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Choosing Meaningful Thread Titles
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| DigiNut |
I'm going to get on my high horse and be an for a little bit to discuss a pet peeve of mine. I've had this discussion many times about e-mail but it's just as relevant to forums, if not more so:
When you ask for help on a forum, if you want your question to be answered, you need to give your thread a meaningful title.
Obviously, your thread title is meaningful to you. When you call it "Cubase Problem", you know exactly what that is because you only have one problem with Cubase. But none of us know what you mean; it could be in reference to some obscure feature we never use, or it could be a braindead question about where to download a new pirated copy because you had to reformat and didn't keep the installer.
Some of you may think I'm being pedantic, but truthfully I'm just trying to help you get your questions answered better. If I see threads that appear meaningless to me then I simply won't read them, not my problem.
Now this thread would be pointless without actual examples, so I'm obliged to list them. I don't mean to pick on anybody specific here, so don't get upset if you started one of these threads; I'm not even looking at who posted these threads, just the titles. Here are some not-so-great titles on the front page right now:
- "reasons users, HELP!?" (with what?)
- "cubase sx3 help" (same question)
- "Something I've noticed" (I notice a lot of things)
- "can someone tell me what this is called?" (I understand it's hard to come up with a title when you don't know the name, but use a few words to describe it)
- "Home Studio Monitors..?" (what about them?)
You're much more likely to get good answers with these titles:
- "Bass kick lowering volume of other sounds in Reason"
- "Getting started with Cubase - want tutorial/book recommendations"
- "Why do threads about Studio Monitors never get flamed?"
- "How do I put separate effects on the centre / sides of a sound?"
- "Please recommend some home Studio Monitors from $xxx-$yyy".
See the difference? If you wonder why some people instantly get 20 answers to their posts and you get none, it might be because they're just super-popular, but it's more likely that they used a meaningful title, and other members quickly skimmed down the list of 30 threads and saw instantly that it was something they could answer.
Here are some examples of good titles and you'll see that most of these have received several responses:
- "Do you play your own productions in sets?"
- "Linux production options? VST / Host program preferred w/ sequencer?" (a very obscure topic, and yet it's got a bunch of replies)
- "Great Site With A Lot Of Free "Vst/Vsti's"!!"
- "How many of you still use hardware gear?"
When I see the titles above, I know exactly what I'm going to get when I open the thread and therefore know if I've got anything to contribute. I don't have to waste a single brain cell guessing whether or not it's worth looking at.
Some titles are in the gray area, such as:
- "Mono Compatibility" (this is okay, but a better title would have been "How can phase problems be corrected?" or even "How to fix problems when converting from mono to stereo")
- "Fl7 & v-station" (okay, I kind of inferred that you're having trouble getting V-Station to load in FL7, but "Compatibility problems between FL7 and V-Station" would have elicited a few more responses, I think)
Again, I'm not trying to single out specific *people* here, just pointing out the *topics* that could have been worded a lot better. You obviously don't have to take my advice, but if you think I'm truly full of or just cutting people down for no reason, I'd advise you to take a look in your own e-mail inbox and try to figure out (without opening the messages) what half of them refer to, just going by the subject field. I'll bet that several of them are not even that easy to tell apart from outright spam, except for the fact that they probably came from someone you recognize.
Well, I've said my piece. That's all for now - have a good night guys! ;) |
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| Enigmatic XTC |
| Sorry, i was responsible for one of the bad ones. I did try to think of a better way to title it, but i couldn't really think of one. I'll try better next time. |
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| david.michael |
| Good post. :) |
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| Seppa |
Good advice that will help us all !
cheers |
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| Bidor |
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| michaelconway |
| Can we sticky this at the top? |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by michaelconway
Can we sticky this at the top? |
I'd actually like to see something like this in the stickies, whether or not it's this specific thread. It's important but it doesn't fit so well into a FAQ. I'll ask the mod if he's not already reading this (although, he might just disagree about the importance, I can only speak for myself here).
Actually, I think it should be a global sticky, but good luck getting the COR whores to listen! |
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| DJFreaq |
The COR will not listen. They are pretty much irrelavent. Infact, we need the COR. Because if we didn't have, granted many would dissapear from TA, but most likely, they'd take over other threads.
I was about to post and say: "PUT IT IN FAQS" but you already mentioned that idea.
It should be a sticky. But honestly. How many stickies do we already have that no one pays attention to? (even experienced members)
--Adam |
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| michaelconway |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJFreaq
The COR will not listen. They are pretty much irrelavent. Infact, we need the COR. Because if we didn't have, granted many would dissapear from TA, but most likely, they'd take over other threads.
I was about to post and say: "PUT IT IN FAQS" but you already mentioned that idea.
It should be a sticky. But honestly. How many stickies do we already have that no one pays attention to? (even experienced members)
--Adam |
than we can we can make fun of people that ask stupid questions with stuff like "how can i produce like paul van dyk". If you break the law because you didn't know it wasn't ok to kill stupid people the courts arnt gunna be like "its ok" they will send you to federal "pounding" in the ass prison. It will help the people who really want to help people to distinguish from people who really have a problem and people that are just being lazy tards. |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJFreaq
The COR will not listen. They are pretty much irrelavent. Infact, we need the COR. Because if we didn't have, granted many would dissapear from TA, but most likely, they'd take over other threads.
I was about to post and say: "PUT IT IN FAQS" but you already mentioned that idea.
It should be a sticky. But honestly. How many stickies do we already have that no one pays attention to? (even experienced members)
--Adam |
I could put it in the FAQ, but where would go? I'm not sure how it would be reworded as a "question", since the very idea of this is how questions should be worded... heh.
Truthfully, this topic wasn't just for the nubs. I think there are a lot of contributing members here, and a lot of intelligent people in general, who just don't even think about this. The topic seems meaningful to them, so they leave it at that. So if stickied it would be for new members and regular contributors both.
Michael: I don't make the law here, these are just suggestions to help people get the most out of the forum. ;) |
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