Advice to Thread Starters

Lately I have been seeing a lot of thread starters using general title headings such as:" Help, Problem, Urgent help needed". Anyone who sees this post and is thinking of making a post, remember, we want to help you. Everyone here has a different area of expertise. Be as accurate as possible in your title Heading. "I cannot install Windows 7 32 bit". Would be much better than," 7 does not work for me". With the first heading, someone knowledgable with installtions will come to help. With the second, maybe someone that has expertise in the area of BSOD would come to help. Have A Great One.

richc46 said:

Lately I have been seeing a lot of thread starters using general title headings such as:" Help, Problem, Urgent help needed". Anyone who sees this post and is thinking of making a post, remember, we want to help you. Everyone here has a different area of expertise. Be as accurate as possible in your title Heading. "I cannot install Windows 7 32 bit". Would be much better than," 7 does not work for me". With the first heading, someone knowledgable with installtions will come to help. With the second, maybe someone that has expertise in the area of BSOD would come to help. Have A Great One.

Good one Rich .. Something i used to think and you said it

Qdos said:

And if new members were to complete their system specifications, IN FULL... instead of just saying "Win 7 OS" then it'd also help them - the number of posts which appear without this essential information being input wastes everyones time... in fact it also means that their requests get fewer replies too...

That's okay. The more posts we need to solve the problem, the higher our post count, right?

richc46 said:

Lately I have been seeing a lot of thread starters using general title headings such as:" Help, Problem, Urgent help needed". Anyone who sees this post and is thinking of making a post, remember, we want to help you. Everyone here has a different area of expertise. Be as accurate as possible in your title Heading. "I cannot install Windows 7 32 bit". Would be much better than," 7 does not work for me". With the first heading, someone knowledgable with installtions will come to help. With the second, maybe someone that has expertise in the area of BSOD would come to help. Have A Great One.

Very well said!

I touched on this in another thread on a another forum:

Basically, "Help! - Urgent! " titles are hooks. Intentionally or naively, they grab your attention. Admit it, you see a title like that and you can't help but check it out.

The majority of the time, the poster is unaware that titles like this are a PITA.

However, for the most part, they simply do not know any better.

Since a lot of people 'stumble' across a forum in an effort to seek help for a particular issue, they are unaware of the 'etiquette' involved; since by and large, tech forums are a completely new experience for them.

Part of this ignorance is not knowing that system specs, or even which version of Windows they have, aren't even considered important when requiring others to help them.

The common mindset is "Computer not working! I want it fixed now! How?"


Unfortunately, entertaining the idea of magic and mind reading is not part of that mindset that is expected from tech sites.


The problem with initially succinctly and accurately explaining the issue involved with all the pertinent details is that it tends to 'scare' off any potential helpers who are unsure of how to offer any advice. This negates 'out of the box' thinking that can sometimes lead to the root of the problem.


My personal style when dealing with unknown problems is to ask seemingly vagueinfo mining questions in an effort to encourage and elicit further information that at the time may seem innocuous, but can often be an underlying factor in helping resolve the root of the problem.

This also has the added bonus of avoiding well meaning, but ultimately confusing and incorrect advice offered by others that only leads to further complicate the OP and confound the issue.


My method does not always work for a variety of reasons, but when it does - it can be very beneficial for all concerned. Even if I don't know the answer, somebody else who has picked up on my line of reasoning may have the key that solves it.


As for Google, how do you think they get here to begin with