Creating a New Thread: Guidelines and Suggestions

[Rob]

Are you new to these forums or thinking about making a thread for the first time?

Please take a moment to follow the following recommendations:

1. Consider if you have the right forum - Don't get your thread off the wrong foot by posting in the wrong forum. Look carefully at other threads in the forum you're thinking of posting in. Does your thread have nothing to do with DMB? It should not be in the DMBc forum--it goes in the nDMB forum. Does your thread have to do with a particular venue on this summer's tour? It should be in the tour forum.
2. Use Descriptive thread titles - See below for the lowdown.
3. Make being the OP an honor - OP or Original Poster is the person who created the thread. Their first post should explain the intention of the discussion and give as much relevant information and links as possible.
4. Search the forum - Before going to the trouble of making a thread, please perform a search using reasonable keywords. i.e. Dave's Boots

What is a Descriptive Thread Title?

Thread titles should be descriptive, but not explanatory. A thread title can describe your position on the topic you wish to discuss, but it should never describe your reasoning therein. Here are a few examples of good thread titles:

• Album Tracklist Finally Released - Includes SUAD
• Carter's Use of Polyrhthyms
• Should Rashawn Guest on Dreaming Tree?

Here are a few examples of not-so-great thread titles:

• Drumming is cool
• Ticket Buying
• Beer

Note that bad thread titles can take many different forms. Teaser titles should be avoided at all costs. Examples include:

• I can't believe this!!!!
• Just a question for all you dave-heads...
• What will they think of next?

Not everyone wants to participate in every thread. It's important to give people an idea of what you want to talk about--forcing people to guess is considered bad form. A good test is to simply read your thread title and say to yourself, does this give me a clear idea of what this thread is about?


rob

Some of this post was adapted from arstechnica's page on writing descriptive thread titles.