The Twenty Character Rule For Subject Lines Results In Titles That Are Unnecessarily Long.

I suggest that the minimum be reduced to 5 characters.

You should change the title to:

"The Twenty Character Rule for Subject Lines Results in Titles that are Unnecessarily long, so I recommend that we change it to 5 characters, but I'm willing to compromise, so please reply with your comments and we can make a group decision on what to ask the moderators to do."

Or something like that.

5 charactars sounds great.

Let us guess how many topics will be called STAMP if we would do that.

Another popular topic title might be $$$$?

Good quality thread titles are critical and are something that members who do not contribute in other ways can do to help the community. In other words, by writing a good quality title you are investing time and giving back to the community. Title specificity is a form of community consideration.

Thread titles are summaries of the original poster's intent for the thread. A good quality thread title typically includes both a noun and a verb. The relationship between the noun and verb is not only what helps search engines but also help humans search and find what they are seeking.

As other have already pointed out, if this were allowed we would see a number of new threads with mysterious one word titles. While folks might think that a mysterious one word title might cause more people to open and read the thread (to see what the thread was about), the truth is that people will grew frustrated and tired of wasting time reading threads they are not interested in. Take it from a person who knows, reading every thread can be arduous (as Mod it is my job to read every thread). Folks should appreciate anything that allows them to efficiently sort and filter threads of interest.

Moderators already spend time fixing poor quality thread titles. But let's assume that posters are allowed to write a one word title and Moderators then revise it. This would introduce a Moderators opinion on every thread title they revised; I am quite sure that folks do not want to see my opinion in every thread title. Good forum moderating is when we do not have to intercede and influence the flow of opinions.
Don

I've had to "pad" most of my titles. "PSE vs. PF" and "Mounting covers?" are too short.

Also, the rule is not always enforced. "Zepps?" Is 5 characters long. How did a user get around what should be checked by the web page form?

We could replace words with numbers. 1 could equal "album", 2 could equal "Washington", 3 could equal "rose carmine" and so on. These could change daily for opsec. Or better yet they could be randomized on a continuous basis........

Personally, I suggest that we leave well enough alone. Many of the present users know how to contain tiltles to the relevance of the issue. You can search with as many and as few words as you choose.

Using a code, no way! That would create more wasted time looking up a table to see what your searching for and more pages for the forum to create.

It should be manditory for new users to read a new users welcome page stating the do's and dont's, rules and information about posting and listings, as the site already contains and Don enforces as moderator.

Just add a time restriction clock of the least amount of time to pervue the page and add a checkbox that the user has read the page and understands and agrees to the rules before allowing the user to click agree and use the forum.

This may help new people understand the forum more intimately, and prevent some pages of useless information that many do not want to search or read through.

I'm sorry but there is NO reason you can't come up with 20 characters.

The reason there is a limit is because almost every day we would get Help? as a topic title. That is just sheer laziness.

Last week I got a title from a new member... Help? Extra Characters to Reach Limit I just deleted the topic and deleted the member and never lost a second sleep over it.

We've had members make multiple topics titled Help? right after one another.

When topics have obvious deliberate padding in them, (like multiple punctuation and random crap) and I see them, I delete them.

Because the topic is 10 years old before we imposed the limit. And this is a great example of WHY we made the limit.

There have been times when this requirement has slipped my mind and after pushing 'submit' I get the message that my title is too short. Then when I go back to correct it the entire body of my post has vanished. I either start all over again or just decide to forget it. I understand the rationale in wanting descriptive titles. I just don't understand why the system deletes my entire post if this happens.

Hi Stamps1962,
That is a browser issue, not the 'system'.

It is a good example of just how hard it has become to support 10,000+ different browser/operating system/version combinations in this day and age.
Don

Edit: This issue is a bit embarrassing to me. Back in the early 1990s, I rallied hard in my company and to technology customers to promote browsers as the perfect platform for "write once, run anywhere". I told them that investing in browser technology would be as good as sex and sliced bread. What I moron I was, browser technology is now the bane of my existence. What started as a great idea (a plain vanilla 'container) which code could be run has now turned into a monster and a total cluster.

Yep, that's a Chrome defect. Standard browser behavior is to preserve textarea input with the back button. Also Chrome does not acknowledge the minlength property. Firefox wont even let you submit without there being 20 characters which is the way it should be.

It's cute how you think people read. (Not to mention we already do that.... you did it.)

I'll give you a classic example, here is a screenshot of our contact form....



Pretty crystal clear right? Bright yellow box? Big Red Text?

I get at least 10 a day here with people asking what their stamp is worth. They can't include a picture so they'll spend 10-15 minutes typing up an elaborate description of their stamp........ but they don't take 15 seconds to actually read the form.

Form is the same on the coin forum (change stamp to coin) and I get about 30 per day from there.

I've always thought this would be an excellent idea, as we see many new members posting about things like their inherited collection, or very common subjects that have poorly worded titles, all with no idea of what they need to include in their post.

It seems that it would be technically feasible to associate some sort of flag with a new account which is not set until the "new users" welcome page" is at least visited, and a post could not be made when this flag was not set. I realize the clever new member could skip it without reading, but perhaps there could be a "check box" in the sign-up page like we get on many other sites where we agree to abide by certain rules, etc.

I also understand that our Forum moderators do not have control of many things, but if this is not something that they could manage, perhaps they can make a suggestion to the Forum hosts.