The Anatomy of a Good Forum Post

I think it would be good for the community to have a discussion about what makes a good forum post. Here are some things that I think make a good forum post, an example, and a few things I think make bad forum posts. This is all just my opinion.

What Makes a Good Forum Post

A Descriptive Title

The title of your post should accurately but tersely describe the content of your post. It should be more specific than just a single word. It should not be misleading, ambiguous, or click-baity.

Have a Purpose

A good forum post is one that shares something meaningful with the community, or asks the community for help with something (and hopefully benefits the community by having the question and answer publicly shared). A great post might let the community about a new and unique craft you've been working hard on, or ask a question you are stumped on after doing your own research (including searching the forums), or share some commentary on recent events in space exploration.

Be Articulate

Try to clearly articulate your question, or what you are trying to share with the community. If it's hard to tell what you are asking, and you don't give people enough information to try to answer, you're not going to get a good result, and the community won't get any benefit.

Format Your Links (and Other Stuff)

Links are the most important, if you're going to include a URL, make it a link using the format [plain text](url here) (square brackets around the plain text followed by parentheses around the url). See the pinned Post Formatting Guide for more details.

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

If it is relevant to your post, consider including a screenshot. If your post is a question, include a screenshot of what's wrong, especially if it's vizzy. If it's a teaser include a screenshot of the craft. For in game screenshots, make an unlisted post with the image, copy the url of the image and then use the format ![](url of your image) in the post (minimum 100 reputation score required).

Correct Tagging

This one's pretty straightforward, pick the right category when you create a new post. Try not to abuse the Announcement category with things that aren't actually announcing something new (I admit I've made the mistake of defaulting to this category in the past).

Note: Avoid the Suggestion category for the most part. If you want to make a suggestion for the game, post it in the Development > Suggestions section (after searching for previous submission). There are probably some exceptions.

An Example

Here is an example of a good forum post. It doesn't tick all the boxes, but it has a clear purpose, it has a descriptive title, and it has relatively clear and understandable content.

Things to Avoid

1. One word titles
2. Use of all caps, there is no need to shout
3. Use of excessive punctuation!!1!
4. Posting just because you are bored
5. Asking meaningless or rhetorical "questions"
6. Posts about website point milestones or goals*
7. Rickrolling (I'm looking at you @AeromanYett 🤣)

* These posts are tantamount to begging for upvotes, and fixating on completely etherial and largely meaningless website points is just silly.

Closing

As I said this is all just my humble opinion. I don't make the rules and I wouldn't want to make these suggestions into "rules" even if I did. However I do want this forum the be full of helpful and interesting content for the community. I hope that we can all continue to make that the case.