Why don't people write descriptive subject lines? (Rant)

[datapappan]

I like the forums spread all over the web, especially when I'm looking to solve some intrinsic computer error (product manuals these days seem to be automatically produced by listing what each menu choice performs, in stead of teaching good procedure when using the software).

I also like the handiness of e-mail; you just leave a short notice, to be answered by the recipient at their chosen time. No disturbing phone calls, and all well documented, and you can write half an essay; a voicemail with the same information would be cumbersome to handle (what'd he say? rewind, listen again...).

My rant is about ppl not putting the effort into writing a good subject line. It got to me this morning when browsing these very forums, "system advice" section. If you need help with a build, who do you think will help if you put the subject as 'Help!!!', or 'Is this any good?". Only the most hardcore philantropist respond to those, or someone very bored. If I have special knowledge I want to share, I look specifically for those posts where I might be of use - alas, those that are outside my knowledge I would skip. Having a proper subject line will attract those that can be of real use. (I won't even comment on those "contributors" that only post 'I have the same problem, does anybody have an answer?')

Same goes for e-mails, with subjects like 'Hi', or even a blank line. Please, tell me your errand in the subject!

Nuff for today, good to have this off my chest.

Out, datapappan

[andyb]

Subject lines such as "Help!!!" are unforgivable, but I (personally) have 2 reasons to give poor subject lines.

1, there is a limit to the amount of text you can use, which can severly hamper your description.

2, Mystery, just like a newspaper headline, its often effective to put down something that is attention grabbing, or just sounds interesting.


Andy

[Arvo]

Subjects like "HELP" do not count as mystery to me. What about text limit, then it is always possible write two-three words short description about your problem or intention.

I'm moderating one local technical forum. Our forum rules prohibit uninformative subject lines, like "Help!" or "Problem with IE" or similar. After recycling (deleting) some threads with such subject and pointing to forum rules, (new) users usually start to write informative subject lines

I hope they (new users) will at some point understand that forums are not IM clients and MSN-like speech doesn't work here. I hope that I can make world a better place

[nutball]

Bad subject lines don't bother me as much as people who post asking questions without even bothering to search.

"Hi, is this motherboard good for a HTPC?

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H $76 at Newegg"

Right because it's that hard to type "HTPC" or "Gigabyte" or the model number into the search here. Hell, it might even show up that this site has reviewed it!

Or another pet peeve

"Can you review this 88CFM LED fan I wunt to know if it's quiet. It's $7 so I need to know before I order it. kthx"

Simple answer, for $7 you could buy it, try it, and let us know if it's quiet. kthx.

</rant>

[walle]

Bad subject lines don't bother me as much as people who post asking questions without even bothering to search.

There's an explanation for that, think school system, instant gratification and one line answers.

[m0002a]

The basic reason is becasue of IM. People (especially younger ones) tend to communicate as if everything is an IM, even emails.

[walle]

Asking questions without bothering to think, less search before asking them, has less to do with IM but more to do with humans becoming increasingly computerised, though they are of course related.


Edit:
I omitted to state that it’s not their fault so let me do that now, it is not their fault.

[AuraAllan]

The basic reason is becasue of IM. People (especially younger ones) tend to communicate as if everything is an IM, even emails.

100% agreed.
Also IM destroys peoples ability to write proper English (or any other language actually).
I know that here in Denmark alot of people on hardware forums can't spell at all. Some posts are almost unreadable because of peoples inability to spell properly.

.....but more to do with humans becoming increasingly computerised.....

AKA becoming lazier.
Most people seemingly can't be bothered with actually searching, let alone trying to find the answer themselves.

I don't think its a problem here at SPCR yet but at other forums you see people bumping their threads several times within the first hour after posting it.

[zoatebix]

[toot my own horn]I'm quite proud of HD 4850: Ethics, Warranties, and Aftermarket Coolers[/toot my own horn]


George

[Cistron]

Also IM destroys peoples ability to write proper English (or any other language actually).

Nanana, you don't need instant messaging for that. I'm thinking about those brilliant London bus lines: "Do not talk to or obstruct the driver's vision." Hell, what? Talk to the driver's vision?

Or: "Only yellow permit holders are permitted to park here." The Simpsons only?

"Do not chain bicycles to these railings, or they will be removed." Poor railings...

Recently at work, one of the hospital floors was off limits. The notice in the lifts "No exit on level 5" - yeah sure, morons, the exit is on level 2 ... (don't ask about the floor numbering).

English is degenerating or evolving, at least on this side of the big lake, innit?

[walle]

AKA becoming lazier.
Most people seemingly can't be bothered with actually searching, let alone trying to find the answer themselves.

It has nothing to do with laziness, though I really wish it did.

[widowmaker]

I'd have to say that the SPCR forum is way above par of the "bad subject line forums" (if that even makes any sense). Based on observation, it is generally reflected by the age group of the forum members. Look up any music band or MMO forum and you'll find that an astonishing number of topics/threads have vague subject lines. I'm not surprised by this considering a large majority of those members are immature. When it comes to objective forums like SPCR, the community tends to behave and respond to a more formal atmosphere. There is also much less flaming.

[andyb]

English is degenerating or evolving, at least on this side of the big lake, innit? Wink

Language evolution is part of the problem. Mass media is making the problem worse and more widespread. Add to that a lack of decent education, and poor parenting and its all looking pretty crappy.

One of my pet hates is American, most of the British youth read, speak, and spell American not English. This has primarily come about due to Microsoft, American Television and Film, and American Websites.

Its difficult to blame mobile phones, Instant messaging, and forums when the problem did not start there, that is just the next logical step along from not being able to read and write correctly. The education system and poor parenting has to be given a large proportion of the blame for this, children should have correct spelling beaten into them in school and at home.

The fact that peoples spelling has been deteriorating over the last 20+ years is just a sign of things to come.

English has been all but superseded by the very lazy American language, now things are getting even lazier, who is to blame. I blame the Americans to start with as they showed the world that they can change the spelling and pronunciation of dozens of words and still call it English, when it is clearly not. I then I blame the schooling system for not putting their foot down and changing every dictionary and incorrectly spelt word within the Microsoft products on the schools computers. Then I blame the government for not putting their foot down and forcing MS and other companies to change the spelling for all software products sold within the UK. I then blame the parents for not forcing their kids to use correct spelling.

Essentially the problem is not with TV and Films so much as it is with written media and during the formative learning years. The incorrect spelling on the Internet is impossible to regulate (but that the beauty of the internet, and I don't want to see that change).

As we have clearly moved into the next era of bad spelling, we now don't care as much, spelling has deteriorated already and across a whole generation, so this pandemic of "txt spk" does not come as such a shock as if it had happened in the 1970's.


Andy

[Gojira-X]

I must agree with andyb that the source of most of the problem stems from American's and the dominance of American companies and culture.

I don't know about any of the other non-US residents on SPCR, but the first thing I do when configuring Windows or Ubuntu is to change the language to UK-English, if and when it is available. the second thing is configure the Office suite (MS Office, OpenOffice, K Office etc) to use UK English. Lastly I install the English-GB dictionary for Firefox. The later is the reason this post is spelt correctly, as I for one am lousy at spelling.

Nik aka Gojira-X

[psiu]

I must agree with andyb that the source of most of the problem stems from American's and the dominance of American companies and culture.

I don't know about any of the other non-US residents on SPCR, but the first thing I do when configuring Windows or Ubuntu is to change the language to UK-English, if and when it is available. the second thing is configure the Office suite (MS Office, OpenOffice, K Office etc) to use UK English. Lastly I install the English-GB dictionary for Firefox. The latter is the reason this post is spelt correctly, as I for one am lousy at spelling.

Nik aka Gojira-X

fixed for ya, by an American

[Gojira-X]

I must agree with andyb that the source of most of the problem stems from American's and the dominance of American companies and culture.

I don't know about any of the other non-US residents on SPCR, but the first thing I do when configuring Windows or Ubuntu is to change the language to UK-English, if and when it is available. the second thing is configure the Office suite (MS Office, OpenOffice, K Office etc) to use UK English. Lastly I install the English-GB dictionary for Firefox. The latter is the reason this post is spelt correctly, as I for one am lousy at spelling.

Nik aka Gojira-X

fixed for ya, by an American

Well, I said I couldn't spell and it shows!

[walle]

The two last posts just made my day, nice to see some "pointers" with a blink in the eye.

Thank you.

[Cistron]

Language evolution is part of the problem.

On this note

I don't think the spelling is the problem. Whether one writes homeopathy instead of homoeopathy is not going to kill the style (yet, it's subtle isn't it?). I'm no cultural expert, so I have no idea how you call the current degeneration of youth eloquence.

[andyb]

That Wiki link is rather good.

One thing I have never understood is why Americans call the "pavement" the "Sidewalk". On the basis of its name the road (highway) should be called a "centredrive" (or "centerdrive").

The name suggests that someone didnt like the word pavement, or just created their own word that seemed more descriptive, therefore I put forward to Americans that roads/highways should now be called "centredrives" Makes sense to me.


Andy

[zoatebix]

The two last posts just made my day, nice to see some "pointers" with a blink in the eye.

Thank you.

Don't encourage him. That way lies madness!

[xan_user]

The obscure post descriptions don't bug me, as i generally ignore them.
what I don't like is a thread descriptions that tricks me in to reading a thread that asks how to silence a system only to find out in reading they're using 8 fans and overclocking....

That Wiki link is rather good.

One thing I have never understood is why Americans call the "pavement" the "Sidewalk". On the basis of its name the road (highway) should be called a "centredrive" (or "centerdrive").

The name suggests that someone didnt like the word pavement, or just created their own word that seemed more descriptive, therefore I put forward to Americans that roads/highways should now be called "centredrives" Makes sense to me.


Andy

You forgot that we drive on the "parkway" and park in our "driveway".

When you accept that, everything else makes perfect sense.

I believe "sidewalk" came from the elevated wooden walkways built above the muddy horse shit strewn streets in the frontier days. Way before pavement and driving. Don't they show westerns over there?

[andyb]

You forgot that we drive on the "parkway" and park in our "driveway".

I am a total virgin to "parkway", but "driveway" is a common term in the UK, but its quite modern, less than 100 years old.........

I believe "sidewalk" came from the elevated wooden walkways built above the muddy horse shit strewn streets in the frontier days. Way before pavement and driving. Don't they show westerns over there?

Yes I am sue you are right, but "paving" is quite an old fashioned idea, it has been around for a good thousand years. Paving is a material used to make journeys, by horse, foot, and later car easier. We decided upon the name Pavement working from the word Paving, you decided upon "Sidewalk" an wooden material used to walk upon because you did not like Horse Shit lapping up your boots, but its hardly more modern is it, and I am sure that they are not used any more.

BTW, the invention of the horse drawn carriage (replced by the train and automobile (go watch a western, or better still something Roman (Google "Roman Empire", and check out the dates). You will probably find paving in those movies as well. My question is still, why do you call a "pavement" a "Sidewalk", but you don't call the bit in-between, which cars use as a "Centredrive".

Re-naming stuff for the sake of it is silly, so why was it re named, was it because people couldn't spell/read/write "pavement" and they walked on the side so it was called the "side walk", if so, why was the road not called the "Centre Drive" or "Middle Drive".


Andy

[psiu]

Anyways, for the most part, I would agree that one reason I appreciate SPCR's forums is that the writing is generally better than a lot of tech forums. Could be attributed to a lot of things, whether age, maturity, upbringing, etc. I also don't think all the "younger" folk lack the ability to write either (yet another 'feeling old' moment).

Is my grammar perfect? Not always, not formally anyway. Spelling? Usually. And I think it reflects on me, and is based a little bit on my own view of others based on their writing style. A well written question has a better chance of getting an answer from me than one I don't read because it was so poorly written.

As far as UK vs US spellings/words--we generally end up with what we are raised with. Sorry for corrupting your language!

[MikeC]

heh, I love threads like this.

I also love all the horrific language in all those amazingly entertaining mostly Brit crime flicks like... Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Layer Cake, Snatch, The Fight Club... or even The Snapper. That scene in Snapper of the family watching TV & the mum says, I wish you wouldn't say that, and the dadd gets all defensive about fuck or whatever he's been shouting at the TV show, and she says, no, I wish you wouldn't say eejut! I've loved that word ever since I saw the movie. eejut. wow!

Also have to retell a scene from my first ever visit to England as a very young lad: On a doubnle decker bus, a blacker than night black man speaking BBC English to a red-headed white woman, possibly from Scotland. He sounds like the radio, she I can't understand a single word of, and they're having the nicest ever exchange. Me. I watch agog.

Just a couple of possibly inflammatory comments:

1) I policed the SPCR forums like a rabid vigilante for a couple of years in the beginning, for language & civility, and I like to believe that had an impact on the culture which evolved and developed here... but this could just be wishful thinking.

2) I decided to accept US English as the spelling standard for SPCR early on because I kept getting emails from US readers (who represent 38-40%) correcting my UK or Canadian English. US English has become the defacto language of the web... and in large part, of the world. When two Asians from difference countries meet, the language they most commonly communicate in is English.

3) English is the most dynamic language in the world, expanding ad nauseam for the last several hundred years. The Oxford English Dictionary is really a continuous ongoing and -- afaik -- endless project to document its evolution. This is in total contrast to French: There is a committee which meets in France every couple of years to decide which words are officially French; the remainder is rejected. (I'm sure someone here knows more about this than I.) English is utterly "democratic" -- whether it goes into the Oxford Dictionary or not depends solely on widespread acceptance and usage in written and spoken forms. Of course, the web has expanded everything substantially.

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester is a great read about the Oxford English Dict. and the evolution of the English language. It ain't gonna stop.

[lm]

Yes I am sue you are right, but

I thought that suing is the (US) American thing to do.

[walle]

I also love all the horrific language in all those amazingly entertaining mostly Brit crime flicks like... Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Layer Cake, Snatch, The Fight Club... or even The Snapper. That scene in Snapper of the family watching TV & the mum says, I wish you wouldn't say that, and the dadd gets all defensive about fuck or whatever he's been shouting at the TV show, and she says, no, I wish you wouldn't say eejut! I've loved that word ever since I saw the movie. eejut. wow!

There is a difference between a dialect (and local dialectal words) and an accent and how words are spelt, regardless of different dialects the words are spelt in the same way, no different in my own country with our own various dialects either; some dialects are close to impossible to understand and may sound horrible but the written language (spelling) is the same.

Now if you view that as poor English in the sense that its close to impossible to understand, sure, I can understand that, again; same thing in my own country, some dialects sounds horrible but that doesn’t change the way we spell our language; there’s always a difference between written form and speech.


I wonder where the Aussies and Kiwis are, heck; where’s the Indians? nope; not the Native Americans but the Indians.

[andyb]

Walle, has really defined my gripe with the written word.

There are an infinine quantity of vocals, dialects and pronunciations within a single language, but the written word is always the same. The problem being discussed here is that there will be in the future 2 different versions of the English language (English and American), with several sub-dialects (Canadian, NZ, OZ, Indian etc). If this continues then we will end up with several languages that are similar but noticably different (nordic languages are an example).

This will be very very bad indeed, and ideally needs to be addressed right now. I know people who have been to the US, and they have no idea of what a "Tomato" is. Seriously, no idea at all, they actually had to point at one for the Yank to understand. Imagine what the problems will be like for our future generations. Many words will have exactly the same problem whilst spoken due to the huge differences in dialect such as the "Tomato" problem. Imagine hown much worse it will be when more words are spelt differently across the world, they will also be pronounced differently due to this, if you then consider the differences in dialect people wont be able to communicate, and thus we will have 2 (or more) languages.

The answer is to abort the American language, and have just one (true) English. This wont help with the dialect issue at all, but at least things wont get any worse than they already are. The Yanks will of course say that American is a better language due to it being more phonetic, but that has huge implications for dialect and thus will increase the problems further at a faster rate. Imagine if we started to do the same thing. Amerekan peepol will get realee fed up with aur stranje speling wont thay, but the problem will have been cauzd by them in the first plase, thay after all set the ball rowling dew to ther inabilate to spell korectlee.

This kind of nightmarish situation could easily happen, and ideally should be reversed by the Amerekan people, but they wont, and we wont adopt their poor lazy spelling any time soon (I Hope). The whole idea of having a written language is to keep things constant, if that consistency has changed (like the Amerekan's have done) we may as well go back to the dark ages were everything was written down phonetically, and there were few standards.

2) I decided to accept US English as the spelling standard for SPCR early on because I kept getting emails from US readers (who represent 38-40%) correcting my UK or Canadian English. US English has become the defacto language of the web... and in large part, of the world. When two Asians from difference countries meet, the language they most commonly communicate in is English.

The Amerekan's are on a war OF Terror against the English language, yet they are the most insular country in the Western world, who are now unanimously disliked accross our planet because Amereka is seen as a bully that does what it wants regardless of anyone (often everyone) else. One way they would gain some respect from the rest of the world would be to fix their wrongdoings. Start using English instead of Amerekan, correct the quantity of liquid that makes up a Pint, Gallon etc, teach geography in school, and point out that the rest of the world pronounces "Tomato" in a different way so they dont have to point at one of those small red fruits to grasp the meaning of the word "Tomato".


Andy

[thejamppa]

My policy is: I don't care how its spelled, how many errors it has as long its not l33t and makes your point understandeable its fine for me. I have suffered dysgrammatism since birth so writing a perfectly good and grammatically correct text is almost same as asking Ray Charles or Helen Keller land a F-14 / F-18 on U.S.S. Enterprise... ( At least in my native tongue. English is much more riggid in grammatically so its a lot easier for me to use than Finnish )

But still, I personally like when peoples don't use weird dialect or slang words as non-native speaker the slang is like trying to understant whole new languange.

[datapappan]

Excellent, I knew we were all a bunch of grumpsters

Sorry to point out that my original post was not about bad language, or spelling (although posts without commas or periods, sprinkled with net slang, are illegible at best). Feel free to start a new thread on education and differences of English use. (I'm a native British, so I prefer walking on the pavement, unless of course I'm in the US, where I naturally use the sidewalk, lest I get my shoes horse shit smitten).

Back to my first intent, griping about the subject lines not lending themselves to the proper interest if badly, or shortly, expressed. This also goes for e-mails. As an engineer, I'm usually involved in several projects, and when communicating email-wise I would put something like this as the subject:
"Grand Theatre - Coordination suggestion for central shaft",
and not "Suggestion", "What do you think?", or even "(blank)".

I do this out of respect for the recipient, so they can sift through their myriads of messages and find, and refind, those they find pertinent. It's an analogy with the TV guide announcing "The David Letterman Show", in stead of "Talk Show" (host: D. Letterman).

You get my drift?

// datapappan

[MikeC]

You get my drift?

// datapappan

Totally, I'm with you 100%. Will point out this thread to the mods so they can edit subject lines, admonish, etc. Sorry to let the topic drift so far.