Crap thread titles won't get your thread read

[princec]

Should you use a crap thread title like "some advice?" or "I need help" you're pretty unlikely to get many of the most useful or active members of the forum bothering with your thread. Many people here have limited time and scan the forums quickly to check what's going on.

If you want to catch their eye, be specific, on-topic for the forum you are posting in, and attempt to use proper spelling and capital letters. If English is not your native language, run it through an English spelling checker first. You will be surprised what a difference it makes to the number (and perhaps even the quality) of the replies you make.

Cas :)

[svero]

I agree. Try to make sure your thread title is meaningful. You'll get a better response so it's good for you and for the people reading it.

- Steve

[stan]

I definitely agree (except the capital letters thingy which doesn't seem so important to me), but this post will soon be lost at the end of the threads list. Maybe it could be "pinned", renamed to something like "Forum rules - READ BEFORE POSTING", and completed with other useful info :).

[princec]

I think the mods round these parts are going to put a sticky FAQ in each forum soon enough... yes?

Cas :)

[^cyer]

Could be possible that someone deletes my 2 forum post/poll about "how much ram is on your video card" and "what kind of computer do you have"?
I have put these two in the "Game Development & Technical" section.
Don't see why the administrators would delete them ...

[Dan MacDonald]

^cyer the polls were removed because they did not meet the topical requirements for the forum, this is not entirely your fault because the forum description isn't quite enough to accurately describe the intended contents of this forum.


"Discuss game development and technical topics, including programming, art, design, music, sound fx, web development, porting, localization, and hardware."


We will be posting some forum FAQ's in each forum shortly to help clear up these types of issues. But in essence this forum is intended for technical topics as they relate to game development. Your polls while they did relate to hardware, did not relate to game development and arguably were not technical questions either.

The polls you posted were asking members of the forums about their personal systems, I suppose in some attempt to get a better idea about the members of these forums. Often what happens in these types of posts is members brag about what types of systems they have etc. The result is a social thread that really has nothing to do with "technical" game development questions.

A "technical" game development question would be something like....


"what texture size and color depth should I use to best support older video cards like 3dfx and TNT?"


You can see how the responses to this question would be technical in nature, as opposed to social.

a typical response might be,


"Rectangular textures are not well supported by older HW Accelerators, you should use square textures in 2^n increments, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, etc.."


Since you posted those polls so close together (before there had been response to the first one) I took the approach that you were posting noisy off topic threads and deleted them.

The past few years at dex have shown that polls are like "Bait" for new members. Each new member tends to post the same poll that the last one did and they get repeated over and over without adding any value to the forums or the existing membership. Because of that we have just disabled polls entirely. If you want to brag about hardware, post a new topic in the "General Chat" section and go at it.

[Nikster]

princec, kind of ironic this thread has had quite a few reads ;)

[Screwball]

Yeah I was about to say this topic has a crap subject and I still read it :-P

Seriously though, unless topics are catching and sound interesting or I have a bit of time on my hands, they will get read. Otherwise I generally skip them.

[^cyer]

Dan MacDonald: "We will be posting some forum FAQ's in each forum shortly to help clear up these types of issues. "


- Yes, you do that.

[Morphecy]

run it through an English spelling checker first.
Where can I get a GOOD English spelling checker? (okay... I write English pretty well but I want to learn the grammar properly and start writing some articles) :)

[princec]

There are ways to get people to read things even if they seem superfluous ;)

Cas :)

[princec]

Your English is already as good as mine is... and about 1,000,000x better than my Finnish.

Cas :)

[Morphecy]

Hopefully you Cas don't consider this as stealing your thread :D but I certainly have problems with those "on", "at", "with" thingies. In fact, I don't know whether I should have used "on" or some other word instead of word "with" in my previous sentence. (And I use to put "thingies" everywhere ;))

Seriously: I would appreciate to know where to get a decent spell checker.

P.S. now this is off-topic but you got me curious: please tell me few finnish words (you have to know more than 1 word because I certainly know more than one. And zero multiplied by whatever figure gives zero - that means you got to know few words :rolleyes: )

[Andy]

Guys, listen what I propose to you...

Let princes shut up with his marks on anybody's English and let Dan MacDonald move this thread into appropriate place - don't know where it is but this is obviously not something connected to Indie Business - follow by your own rules Dan.

If you will not do that - I'll (personally) shut up my participation in these strange new forums at all...

Thanks,