Subject: Choosing Good Subject Lines [Periodic Posting]
From: [email-masked] (Dean Roehrich)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.misc

NAME
     subject_lines - Choosing Good Subject Lines

DESCRIPTION
     The quality of your article's subject line	will dictate the
     quality of	the responses you receive.  Choose your	subject
     lines wisely.

GOOD SUBJECT LINES
     These subject lines indicate exactly what the article will
     be	about and are therefore	quality	subject	lines.

	     Putting Commas in a number
	     Can I print "~" (tilde) in	a format?
	     Assigning to an @array and	undefined value.
	     Printing/calling date/time	using unix gmtime
	     How to install individual modules like CGI-Lite?
	     getpwnam()	& Solaris's /etc/shadow	file

BAD SUBJECT LINES
     These subject lines say nothing about the content in the
     article.

	     Where do I	start???!! :-(
	     How hard would this job be?
	     Can YOU solve this	simple problem?!
	     Testing.
	     04]?
	     Simple split question

     These subject lines use negative-flash words.  See	the
     section on	NEGATIVE-FLASH WORDS.

	     Perl newbie with cgi script problem
	     Newbie needs help
	     Total Beginner Reqs. Help - Please.
	     Simple split question
	     Can YOU solve this	simple problem?!

NO SUBJECT LINE
     Many of the people	who give high-quality responses	will tend
     to	ignore posts which have	no subject line	at all.

NEGATIVE-FLASH WORDS
     The following words are guaranteed	to make	large numbers of
     people deliberately ignore	your article.  I call these
     negative-flash words.

     beginner  Many people ignore articles which have these words
	       in their	subject	lines.

     emergency News propagation	is too slow.  By the time anyone
	       gets to read it your condition has probably been
	       upgraded	to catastrophic.  By the time you get
	       their response you'll be	dead.  Don't waste other
	       people's	time with this stuff.

     expert    See guru.

     girl      The people who can give you the highest-quality
	       responses probably aren't in the	mood for this
	       sort of trolling.

     guru      The truth is that it's probably a non-guru
	       question.  Most gurus will ignore any article that
	       has this	word in	its subject line.

     help      It sounds like you've given up, or, more	likely,
	       haven't tried.  Omit this word and the rest of
	       your subject line will probably be a high-quality
	       attention-getter.

     newbie    See beginner.

     novice    See beginner.

     please    Don't beg.  It's	a turn-off.

     question  It's too	obvious, and probably answered in the
	       manpages	or the FAQ.

     sex       See girl.

     simple    This word should	tell you something--that you need
	       to look at the manpages a little	harder.	 Don't
	       waste other people's time with this stuff.

     stupid    It's just plain derogatory.  People don't like to
	       waste their time	on things that are stupid.  Hint:
	       don't tell them it's stupid, and	you will get a
	       higher-quality response.

     urgent    See emergency.

     woman     See girl.

NEGATIVE-FLASH EFFECTS
     The following effects, like the above list	of negative-flash
     words, are	guaranteed to make large numbers of people
     deliberately ignore your article.

     ALL CAPITALS
	       Do not use all capital letters in your subject
	       line.  Many people find the effect annoying or
	       equate it with newcomers.  In either case they
	       will ignore the posting.	 Hint: There's nothing
	       wrong with being	a newcomer--we all were	at one
	       time--just don't	advertise it.

     Multiple bangs!!!!!
	       Multiple	bangs (exclamation points) and multiple
	       question	marks come across as either over-zealous
	       or literarily ignorant, and both	effects	tend to
	       chase away the people who can give the highest-
	       quality responses.

BAD, BARELY
     This brings us to the next	category of subject lines:  Those
     which are bad but could be	good with only a slight
     adjustment.

	     HELP: Perl	5.002, SunOS 5.5, gcc 2.7.2, dynamic loading
	     HELP: Converting text to binary

GRINCH
     Dean Roehrich,  July 26, 1996.