But our moderators (including me) would hardly have the time to keep up with evaluating the quality of thread titles and communicating with "offenders" to teach them how to write better titles: i.e., making sure everyone is following the rules. Plus it would be rather wearying on our members to be contacting them every time they have a poor thread title - I expect that would be hundreds of incidents each day.

Nevertheless, as a guideline it is quite true that using good title is a recommended practice in order to use the forum most effectively. As such, all members have a strong incentive to write quality thread titles. Doing so improves the chances of getting quality replies. Forum guidelines suggest a meaningful title relevant to the question is best. And I think that is good advice!

ξ

Well worded...

 

[Cool blue]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion but I believe that opens up a can of worms. A rule on thread titles would imply that one must follow the given set of regulations. But our moderators (including me) would hardly have the time to keep up with evaluating the quality of thread titles and communicating with "offenders" to teach them how to write better titles: i.e., making sure everyone is following the rules. Plus it would be rather wearying on our members to be contacting them every time they have a poor thread title - I expect that would be hundreds of incidents each day.

Nevertheless, as a guideline it is quite true that using good title is a recommended practice in order to use the forum most effectively. As such, all members have a strong incentive to write quality thread titles. Doing so improves the chances of getting quality replies. Forum guidelines suggest a meaningful title relevant to the question is best. And I think that is good advice!

ξ

Im talking about titles like "help with macro please" or "another post by me" or "problems with code" , when there is zero attempt to state the subject of the thread.

But ok, the quality of the forum is limited by the available moderator resources. That's a natural dynamic... Just thought I'd ask.

Maybe the moderators are overloaded with answering "can somebody please write this code for me" type threads?

 

[Peter_SSs]

Agreeing with xenou - moderating it would be an enormous task in a forum that gets as much traffic as this one. The weekend is much quieter than during the week but when I checked a short while ago 101 new threads had been started in the last 24 hours and, just at the moment, I can see there are just 2 Moderators online. Like all helpers on the forum Moderators are volunteers and already spend significant time on other moderating tasks and yes, I'm sure most would prefer to be answering questions.

A further point is that this forum puts a lot of emphasis on being a friendly forum. There are certainly a number of other forums that will lock threads and/or temporarily ban members if they don't post appropriate thread titles. Especially for newbies I think that is not appealing and it's one reason I participate in this forum.

So, while it's a valid point you raise I doubt it would be likely to become a rule.

 

[Cool blue]

Ok. Thanks fo the reply @Peter_SSs