Since I have a few of the top Thread Title submissions for this week’s Forumbuildr, I obviously know everything there is to know about making good submissions, and therefore shall deign to instruct you on how to be better.

Or, y’know, I could have just gone through four-hundred-and-****ing-fifty submissions and be ranting about stupid mistakes I see over and over again that turn ideas I’d like to upvote into stuff I end up downvoting. Take your pick.


Tip #1: Spellcheck, goddamnit. I realize that actual typing on the Internet is filled with misspellings, grammar errors, and mistypes. But throwing those into the description of a forum you’re submitting just makes it look like you don’t know what you’re talking about. And with Crotch Zombie using the UNINTELLIGENCER on submissions, intentional misspellings are going to be redundant.

Tip #2: You can Preview your submission. Despite the rumors, it does not actually send electric shocks through your keyboard. You can have the most brilliant idea ever, but if the word_type entries and modifiers are mistyped, no one is going to vote for it. Previewing your submission not only allows you to double-check your spelling and grammar, it also allows you to see whether your word_type results work the way you intend them to.

Tip #3: Keep Madlib entries consistent with the rest of the submission. If your ‘typical post’ is in all caps, make sure the word_type entry has ::up after it so that it’ll be in all caps, too. If your ‘thread title’ has every word capitalized, add ::cap after the word_type so every word in it will be capitalized as well. Otherwise, it looks broken and wrong. Also: every time you preview, the word_type entries will be re-generated. You may want to preview a few times in a row just to make sure that the random words that come up match the grammar of the sentence they’re in.

Tip #4: Be random, but not too random. Having a couple of word_types in a submission keeps the item fresh. Having a dozen or two word_types in a submission creates problems. Since the initial impression is based on the text you typed (as opposed to the smaller example which gives the output), having a lot of word_types will make it harder for the voter to understand what the hell you’re trying to say. In addition, having a lot of your message come out random often pushes you past ‘amusingly inappropriate’ and into ‘incoherent gibberish’.

Tip #5: @# gives you a number from 1-10; @random_number gives you a number from 0-9. If you don’t want 10 to show up as a possibility, use the latter; if you don’t want 0 to show up as a possibility, use the former. MC Banhammer edit: To generate a single-digit random number in a range, use this format: @#::2-4 [will generate 2, 3, or 4]

Tip #6: Keep the Forum in mind. Yeah, sure, “SUCK MY NECROTIC male reproductive organ” is a good general Angry Reply, and fits in any forum. And will probably be posted repeatedly in response to this rant. But generic responses don’t generally get a lot of positive votes, especially when compared to responses tailored to the forum you’re submitting to. And in this case, it wouldn’t even take much work to modify it to fit- if you were making a reply for BoobTube, just change it to “I am attaching a link to a video I have uploaded in which I tell you to suck my necrotic male reproductive organ. Please watch it.”

Tip #7: Don’t submit something that’s already covered by an existing forum. We already have forums about YouTube, and about conspiracy theories, and about MMORPGs, and about Republicans, and about Furries. Original, untouched subjects will always get more attention than yet another bashing of something that’s already in the game.

Thank you for your time. Please add in your own tips on what makes a submission ‘good’, or what simple mistakes immediately mark it as ‘bad’. Or just flame me, I don’t care.
Escher edited this message on 03/10/2008 2:17PM