Could the forum administrator modify "New Topic" Notice

[Chen Samulsion]

So many posters here do not obey Advide on Posting, it's a pity and has consequences of reducing probability of getting a reply, wasting time of enthusiastic experts, annoying them by often repeated acts. Could the forum administrator modify the current "New Topic" Notice, and make it clear the essential nuts and bolts that posters should obey. Roberto Ferrer's Post Signature is a good start for this nuts and bolts. There must be another one who has similar signature, however I cannot remember.

Roberto Ferrer

You should:

1. Read the FAQ carefully.

2. "Say exactly what you typed and exactly what Stata typed (or did) in response. N.B. exactly!"

3. Describe your dataset. Use list to list data when you are doing so. Use input to type in your own dataset fragment that others can experiment with.

4. Use the advanced editing options to appropriately format quotes, data, code and Stata output. The advanced options can be toggled on/off using the A button in the top right corner of the text editor.

[Nick Cox]

I don't think I agree with this request in the sense that tinkering with this prompt seems unlikely to change much.

Looking at it again, I suspect that the sentence on searching the archives before the forum started (2014) really should be cut now. There are occasionally reasons to refer people to threads before then, but not frequently enough to mention there.

Otherwise, the main point of the prompt is to alert people to the FAQ Advice.

in abstraction, I have more sympathy with people who don't read the FAQ Advice than may be apparent. Who reads all the Terms and Conditions on a legal-looking document before you sign? But concretely, the reasons for a question being lousy do often hinge on ignoring points detailed in the FAQ Advice.

Further, people who ignore that advice repeatedly deserve what they usually get, basically that they get such a reputation that most active people ignore their posts.

There's a very fine balance between being friendly and becomng more ferocious, even in the pursuit of trying to avoid waste of time and frustration on all sides.

Comments on say Twitter/X or Reddit and in darker places reveal a long tail of people who say that they dislike or even hate Statalist because (in essence) we often comment very directly on mistakes or shortcomings in their posts. I think such people are usually wrong, or often more unpleasant than anything they complain about. but we're mostly better off without their participation. In any case the most vocal critics either hide behind cryptic identifiers or have no track record whatsoever of helping anyone anywhere. But, all that said, I am not in favour of making this part of the interface more aggressive.