[JoeJustice]

Hey guys, I saw Greg's thread here and thought it was really fantastic:

http://www.transformetrics.com/forum...ead.php?t=3759

The thing is, people kind of approach the internet and particularly message boards in a real cavalier way with poor grammar, undeveloped topic ideas and uninformative posts and titles. Whenever this happens, they won't get a whole lot of feedback. I know some people won't even bother reading a post if the grammar is bad because it's just difficult to read. Or if every other word is misspelled, people are going to think you're not intelligent. That might upset you, you might be thinking, "People shouldn't be worried about my spelling and grammar, I'm not trying out for Poet Laureate!" But thems just the facts, jack. As someone with dyslexia, I can tell you that people WILL judge you by the words you use and misuse. Control of the language is associate with intelligence, whether that's true correlation or just assumption I'm not even begin to get into!

So I'd like to open up a thread on how to get your topic noticed and commented on.

First of all, the subject line! Man oh man, one of my pet peeves is subjects line that make no sense whatsoever! A subject line that just says, "Please help" or "Is it true" or "Hey John" just isn't going to draw people's eyes. Your subject lines should be informative. The best thing to do is ask a complete question with your subject. "How do I improve my reps?" A little shorthand is helpful too, try a subject with a colon followed by a question. "Pull-Ups: Which one's the best for building the lats?" See, those kinds of topics are going to let people know exactly what you want to know and you'll get more people looking at the thread. The more people look at the thread, the more replies you're going to get!

Use the Post Icons at the bottom of the post block. Those smiles and thumbs-up, etc. will help give people a good idea of your mood when posting. If it's a rant use the angry face, if it's a question use the question, if you're just showing off use the sunglasses cool guy.

Use emoticon in your posts! Emoticons are the "smilies" you can insert . The written word does not express non-verbal communication (i.e. body language) and as much as 90% of communication is non-verbal. So use the emoticons to helps express this. Sarcasm and jokes, for example, do not come across well in written text. I only know this because I'm so awesome! <- See, joke. (But I am still awesome)

Use tags. I'm not as good about doing this as I should be. Try to put tags in the threads you start to help people search. A tag is a keyword. Take a look at the tag cloud here and you'll understand what they do: http://www.transformetrics.com/forum/tags.php. If you fill in the tags field with keywords then it makes searches easier and also the text in a tag cloud can help people find thing that they didn't even know they were looking for.

Think about the topic before you post it. A well developed idea will get more replies than a half-baked one.

Know where you're posting and try to stay on topic. The current make-up of the forum is as follows:
Ask John Peterson - General fitness focusing on but not limited to John Peterson's works.
Ask Greg Mangan - General fitness focusing on but not limited to Greg Mangan's works. Greg enjoy a wide range of discusssion.
Ask Larry Wick - Combat sports and self defense focusing on but not limited to Larry Wick's works.
Gordon Anderson on Current Events - News of the day.
Transformetrics Body Building Gallery - Progress pictures and testimonials
G.U.T.S. Power Training Forum - Training logs
Feedback and Support - Technical support issues
Coming soon will be the Transformetrics Video Blogs for posting videos. Right now the video blogs are split between John Peterson and BennyB.

Please add in your comments and feedback.

-Joe

[Big Bear]

Joe,

That was outstanding! Thank you! Where else will you find this information or concern. You, Greg and of course John have raised this forum to yet another notch. Kind of like a world record to someone that holds the record when there is no real competition,so they just keep notching it up!

peace,
jason

[JoeJustice]

Jason, you're being way to kind, brother. I appreciate it, but I'm just doin' my job.

-Joe

[Greg Newton]

Thanks Joe. That was very imformative. I owe the moderators over at the Hardgainer Roundtable for giving me this idea. If threads and posts were readable and clear, more people will sign on to read and take what is being discussed with an attitude of seriousness. After all, this is a sharing, learning and information forum.

Two tips I want to reiterate - do your post in a word processing document where you can check grammar and spelling, then cut and paste here. It helps a lot, especially for long posts.

Second, keep your posts in clumps of three to four sentences. It makes them more readable for the most people. Some of you are excellent writers with great expression and knowlege to share. I want others to see that.

And Jason, thank you for supporting us on this. John Peterson stands for quality. This forum has come a long way. Joe and I want it to become a sterling example of what a fitness forum can be.

[Johnny]

Thanks Joe for making sure that this forum is running smoothly and beneficially for everyone...
i think this thread should be marked "Sticky"

[JoeJustice]

empiref,

I'm going to move it to the Important Articles section after everyone has time to take a look at it and add to it.

-Joe

[JoeJustice]

Originally Posted by ddc

Everyone makes mistakes

Not me. Anywhere where reality and myself don't match, it's reality that's inaccurate.

-Joe