[tallin]

First of all welcome to D-A-L

If you are Asking for Technical Help:

• Please give us as much information as possible
• Some details of your system, brand name, model, desktop or laptop, CPU, RAM, age of the system.
• Which OS have you installed?
• What were you doing when the problem occurred

Briefly explain what is not working for you and what you were doing when the issue occurred. Have you made any recent changes to your machine? Tell us any error messages displayed.

In the topic description guide us to your problem, don't say "Help I am desperate" which tells us nothing. Give us an example 'Software Problem' for example. Also tell us what you have done to try and fix your problem.

Try and be patient, problems often take some time to research and if you are assisted, please thank the volunteer posting back if your problem has been solved telling us how it was solved....we are all learning too.

Following the above will help us to help you more quickly.

[Dan Penny]

Maybe we should get all of these type posts in a more central location. Or at least more visible/obvious. ie;
(Good post by the way tallin.)

http://www.d-a-l.com/help/general-ha...ng-system.html

(Looking for opinions/suggestions........)

[tallin]

I would/have suggest/ed a Contributors Forum to Administration so we can all post our tips where they will be in the one spot and not lost as others post in the general forums.

I particularly do not wish to carry the threads in my signature that I do. However I use them so often they are easy access so that is why they are there. I would prefer to signaturise (new word!) them here at D-A-L not have them showing from another forum.

Thanks Dan for the compliment, the post was only a draft really to see if there was any reaction to it. I seem to spend my time asking OP's for their system details, so thought posting a suggestion may help and ultimately perhaps be pinned somewhere or the Contributors Forum may be born.

More suggestions may evolve.

Best regards,

[rokytnji]

Being one of the few full time linux users on this forum. I really wish that OPs would follow Tallins guidelines when starting a Linux thread. In Windows or Mac there are only a, how can I put it, a select selection of Operating systems to trouble shoot.

In Linux there are hundreds of different Operating systems for all kinds of different harware requirements. So just saying "it don't work" and leave it at that discourages me from answering. I try to give back to the community because the community has helped me. But "it don't work" just brings a big sigh out of me.

I am a active member on numerous linux forums. Moderator at one. Run a half dozen or so different operating systems on varying hardware. And usually test new operating systems for developer friends when they are released.

I try to keep my hand in here, but it is getting harder and harder to do.
Happy Trails, Rok

[townsbg]

I have a list of common questions in my signature and I post that when need be. I've gotten used to the fact that most of the time the initial post doesn't contain enough information because in my experience most of the time it doesn't. What I find discouraging is when others go a second or even a third post without answering our necessary questions or respond to our suggestions without giving any detail both of which ties our hands . We may be "computer wizards" but we aren't mind readers. It's unfortunate that this happens because that means that we might not be able to help them in our first post which therefore just delays the trouble shooting process.

Perhaps this should be pinned and even distributed across all of the help forums but that doesn't mean that members will read it before they post. In fact they probably won't. I've come across a forum where the new member had to read a couple of threads (which they where subsequently taken to after registration) before being allowed to post. Could we do the same thing to bring this point across a head of time?

I would like to point out that I would rather have too much info than not enough.