Ravenstar wrote:why do you guys keep changing my titles in the subject line when I post?
Hi Ravenstar. Thank you for asking this question. There are probably other members wondering the same thing.
I have changed the titles in the subject lines of your posts to make them better match the
wording in the posts. For instance, the important part of your OP in this particular thread consists of inquiries as to why you're no longer getting email notifications, and why your post titles mysteriously change. Yet, you titled it, "I don't know where to go for this question." Those words don't reflect what the post is really about, so I changed the title to "Regarding My Email Notifications, and Changing Post Titles," which does.
One reason it's important for titles to match the content is so the post comes up more logically in search engines (Google, Dogpile, etc.). And one reason this is good is it serves as a courtesy to people using the search engines to find information about a topic (there are a host of other reasons, but I'll leave it at that for now). On a more practical, user-end level it is a courtesy for the members and guests of this board, so that they will instantly know what a post is about and not have to waste their time clicking and reading the whole post, only to find it was about something they weren't interested in. Don't you hate when that happens? I do. lol
So from both an SEO (search engine optimization) point of view, and from a user-end point of view, matching the title and text is just a good practice to maintain if someone is going to participate in an online community like this. In fact, the owner of this board, Starwitch, posted a rule about this in
the board rules. Most members are pretty conscientious and automatically follow it, but it does get overlooked (or ignored) by a few:
8. Try to be as descriptive as possible when writing a subject line for a new thread. "Help please..." is not descriptive. Your subject line may be changed by a moderator if it's lame.
Maybe you didn't see it, or didn't understand its meaning when you did see it. I have had to reword the title of pretty much every post you've made on this message board since you joined. So, in the future, if you could please be sure to make your titles match the important parts of the content of your posts, I would really appreciate it. Following the board rules like this would make less housekeeping for mods to do on top of all the other stuff we regularly attend to here as well. Thanks.
And thanks again for your question. I hope this explanation clears things up a bit for you, and for other folks, about why that rule exists.
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