I run a developer community and people not posting code correctly along with not describing their issue thorough enough is driving me and my moderators up the wall. So I thought I could create an intro video that explains how to post code correctly and what you should include in your post to receive a response/help that is MANDATORY to watch (or a thread is mandatory to read) before you can post.
Does anyone have any ideas on how this could work?
Thank you!
We currently have an outline of what to do as a banner on our forum:
I am thinking I can maybe make that call to action better? But I still think we will run into issues.
lol I feel your pain.
The SitePoint forum is a web dev forum
We get a good number of “my code is broke, please help” posts that provide no further information. No code snippets, No link to the broken page. No CodePen example etc.
Though sometimes we’ll get a screen capture image.
It often takes a few posts into the topic just to eek out enough information to be able to address the problem. Aarrgghh!!
That aside, by far the more common problem is with members not formatting there code correctly so that it makes it to “cooked”. True, one can “Reply - Quote” to see HTML tags, but it can’t be expected that anyone will take the trouble to do so.
To help lesson the occurrence of these problems we put together a Pinned “help” page.
I don’t know how much it actually helps, but it does give something that members can be pointed to.
YESSS!!! People get mad that their questions don’t get answered, responded to or solved asap LOL 
We get screen shot all the time. It’s terrible…
Thanks for that! I am thinking I will 1. edit the banner to call out forum posting etiquette and 2. have a pinned global thread similar to yours. (which is outstanding).
Thanks for the help and resources!
[quote=“AlexBCodecademy, post:1, topic:38468”]MANDATORY to watch (or a thread is mandatory to read) before you can post.[/quote]This is exactly what I have wanted for a long time on my existing system and especially when we migrate to DC.
Regarding implementation, what about reading a specific thread issues a badge and requiring that badge to post?
That’s a great idea for a workaround! I will have to figure out the SQL…
That page is also linked near the top of our FAQs, along with the Discourse “cheat sheet”.
