Quote:Original post by jbadamsI also got the suggestion last time of highlighting one bad post as an example of how not to do it. While this would be both educational and potentially amusing I don't feel it's really in the spirit of encouraging beginners (even if they're really bad now they might get better with some prompting), and doesn't seem overly professional. As an alternative however, would people be interested in seeing short snippets giving tips on succesfully recruiting from some of our current and/or previous users?

I'm glad that you didn't focus attention on a bad post. IMHO there are too many responses to 'help wanted' posts that tell the the OP what they shouldn't do rather than what would make their project more appealing. So I think having snippets of advice would be great, but I don't know where you would put them so that people would actually read them. It's a bit like the FAQs: there's plenty of good info there, but hardly anyone seems to read them.

Raising the level of professionalism in 'help wanted' would be a good thing. Flame wars are obviously pointless and unproductive, and posts that are poorly thought through are ineffective, but I also seen a couple of moderators who have posted in the forum in the last few weeks have made back-handed comments while chiding earlier posters for a lack of professionalism (not you). Hypocrisy is not professional either. Maybe this isn't the right place to bring this up, so I'll stop here.

P.S. It's funny that this sill says 'Journal of Kazgoroth' [smile]

I wouldn't like to see any actual help wanted posts get singled out as a "how not to do it" example as it would most likely be discouraging to new developers, both those who get singled out and those who feel afraid of being picked on. If you were to do a "how not to do it" article, I would recommend making your own fake bad help wanted post to tear apart. That way you won't step on anyone's feelings plus you can make it as bad as you like.

A general series of articles on sensible recruiting would be good. I'm not sure how many people posting in Help Wanted will read them before posting, but at least the articles can be linked to in the template so those who follow the rules will see them.

I'm not a fan of tearing apart an actual HW post, but snippets of advice? Go for it. It might also be worth it to crosspost weekly in HW with this (I realize there's a how-to-post sticky already, but it's bloody long).

I do like the concept of the HW picks - very cool gig.