"stop words" - what words shouldn't be in a thread title

[Jesse]

The purpose of this thread is to capture key words and phrases which shouldn't be allowed in a thread title. Once we have a good list, we will try and produce a plugin which challenges users who try to use any of these words.

Note that I say "challenges", so I'm thinking a JavaScript alert or AJAX auto-updating text as someone types.

I'll start off the list:


newbie
noob
n00b
!!
hrm
hmm
@#$%^


Suggested alert:
Your thread title appears to contain words which do not add value. Please check that the thread title is a concise summary of the issue you are experiencing. Posts with titles such as "Help!!" are MUCH less likely to be read / solved.

[Cota]

nokia
sothink
samsung
free

Just some common title words spammers love so much. I would also suggest "please help", but that could get screwy when you say, "LoadVars not working, please help"...

[CyanBlue]

Don't forget the these words...
urgent
crap
umm
I also suggest that we somehow add minimum length for the topic so that the users cannot start a thead that says 'help' or 'sound' and so on...

[tg]

Dont make this site harder to use without a CLEAR and PRECISE explaination of what they are doing wrong....

i understand what you are attempting, but it could easily frustrate and confuse people.

case in point:

this thread:
http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?t=120805

has the word 'newbie' in the title... but it is still a very clear and precise explaination of what he wants: the title 'Please help a newbie customize an image gallery'.

nothing wrong with that. but 'newbie' will trigger an error. so he rewrites it, but doesnt realize that newbie is not allowed and leaves it in, he gets teh error again, so he rewrites and maybe puts in a different banned words... at this point, he may just say **** it, they dont want to help, or they are making it too hard to get help.

i can think of a bunch of possible titles using many of the phrases stated above....
'need help getting flash to show in my nokia 5000', etc etc.

so if you are going to do this, put up your message with either all teh banned words in it, or a link to all the banned words or something. but be CLEAR and SPECIFIC.

personally i think the whole thing is a bad idea.
dont make getting help harder. we all have the choice and opportunity not to help anyone whose title we dont like.

hell. i dont help anyone who posts their code as a zip file. i dont know them or what is in their file.... so i dont help. its a personal choice on my part, but i dont think we should ban zip files....

im rambling now.
cheers.

[Cota]

Good point..something I personally never considered..Though I believe the words I posted should still be banned, cause they are spammer relevant....Cant imagine a user posting a legit thread with nokia or samsung in the title..

[Ruben]

On the subject of checking thread-titles before they are posted; what do you guys think about the idea of checking for complete or partial matches of titles in past threads?
For example, if I were to post a thread called "Does Cota love dasies?", which would also be the title of a thread posted by someone else, then perhaps I could find my answer in that thread, instead of going through the trouble of creating a new thread..

Good or bad idea..?

:) - Ruben


PS. Sorry for bending the subject Jesse, tell me and I will start a new thread for this somewhere..

[CyanBlue]

Here is an idea... Let's trick the users in a way that all the words they put in the title area will be actually forwarding to the search page??? I am sure that will solve lots of problem here... :D

Yeah... I have not considered what tg mentioned and I do agree with what he said...

Here is what I suggest... If there is a public mod available for vB that will limit the posting with the simplest combination of 'bad' words, I'd say we add that as long as the user gets feedback on what word triggers such action...
If this is something Jesse or Strok have to custom build, I don't think it is really worth it... I'd say spend that time for doing something more useful, whatever that means... ;)

[Flash Gordon]

it was just an idea.... :o

and not a good one

[tg]

Good point..something I personally never considered..Though I believe the words I posted should still be banned, cause they are spammer relevant....Cant imagine a user posting a legit thread with nokia or samsung in the title..
unless we start a hand held or flash lite forum like cb requested.:D

[Cota]

@tg - yet another good point.....

@Ruben - not daisies..I prefer tulips!

[pixelwit]

Here is an idea... Let's trick the users in a way that all the words they put in the title area will be actually forwarding to the search page???

I LIKE that idea.

If it was made optional and actually returned relevant results it might prove handy and eventually get people to consider searching before writing a ~new~ question.

Maybe if you just did a search for exact Title matches then presented them with a dialog stating "A thread with that title has already been posted. Would you like to view that thread before posting a new one?"

You're 'outside the box' with that one CyanBlue. Way to go.

-PiXELWiT
http://www.pixelwit.com

[tg]

sorry my last post got off topic just slightly....

the idea behind this thread is a great idea.... goes along the thoughts behind our thread we had a year or so ago about what to do to get your questions answered....

but my concern is we will make the forums more difficult to use.

its really the only point i have. i have made it so i will just sit back and watch the discussion now.... no more side trips i promise.

[Jesse]

@tg: I don't think my idea will stop users asking for help. I'm favouring more and more an area under the initial Title field which, based on AJAX queries against the user's specified title, just says "This is a good thread title" or "This is a bad thread title. Click here to find out why". It could even be color coded.

Also, I think AJAX might let us do an "as they type, search for currently existing threads" kinda thing. Id' be really surprised if that doesn't exist already, and if it doesn't, it should...

Having said all that, I don't know how to work with AJAX, but you're never too old to learn. I do it in Flash but... the integration of the HTML form would probably be harder than learning AJAX.

[Cota]

MichaelxxOA is an AJAX guy....I'd suggest hitting him up for info.

[jsebrech]

As it happens I just wrote something comparable to google suggest for work, so if anyone wants some pointers on AJAX code, you can always hit me up as well.

The thing that will be tricky is bandwidth use (for modem users) and server load (performing searches). You have to limit the number of requests. If you only do it in the onblur handler of the title entry field then you would only get one request, but even that might prove stressing on the server, since even a single search takes up a lot of resources.

[Cota]

rain on the parade man! But I dont think any of us considered server load..

[CyanBlue]

Do you think AJAX is really necessary??? It's good to see the feedback right away, but I don't think it is really necessary...
How about intercepting the data when the user clicks on the 'Submit New Thread' button and evaluate the title string and forward the user to the Yay or Nay screen depending on that value??? I think that's whole lot easier that way and maybe it is easier to implement the same thing when we upgrade the vB next time as well...

[newblack]

i really REALLY think it's a horrible idea. well, a horrible implementation of a decent idea. perhaps a 'your thread title appears to be relatively non-descript' popup? no one will call you a a censor...

[Cota]

I think thats the basic idea that Jesse was trying to get across, more of a popup situation.

[Jesse]

No no, I started thinking popup then switched to "discouraging auto-notice which doesn't require any clicks or anything to make it go away" mode. I figure the sort of person who is going to take notice of a popup and not just dismiss it and post anyway is also going to read a little sentence which changes when they type... Which is why I was shooting for AJAX....

[invader]

it might be nice if you could block the word "help" when it's in all-caps

that one is near the top of my list of keywords in titles that bug me.

[jjbilly]

I like the sound of the helpful advice appearing alongside your text - like the nice Google advice on password strength?

How many banned words are there likely to be? tens, hundreds, thousands? Could it all be client-side?

[jsebrech]

Setting up a suggestion page that queries a remote database (like google suggest does) is not that server-heavy if you design your remote database well. So I personally don't really see a need for the whole list of words to be client-side.

[Soledad]

but that's a problem that not everyone reads posts with the rules, so they just don't know about this!

[CyanBlue]

but that's a problem that not everyone reads posts with the rules, so they just don't know about this!
I know lots of people do that, but they are doing that either because they don't care about the rules, or because they don't know about the rules... We surely cannot do anything about the former case, but we can actually educate the others... ;)