Oh god, oh god, pretty, pretty please help me!

[WILL]

I have a (maybe personal) pet peeve. I think some people might know what that is already, but I'll share it with you guys all the same.

Seeing all these 'help me' threads in the 'Help Me!' forum is getting a little tiresome. I think we get the point that these individuals need help. The problem is however that we don't see what you need help with when we look at your thread. Instead we just see a pathetic plea for help.

I think the subject line could be made better use than that. So what I'm pondering is some form of guidelines for posting in the 'Help Me!' forum. And it's likely going to be the price for keeping it around as it is a high maintenance forum out of all the rest, second only to the 'News' forum.

This means that you will have to read the Help Me! Forum rules and follow a simple subject title formatting guide and basic template when making posts.

ie.

Subject Line: Relevant line describing the problem.

Mandatory Info:

1. brief system specs (OS + CPU / Memory, if relevant)
2. Compiler & Language (Pascal, Object Pascal, etc)
3. detailed explanation of your problem

What this also means is that those that do not conform to these (simple) guidelines will have their threads deleted or locked without prejudice.

Though I'd like to not have a zero tolerance policy [size=9px](iow deletion without warning)[/size] as it may appear a bit harsh to newcomers. I think a better approach might be 'Lock and Talk'.

What do you all think of this alternative to just getting rid of it?

[Traveler]

Hmm, it really has not bothered me that much, actually. If I know the answer to a certain question I'll post a reply. Simple as that.

Although I must admit, sometimes I do wonder why people post questions which can be found in less than a minute just by entering the most obvious keywords in Google. :?

[Robert Kosek]

Make a sticky and tell people to use descriptive titles. That's the only way you can really reach folks about it.


Though I must admit, I visited just because of the title. :lol:

[NecroDOME]

I completely agree with the deletion part, also I don't take time to read post with "Help me" or "Need help". I only read threads with a decent title! So I agree, delete the post and notify the user...

[jdarling]

Help Me as a title never gets my attention. Of course if someone reply's with a title that makes sense, then I sometimes answer. I fully agree that people who use titles that are non-descriptive they should be locked and if not fixed then deleted.

[Robert Kosek]

Locked topics cannot be "fixed" for they are locked. A self-destructive moderator action to be sure.

[LP]

As a reader, I actually almost never read topics with titles "Help me plz!!! I'm getting crazy!!!" and such (I'm not a psychiatrist).

My belief is that forum works like a library or a book: you can search it to find the answers you need. For that phylosophy to work, it should be organized, which requires the topics and the content to be as informative as possible. It should also have as little biased material as possible, as well as flame subjects (examples: "i hate C++ 'cuz it's evil, Java rulez!", "M$ sux, so I use OpenGL", "I want to rotate my 3D mesh but I hate matrices and we all know they are sh1t!", "All latest games run here so yours is bad, and I don't care if my machine is outdated and slow!" etc.) - you don't learn anything new from it and posters quickly gain anger in these threads.

I myself have witnessed few little "flamewars" here on PGD, so I think you should take this into account.

Curious that high-traffic forums like GameDev.net has almost dealt with this problem by providing FAQ for each forum where most frequent questions are answered and a policy of posting is presented. Threads not complying with the policy are closed.

My suggestion is to provide a policy for posting and if broken, notify the poster and close the thread. If you leave it open, you will never overtalk, convince or make the angry poster to relax. Give them time to think.

[WILL]

Well my concern here isn't so much bad forum behavior as it is a poorly used Help system in the forums. People here are generally well behaved and conduct themselves appropriately in more cases than not, I'd say. Though you have some good points about the FAQ on PGD. It's something that should be looked over sometime in the near future.

As for the 'Help Me!' forum it's self. I'm seeing it being used as a sort of catch-all location for people to post all their problems as is and left someone else [size=9px](Dom and I, or one of the moderators)[/size] deal with it. Not so cool as we would rather put our time into something else instead when we come here. Like activating new accounts, posting news items, articles and links to cool and interesting things in the Library and Links sections.

Technically PGD doesn't need a 'Help Me!' forum. So if we keep it around then it should be something that is a bit more organized than it is. Otherwise it might as well just be nuked and everyone can post in the appropriate topic forum instead.

As it is, it's just a burden and a time-waster for the site staff to maintain.

I do however see the value of such a device to expedite getting help for your problems, but it should not be used to excess. So in that spirit, some sort of extra effort will have to be put into posts there.

You put in the effort and you'll get the effort right back. That just seems fair to me.

[WILL]

Ok new rules are in place. Hopefully this will help keep things a little more organized in there.

All existing threads in there now will be grandfathered. Meaning that we will not enforce the 3 lines rule on them as they already exist. (all 3 pages full of them :shock: )

[Robert Kosek]

NOTE: 'Help me!', 'Please help.', 'I'm suck! help.' and other such descriptions are not acceptable!

ROFLOL!