Only one answer for an ignorant subject in posts!
 

:mad: Put something in the subject that pertains to what you are asking about and one post one question please :mad:

I will answer all stupid subject posts such as "help me" with this:

How to ask questions about Linux

Wow what a long long document on the subject like this :O
The original authors must have a lot of free times. :D
They surely have a ability to write such a long document while any other could wirte the same subject only in one page.

The guy that wrote that also wrote software you may be using in his free time. Perhaps that means that he feels strongly in what he writes and felt that it merited the time.

I agree :)

I will answer all stupid subject posts such as "help me" with this
Fancypiper, as moderator I hope you will be lenient on our fellow members with =< 10 posts. Of course members with more posts should be aware by then of the stupidity of having meaningless thread titles, but the newer members will need some time adapting if they're not familiar with fora.

If you only post that message and do not contribute to their thread within the same post, especially if it will be the first reply they'll be receiving, I'd rather you do not do so at all.

Well put bulliver. As fancypiper noted, users will generally generally gain as much assistance as the effort put into the request.

As fancypiper noted, users will generally generally gain as much assistance as the effort put into the request.
Maybe I'm getting OT here, if so then I apologize, but I do not agree and AFAIK the fora show it differently. I see for instance ppl trying to ask questions to extract more info before answering. I agree part of the questions lack having enough info to deal with it right away, but if it where like you said, then a large part of the answers to threads (excl poll/opinion threads) wouldn't be helpfull at all.

I mean the amount of assistance is not or should not be equal to the effort they put into formulating their question. If I'm wrong, and it is like you describe, then this site isn't a helpfull one. I do not oppose to trying to nudge ppl towards posting their questions "a better way", it's just that if we're gonna be portioning our replies measured by the "quality" of question we're like those mailinglist dictators with a 50-point list on their homepage on how they want to see questions posed before they're even willing to look at it.

I totally agree with unSpawn, the purpose of this forum is to help people. The new ppl coming to this forum may not know exactly how to question. You ppl should try to be as helpful as you can regardless of his style of questioning.

I also have to agree with unSpawn on this issue. If they are a new member and are asking a question and you know the answer, help them out by answering. You can always mention to them to use better thread titles in a polite way or direct them to your link to "ask better questions". I feel if you help them out and give them a solution to their problem along with a friendly reminder to use a more helpful thread title in the future, its going to leave a better impression of what we do here and they will only most likely take notice and keep it in mind in the future, rather than just not helping them by giving them a link to ask questions better, probably will just make them frustrated and disregard the post with the link you just made.

If you only post a link to "How to Ask Beautiful Questions" or what not... Then I would rather you just move on to the next thread.

Regards.

Maybe flame people that do it repeatedly. It does get old wasting serious dialup bandwidth clicking on threads marked

URGENT!!!PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!

Especially when half the time they are about things I know nothing about. I agree though, you have to give newbies the benefit of the doubt. Helping also means teaching people more effective means of obtaining help.

This is an issue, or a problem, and not only for moderators. I mean, selecting topics while browsing concerns all of us. So I agree with fancypiper, that users should be educated, perhaps more firmly (and more often) to optimize the site's usability.

How about a regular letter of welcome to all new users mail-accounts, with an explanation why it is better for all, some examples (good and bad) and/or a regular reminder by the moderators (announcement) or the like?

who actually reads those "welcome" letters....i reguard em as spam and delete em, so maybe that wouldnt really work.
i saw answer the question and leave a polite reminder in the post, they are more likely to read a post than
an auto generated "welcome" email. i hate those emails.

That depends from who's written it.

When I'm on a site like this one, I try to be polite, and I read, what they want.

I agree, though, that a polite reminder should be added as necessary.

there are various systems we have in place for things like this, but it can be very hard to suggest that someone try to do a little research for themselves without it being interrpretted as an big scary RTFM, which is basically a banned expression on this site. As Robert0380 pointed out, emils to users are generally regarded as spam, and so have deliberately been avoided. Additional systems may well be added for newbies to confirm steps to take before posting but not quite yet.

Okay, if that's your experience, then no mail/ "spam" it is. An explanation why clear subjects are better for all (and some examples, good and bad) could then be integrated into the process of creating a new account, perhaps.

maybe when we register, one of the steps you had to read was a short message that says:
"Welcome new user! to get the best out of these forums, please do not post your question more than once. Also, to be helpful to the other members, post HELPFUL subjects on your posts. thankyou."

like a liscence that you have to say OK to.. but I always skip those...

titanium_geek