Can I beg people to be specific in their thread titles?

[anotheralias]

Pretty please? Instead of, "how do I change this?" for example, make it "how do I change the color of the links in the posts?"

I promise to Like you for it.

 

[steven s]

Next you will want people to stay on topic.
What is this world coming to.

 

[anotheralias]

Next you will want people to stay on topic.
What is this world coming to.

I'd never ask for that one, I'd be the most frequent scofflaw. : D

 

[Peggy]

Pretty please? Instead of, "how do I change this?" for example, make it "how do I change the color of the links in the posts?"

I promise to Like you for it.

I agree. I'm betting it would get you support much faster.

 

[anotheralias]

Plus we don't have to look through a haystack of "how is this done?" titles to find those things that were already answered.

 

[Russ]

You could always add a little text snippit below the title area asking nicely

 

[Shadab]

You'd think people running their own forums would know better.

*runs*

 

[dutchbb]

That's probably one of the most annoying things newbies do at our forums, just type things like "?" ".." "help?!?" in the thread title. I mean, I was a newbie once but I never did that

 

[Dean]

Pretty please? Instead of, "how do I change this?" for example, make it "how do I change the color of the links in the posts?"

I promise to Like you for it.

If you notice something like that, and are reading the thread, you could subtly suggest a name change.

"less than descriptive thread title" -> you could say something like "oh now I understand, I would have used <insert descriptive title>".

In my experience most of the time, the thread starter will acknowledge your post - then if/when a moderator reads that, they can change the title.

Of course that is a lot of work, which should not be needed....... if descriptive thread titles were used.

 

[Mark.B]

If people do that at the Opera forums, the mods close the thread with a comment about useless thread titles. But, they make it very clear in the rules, at sign up and all over the site.

 

[anotheralias]

If you notice something like that, and are reading the thread, you could subtly suggest a name change.

Duly noted.

I'm going to have a lot of trouble with my own board over thread titles, because we haven't bothered with SEO in years and they're not in the habit of elaborating.

 

[Mark.B]

Duly noted.

I'm going to have a lot of trouble with my own board over thread titles, because we haven't bothered with SEO in years and they're not in the habit. of elaborating.

SEO is the wrong reason to do it though. Most forums' obsession with SEO is becoming wearysome, as if Google doesn't know how to crawl pages or something. A site's members have no concern with SEO, and if I'm a member of any site that starts expecting me to be concerned with their own SEO, I ignore it. people get really fed up with that sort of thing.

The reason thread titles should be descriptive is to assist those who are trying to help.

 

[anotheralias]

A site's members have no concern with SEO, and if I'm a member of any site that starts expecting me to be concerned with their own SEO, I ignore it. people get really fed up with that sort of thing.

I understand where you're coming from, but we're a very small board, and we're pretty much all in this together. They're just as interested in getting some new members as I am, which is the only reason I'll be explaining why better titles will help with that - because they actually do want to help out.

We're not trying to claw our way to the top of Google, we just want some new people.

 

[Mark.B]

I understand where you're coming from, but we're a very small board, and we're pretty much all in this together. They're just as interested in getting some new members as I am, which is the only reason I'll be explaining why better titles will help with that - because they actually do want to help out.

We're not trying to claw our way to the top of Google, we just want some new people.

That's fair enough, I would say the main benefit of decent thread titles, from that aspect, is that when visitors DO find your site, they will see a list of titles that interest them, rather than "Help??!!!" or "WTF is this????!!!!!!!" and suchlike.

That to me is much more important than actual SEO.

I mean, I regularly read that I should ruin my site's layout by splattering visible H1 and H2 tags all over pages that do not need them either functionally or cosmetically. And so I don't do it.

Like, if this thread was on a vBulletin site with vBseo, it would have a stupid box at the top saying:
This is a discussion on Pretty please? Instead of, "how do I change this?" for example, make it "how do I change the color of the links in the posts?"
I just find that sort of thing somewhat pathetic and pointless.

 

[anotheralias]

I just find that sort of thing somewhat pathetic and pointless.

So do I, which is why we're such a small board.... ahahaha.

Seriously, just about every single thing you have to do to be found by anyone annoys the living hell out of me. I don't want to pester people to Facebook me or follow me on Twitter; I don't want a bunch of stupid tag clouds all over the place, I don't want to have to do that vBSEO thing you mentioned above (I bought vBSEO and ditched it inside of three days), I don't want to ask people to "Digg this" or "invite a friend" and so on.

But I have noticed that when I'm searching for something these days, I can often just put in the kind of sentence I'd expect to find if someone were discussing that topic, like say "do you like the tenth doctor," and get a list that includes the smaller blogs/sites because they happen to be talking about it, and that's why we're all going to try to get out of the habit of thread titles like "weather - WTF?"

 

[Paul B]

Thanks anotheralias.
I had considered posting a thread such as this but didn't want to be seen as coming across too officious.

Having correct titles not only helps us do our job but it will mean getting quicker and better support and others searching for the same problem will find it easier which will mean less duplicate threads and therefore split discussion.

Liked

 

[anotheralias]

Thanks anotheralias. I had considered posting a thread such as this but didn't want to be seen as coming across too officious.

I don't like to seem too officious either, but when my basic laziness conflicts with my dislike of officiousness, laziness will win every time.

 

[borbole]

Pretty please? Instead of, "how do I change this?" for example, make it "how do I change the color of the links in the posts?"

I promise to Like you for it.

I second this as well. I have seen a lot of users doing that when asking for help in the past, being very vague (not so much here though). For ex someone asks how can I change the color of that thing there or How can I do that and the beauty is when they don''t get an answer they are like "What, no help? Support here sucks" In the begin those threads irritated the hell out of me but now I find them amusing. Those guys/gals that provide support should go into mind reading as well now

 

[steven s]

That's probably one of the most annoying things newbies do at our forums, just type things like "?" ".." "help?!?" in the thread title. I mean, I was a newbie once but I never did that

Newbies? Don't blame newbies.
Just look at any support forum. It's no different for 'so called' admins.

 

[Peggy]

I've posted a sticky message in the support forums. Hopefully people will read them before posting a support question.