Part of an attempt to improve subject lines.

[Weedpacket]

Yes, I know it's probably futile, BUT THAT'S NOT GONNA STOP ME TRYING! I'm getting increasingly cheesed off with the number of useless and content-free subject lines that go on the forums. They're subject lines. They're supposed to give the subject of the post. How else are we supposed to know what they're about? Right, by clicking on them and reading the thing. Ah, modern marketing techniques.

Here's a sample list of Dumb Subject Lines - what NOT to write. Every one is a genuine post from these forums. Now, you may disagree with having some of these subject lines here - maybe you think they are adequate descriptions of the problem they purport to describe. Maybe you know some (or a category of) subject lines that I've missed. I invite discussion (obviously - this is a discussion forum) and examples. Also of interest are Good subject lines: I didn't put them here because it's so hard to build both lists simultaneously. After less than thirty seconds I found a Good Subject Line: "How can I censor out a banned word in a topic title?"

Now I should point out that the content of the post is irrelevant to my present purpose. It might be a sensible, well thought-out post that was just let down by having a DSL. Or it might have been an illiterate's "gimme". I wouldn't know, because I didn't check when I was making this list. It makes sense really: these are the subject lines that don't give you any idea as to what is being asked for. All are from the Coding forum; the Discussion lists are obviously not expected to hew to the same standards (not necessarily worse, just not the same).

So: the list. Saatchi & Saatchi could probably learn from some of these guys...

• need more help

• how do i make this work with php?

• Help!!!!!!!

• HTML Community Help!

• Can someone help me find a script?

• Where do I put?

• si this correct?

• :: search problem

• search problem

• Need some help with some code here

• preg_match_all ???

• Help Finding a Parse Error

• Okay, this is my last thread for today...

• advantages?

• Is this possible?

• Parse error help.

• Location of Problem?

• a function dysfunction

• Time question

• Coding help needed

• Coding help needed

• session problem

• regex problem

• Session problem !!!

• Crap load of stuff needed

• ereg_replace bug?

• time and date...?

• Expiring...

• Edit file

• Simple SQL??

• Drop Down

• Any thoughts?

• uploding

• Can this be done?

• Date problem

• Setup Script

• What in gods name is wrong

• breaking problem

• TimeStamp

• regexp problem

• XML Parse

• picture thumbnail

• page requests

• need help from the experts, please

• explode help

• explode help

• Array Help

• Calender Help

• Calender Help

• mysql_query help

• For() Help

• xml help

• Regex help

• Reg Exp Help

• help with if statement

• help with delete statement

• mail sender help

• search help

• Plz Help

• FPDF help

• Apostrophe help!

• Help !!

• helppppppppppppp

• helpppppppp on a login plz

• helppppppp

• helppppppppppppppp

• helpppp

• Need help with a concept

• very weird loop

• OOP question

• Urgent

• pdf's

• URL's

• Arrays

• [object] ?

• php

• submiting??????

• Supplied argument

• Help with links

• form question

• confirm problem

• mysql problem

• PHP Forum - Drop Down Menu help

• Login System

• hello ... pleas help Image Resize code wanted

• Simple problem, can u help me plz?

• Sorting data into a table.....HELP!

• PHP Forms

• Searching for a script

• 6 hours and nothing

• What is wrong?

• call all regex masters!

• Hello, general help please!

• Expressions... How???

• No-sence error!

• $php_self

• what am i doing wrong

• Parse Error ..pls help

• Plz help! Parse error!

• Why wont this work ?

• help plz

• Plz help!!!!

• plz help...

• plz help

• Help plz!!

• Code Help plz!!

• Major Help Needed Plz...

[Bunkermaster]

yeah

😃

go WeedPacket go!!!!

[weekender]

weed, you may be sad and geeky, with way too much time on your hands, but you're also damn right. it is soooo annoying, and a lot of these examples you have given have been just the last few days

[LordShryku]

Oh, you are so right Weed. This is just one of my pet peeves here though. There's just too many anymore.

My favorite from the list: si this correct?
Answer: Uhm no, not even your spelling is correct

[edit]Okay, so to try to actually have this happen, I'm going to make a point to shove people to this thread when their subject line is vague, misleading, or just stupid.

Weed, anyway you can make that one sticky?

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by LordShryku
Weed, anyway you can make that one sticky?

Not that one in particular; but it's linked to one that is up there.

I waffle too much: I need help winnowing things down to a convenient list of "Do"s & "Don't"s.

I might add a Hall of Shame and a Hall of Fame to the thread: "These are the dumbest subject lines ever" and "These are the best subject lines ever".

[Bunkermaster]

you are in a sticky

http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=10322030

🙂

[njm]

Sentiments echoed. While I'm on leave for the holidays it's not too bad to go through the list of posts, when I'm back at work I need to be a bit more selective and that's where subject lines come in.

I can't argue with any of the quoted lines below - my favourites being the rather desperate 'what in gods name is wrong', and 'Apostrophe help' ('well, it's a grammatical mark to indicate...')

Searching through for really good subject lines was a bit harder, which makes me think that sometimes condensing down a tricky coding problem into 4-5 words isn't that straightforward (which isn't to say people shouldn't try 🙂 ). The following were the best 3 I could see from a cursory look through the General Help forum - YMMV

• Retreiving Passed Variables with Spaces in the Name

• view source code of php on client side

• confusion with slashes in regular expressions

This is the only forum I really look through - how do people think this compares to others in terms of DSLs?

njm

[bad76]

If the guy
don't knows where is the problem, how cans he write a sensefull title? 😉

But this should be a suggest for 200... ehm... $curryear... not... the new year in feedback forum !

we can asking for:
"Add a 'title' tag to subject with first two/three line of body"

:

[jayant]

we can have some of those phrases on banned word list.
i am not sure how banned word list system works on vB.

maybe we will need an hack.
hack forcing subject lines to be atleast 10 characters, not allowing some specific phrases. if such phrases exist. ask the use to give a proper subject (instead of just removing those phrases).

[pipe_girl]

Brilliant. You expressed my thoughts on this perfectly.

[dalecosp]

Wow, dunno how I missed this one. Sounds at least a great idea to me, if not something that should absolutely postively be done ASAP. Thx Weed for the work in the 1st place, and for bringing it up in another thread so I saw it ... maybe it was 'cuz it was around New Year's....

Jayant ... anything to come from your suggested hack? Obviously it would be a tad of work to do it to the VB code.

What about a little Javascript? There is already a check in VB to make sure the subject line is there ... you could also check against a list of the worst offenders. I see one or two drawbacks immediately: you'd have to have Weed's list of DSL's in the JS (probably as an array) and that would increase the size of the served file considerably ... sometimes it seems that the server here is a tad loaded anyhow... also, would it be somehow unpatriotic to solve this in JS on a PHP forum? 🙁