What the fuck is it with people who post threads with vague subject lines? Are they afraid that if others see what the thread is actually about they won’t have any interest in opening it? Or are deliberately trying to set up some sort of anticipation? If that is the intent, it’s not working. In fact, with the boards being so slow of late, I simply am not willing to sit around a wait for a page to load only to find out that it is one I would have skipped had it been properly fucking labelled.
The lack of speed on the boards has been a hot topic recently. I would submit that one way to alleviate the strain on the servers is to avoid having hundreds or thousands of dopers opening threads they don’t want to open. One way to do this is to have some fucking consideration for the others on the board and accurately label your stupid threads.
One more time, just in case you didn’t get it. The subject line should be reflective of the topic, you asshole.
Amen, Dewt. I’m sick of seeing threads just titled “Who Wants to See My…” or “Pussy Time!” that turn out to be about someone’s stupid cat or something about which I wouldn’t otherwise read a post; or titles using some other line meant to be tongue in cheek or somehow enticing. They rarely come off as clever, and guess what? It’s old and lame. Don’t worry: we won’t think less of you if the “Views” count on your thread isn’t sky-high.
At the very least, can’t people post something more informative than “What do you think of this?” as their subject line? I mean, I understand that some subjects are going to be difficult to cram into ten words or so, but can’t you at least add a word or two that deals with what the subject is about?
And consarnit, let’s have none of this False Subject bullshit! I don’t wanna open a “What do you think about Gay Marriage” thread only to find “Ha ha, just kidding, I really wanna talk about my belly button!”
I honestly never thought about this until I read your OP… but I, myself have done exactly this a few times!
I may not be the biggest violator of this, but I have definitely contributed… therefore (and with no sarcasm):
I humbly and sincerely appologize to anyone who has ever opened a thread of mine that had a vague subject line (I don’t recall ever using a purposefully deceptive one, but I may have!) and was disappointed that the subject was of no interest to them, and I pledge that I will never do this again.
Due to the slowness of the boards of late, I encourage everyone else who has done this to reform with me.
Dude, lemmee just say you’ve earned my eternal respect.
I’m sure there are a number of sniveling bivlets who’ve read the post and missed the point completely… or more likely read the subject and skipped it thinking ‘of course this wouldn’t apply to me.’
Here’s an example of the kind of crap that irritates me:
The thread, entitled I am on the top 10!!! can be found in MPSIMS. I wouldn’t recommend anybody go check it out though… here’s the content of the OP:
Now, I’m not objecting to the content of the thread… perfectly valid crap for MPSIMS… But, red_dragon60, what made you think, even for a second, that people have a need or even a desire to blindly follow your undesignated links? Do you feel that everyone else has as much time to waste as you? Everything about your thread - the subject, the OP and even the corrections to the OP are fucking vague.
All you have succeeded in doing is associating your username with a sense of me wasting my time. From this point on I will have a filter in my head that says “skip this idiot” which is too bad, because I’m sure that you do have some redeeming values. I’m just not interested in following blind links in the hope that I’ll stumble across something of interest.
Replace “They’re” with “Friend of the Court Referees” and I would have skipped the thread altogether. 176 views and 2 responses (last I checked). What a waste of bandwidth.
I don’t even know what the fuck a “Friend of the Court Referee” is. I didn’t read the rest of the OP and maybe it was explained there, but I’ll never know.
I will no longer open any threads with vague titles just to see what it’s about. Not that anyone cares about my input really…
I did a search on myself and found that I’m guilty of this as well. Twice.
One title was:
“It’s real! And it has a name! I’m not crazy!” which had to do with something called Restless Leg Syndrome
and the other was:
“Guess what I found…” which I don’t even know what it’s about.
So before someone decides to filet me, I apologize for doing that and will never do it again. I guess when I wrote those I didn’t realize how annoying it is.
Although in my defense, both were in MPSIMS, which is a forum that one can assume people visit because they have time to waste. I would never do it in GQ or IMHO.
Well, the defense certainly won’t include me. There’s nothing more annoying to me than to open a vague thread, only to find out it’s more of the same mindless flirting/pointless bullshit/topic I don’t know anything about/topic I could care less about.
As someone who’s posted vague thread titles in the past, I promise that i won’t do it again.
But guess what? A thread with this same topic is started here ever couple months, and there ain’t jack-fuck that changes because of it. A couple people promise to reform (and I applaud you for it), but then 200 jackasses sign up and start the same goddamn process over.
My suggestion: make it part of the rules one has to agree with to sign up, and have the mods enforce the rule. The first few times, they are warned, then if they don’t improve, kick their asses off.
Revtim… stuyguy had a great idea. I think he handles things beautifully in this thread.
A simple reply to the offending asshole’s post with a link to this thread should help to get the message across. If that doesn’t work, I recommend we bring out the tar and feathers.
I was just pointing out that you were speaking of the speed of the board. Your solution is one that the moderators have not recomended. One solution they did recomend was that you do a search and see if the thread has been brought up before.
Not that I’m the techwizkid of 2001, but it seems to me a recommendation that would help. As for doing a search… well that might (surely) yeild results, but apparently, there are some people who need reminding. Not only that, but aren’t long threads part of the problem? Wouldn’t it make sense to start a new thread once the old one has gone stale, has been forgotten or would constitute an entirely new discussion as the participants themselves are mostly different.
Plus… remember all those times you said (15mins after posting) “D’oh! I should have said this…”
