Soooooooo

[conuly]

there's this one poster at /r/whatsthatbook who will, upon occasion, respond to posts with lacking titles with the simple comment "Read the rules".

I honestly don't know why they do that. I just report these posts and call it a day unless I notice the same person has made several posts with titles like "Help me find this book!", in which case I tell them what they're doing wrong. I actually think this commenting habit is excessively brusque, and if I think that then it's almost got to be the case.

But I can't deny it's funny when they say it, and then the OP argues with them that they did read the rules and are now following them perfectly.

There aren't many rules in that sub. There's really no excuse.

Comments

[cimorene]

I can definitely understand their impulse to do that though. I remember when I was a community mod on LiveJournal struggling against the strong desire to just delete the rule breaker posts without even saying anything.

[conuly]

They're fighting against the tide - part of the reason that we have so many posts that violate the basic rule of "every post needs a title that describes the book you're looking for" is - well, actually, it's because people are remarkably stupid and don't think, but also because most posts are by people who have never been there before and won't return after they get their answer.

[cimorene]

Yeah, if the rules are at all avoidable in a community of that type where many users are casual or incidental, most people will avoid. In fact, you'd probably get a fair amount of misses even if they were posted at the top of the page like one of those fundraising banners on Wikipedia.