( you should try saying my name three times )
that (guidelines pinned somewhere that’s easy to ignore) has never worked. people don’t change. it’s a struggle against reality. we all know the monty python joke.
those with respect and attention to detail will match many of those points intuitively. those with a lack of respect or a cognitive deficit that makes them unable to see patterns will not pay attention to guidance.
the best one can aim for is a terse template text, for new threads/posts, because that stands in the way of the random person trying to dump their problem and get solutions magically.
a template is rude, “in your face”. it’s supposed to be. you don’t look for it, it finds you. like a bouncer in front of a club.
a template will fit at most half the situations. the other half consists of everything that doesn’t fit Stack Overflow or a bug tracker. users should be explicitly encouraged to ignore it, delete all that text, and write what they want to write. it’s a reminder, not a commandment from the heavens.
so… I wonder how that could be done. I don’t know if the forum software supports it. I’ve seen people start their threads with an apparent version of the github issue template, which is good, but those people went to the trouble on their own.