From: devet@adv.win.tue.nl (Arjan de Vet) Subject: Good & clear subject lines give you more readers! Date: 14 Mar 1993 15:38:28 GMT
In article <1993Mar12.221142.13120@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
ruhtra@turing.toronto.edu (Arthur Tateishi) writes:
>Oh thing that really irritates me is the use of stupid subject lines.
>I mean, when I see a posting with a subject like
> Subject: *PLEASE* READ THIS! *HELP*
>I pass right by. Don't even give it a second thought. I consider it
>as annoying as people who use "stuff for sale" subject lines in
>the forsale groups. It tells me the person has not read the
>netiquette posts and therefore probably hasn't read the FAQ(s).
I totally agree with you! I was also thinking of posting a similar article
about choosing clear subject lines. If I cannot deduce immediately from the
subject line whether the posting may be of interest to me, I don't read it.
Also screaming subject lines (*PLEASE* and all capital subjects) get skipped.
People who post in comp.os.linux should be aware that most readers only read
SUBJECTS, not ARTICLES (trn, nn and tin have those nice menus). So the time
you spend on thinking about a good subject line is not wasted time!
>One thing that I *really* like about some posts recently is the use of
>[Q] and [ANN] at the start of the subject. (Who started this? It is
>positively brilliant!)
It's a kind of convention. Posters should first of all make clear whether
they have a question (in that case the subject line SHOULD end in a question
mark) or have a solution to offer.
An example: consider the package `foo'. I wouldn't even think about reading
an article with subject:
foo
But I would read it if it had one of the following subject lines:
Are there patches for foo?
or
[PATCH] for foo on Linux 0.99.7
If you follow up to a question with a solution, please change the subject
line indicating that your posting contains a solution (you could add
[SOLUTION] at the end). Trn handles subject changes within threads really
nice (I don't know about tin and nn). In Trn I would see the following with
the above subjects:
a+Name1 Are there patches for foo?
Name2 >[PATCH] for foo on Linux 0.99.7
>I recently posted a question about "not a valid file system" messages
>with ext2fs. I got a reply within 4 hours. I also salute those who
>sent me mail requesting any answers I got. This demonstrates a level
>of knowledge and maturity above the "Me too!" followup articles.
I have the same experience: when you have a good subject line which reflects
the contents of your posting very well, you almost always get replies.
>The other irritating types of messages are of the form:
> Hi, I'm really new to Linux and Unix and would like to get dialin
> logins, X11, SL/IP, and TCP/IP working on my machine. Oh yeah,
> I'm also trying to get Wing-Commander running with Stacker
> under Dos-Emu. Can someone tell me how to set everything up?
>
>Ok ok. I'm exaggerating (a lot). However, there's a problem with
>patience here. Should a unix newbie be allowing remote dialin logins?
>SLS is splendid but I usually find a bunch of world writable files and
>directories in the hierarchy and hunt them down using find. Things
>like SLIP and DosEmu are still alpha level or pre-alpha and require a
>certain degree of knowledge and experience to configure(I believe).
For the newbies: I use Linux 6 months now and have dialin logins, Email,
UUCP, News, X11 and TCP/IP working. I had already some experience with Unix
and I compiled many things myself (because it's fun to do!). Don't expect to
have all these things working in a week. Start with a little system and
extend it in steps. That's also the way to learn something about how
everything works so you can solve most problems yourself (I always want to
know how things work :-). A system as the newbie in Arthur's example
describes is just too complex to understand in a week.
Maybe Ian Jackson could add to his `READ ME BEFORE POSTING' posting some
guidelines for choosing good and clear subjects. Arthur and I gave some
hints. The subject line of his posting should then also include the fact that
hints are given which could increase the number of answers to a posting.
Anybody got a good idea for a new subject line for Ian's posting which
invites everyone to read it?
Arjan