Re: Proper bangin', title formattin'

[Old_Gray_Bear]

Yeah, I'm "old-fashioned" too, and it is mildly annoying to see exclamation points in titles. This is a web-forum, folks, and the only benefit you get from typing a Bang is the exercise of your left pinkie finger.

I typically relegate bang-titles to the second tier of nodes; questions that I'll look at later in the day, if I have a couple of minutes free. I only have a limited time in the morning before things start to heat up. After the initial fun and games of the World Coming Online, I can usually grab a couple of minutes between Crises to spend in the Monastery. (It's not just SoPWers who think that Being Excited! and Talking In Caps!! and Punctuation!!!! makes their problem d'heur get sorted faster.)

I have noticed that a while a 'bang-title' is often about a relatively trivial problem (the kind of question that RTFM is often a proper if not quite polite response), the thread of replies often has nuggets of pure platinum. Maybe folks get annoyed enough (even if only subconsciously), and decide to explain chapter and verse with 8x10 glossy photographs, and tell the Querant more than they ever wanted to know about things. I often discover another of one Perl's "Magic Tricks of the Trade" in the ensuing discussion.

I have found over the aeons that listening in on the conversations of the Wizards here is always instructive.

"When you find there is nothing new to learn, you will find that you are Dead." (Unknown, perhaps Mayland Long.)