Better posting tips

[AussieNeil]

It isn't easy posting for the first time, particularly if this on-line forum world is new to you. Then you wait patiently, wondering what others will think of your submission. Will anyone respond? Can they help?

So here are some tips to help those that haven't yet taken this step.

1a) Select 'What's your question?' at the top of the HealthUnlocked home page: healthunlocked.com

If you are a member of more than one HU community, select the one you wish to post in.

or

1b) Select the blue "Write" box on our community home page: healthunlocked.com/cllsupport

2) Choose a title that while not too long, summarises the purpose of your post. A meaningful title will greatly increase the number of replies you'll receive in our busy forum.

3) In your first sentences, try to provide some context for your post. Then members can quickly decide if they can help you, or are interested in reading your referenced article.

4) Take time to make your post easily readable; break it into paragraphs as appropriate, use punctuation and spaces between your sentences, start them with capitals and so on. While it might be easy on a tablet to use all capitals, it makes your post harder to read and is considered to be shouting on Internet forums.

5) Note that there is a 7,000 character limit on posts. You'll be warned in the unlikely event that your your post exceeds that length. Use backspace '<-' to reduce the size of your post under the limit.

When you've completed drafting your submission, take the time to read it through, putting yourself in the place of someone that knows nothing about you and your concerns. Have you provided enough background? What's your CLL status? Say if you are newly diagnosed, approaching or in treatment, had treatment previously and so on. Letting us know what country you are from can help respondents provide you with a more helpful reply. Health systems vary and treatment/trial options vary greatly around the world. Maintaining your bio helps greatly, per this post: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo... It saves you from repeatedly providing background to where you are in your CLL journey. This link enables you to edit your profile and bio: healthunlocked.com/profile/...

Submitting your post - the finishing touches

1) What topic does your submission fall into? (It's not essential if you can't decide, but by selecting 'Add topic' in blue below your post and selecting an appropriate topic from the list provided, you'll help others more easily find your post.)

2) Add a photo or perhaps a scan of your test results. If you have more than one page of results, reply to your post to include the additional pages

3) If your question is on a sensitive topic or you are disclosing personal information, in answer to the 'Share:' option, select 'Community only'. Otherwise your post can be found via Internet searches. See this post for more information: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

4) If you want to alert specific members about your post, use the @ notification feature: support.healthunlocked.com/...

5) Consider using the Bold, Italic, Underline font formatting options on the toolbar to highlight key points. Use emoticons sparingly. Below, there's a section covering keyboard formatting and emoticon shortcuts

Select Post. The site will prompt you for anything you've forgotten.

The above and more is covered in the Help pages here: support.healthunlocked.com/...

You can always edit anything you want, the title, the text, an accompanying photo, etc. Just select the 'More v'...'Edit' under your post and make what changes you require. (You can likewise edit any of your replies by selecting 'More v'...'Edit' under your reply.)

Be patient waiting for a reply. While some members may check a few times through the day, most won't know about your post until they get their daily or weekly notification email. If you keep a HealthUnlocked browser tab open, when you have a reply, you should see a number appear in a red circle next to the bell on the menu. You may need to refresh the page on some devices. You should also receive an email notification if you have that enabled in your account settings: healthunlocked.com/settings

Keyboard shortcuts

As mentioned earlier, there are a few things you can do to make your submission stand out. This site supports basic formatting of bold, italics and underline, alone or in various combinations via the toolbar under the text entry box or via the following keyboard shortcuts.

Font control

[ b ]Bold[ /b ] Bold

[ i ]Italics[ /i ] Italics

[ u ]Underline[ /u ] Underline

[ b ][ i ][ u ]Everything[ /u ][ /i ][ /b ] Everything

You just leave out the spaces between the b, i or u (which enables the font change) or the /b, /i or /u, which resets the font property back to what it was prior to being enabled.

You can use these in any combination and/or you can also use the Ctrl+(b,i,u) keys (or Cmd not Ctrl on a Mac) to toggle bold, italics and underline of text as you write it, or highlight selected text and use whatever Ctrl+ command to change the text font as you wish. (The control/command key option doesn't work in Private Messages.)

This site also supports unicode graphics plus a basic set of keyboard entered emoticons:

Icon, Text equivalent, Meaning

: ) Smiley or happy face

: D Laughing, big grin, laugh with glasses

: ( Frown, sad

: ' ( Crying

: o Surprise, shock

; ) Wink, smirk

: P Tongue sticking out, cheeky/playful, blowing a raspberry

: - / Skeptical, annoyed, undecided, uneasy, hesitant

: x Angry

8 - ) For when it's nice and sunny

You just leave out the space between the characters for the emoticon character representation to be converted into the emoticon. (If you copy the above into an editing program like Notepad, you'll see what I mean.)

Replies to posts now enable you to add photographs, format text, add emoticons and use the @ notification feature.

Do you have tips you'd like to share? Your feedback is welcome!

Neil

Photo: Autumn Dawn

Last updated 24th July 2022 to reflect site enhancements

[gemit2000]

Neil, Thanks

… a few follow ups:

What is the protocol if you want to reply to a person who is replying to the poster/questioner, especially if your comment does not directly concern the poster's issue. Not wanting to "hijack" the post and shift the topic, I've sometimes written a private message to the person but then wind up questioning myself thinking that perhaps I should have communicated on the post itself since the information I get back could be valuable to others.

And if you can go over changing fonts. Let's say I want to make this sentence bold. Still not quite sure how I do that. After the sentence would I type in 'Bold[ /b ] Bold' or part of that or perhaps I'd type it in before the sentence I want bold? And would I want that one sentence to be highlighted?

Let me just ask if you could please specify the exact keystrokes one would make?

This also reminds me… in case your answer makes me realize my question was on the dumb side could you tell me if there is a "duh-faced" emoticon available. I find I could use something along those lines quite often especially when I attempt to work with computers (good example - I was stumped for a while with your instructions above when all my clicking on the letter v was not getting the desired results; then it dawned on me I was to click on the arrow for a drop-down menu, leaving me awash in the feeling of 'duh').

Gene

[gemit2000 in reply to gemit2000]

As I look over my reply to you, it seems that I got the answer to my bold question on font control

[AussieNeil Administrator in reply to gemit2000]

Gene, thanks for your reply - it made me realise that I haven't explained how to enable and disable font changes, so I've updated my post above. Plus I've found an error in my emoticon definitions, now corrected.

I agree, we do need a 'duh' emoticon; I could have used one just then.

With regard to your astute question regarding the protocol about replying to a replier, it's one of those situations where you need hindsight. I agree with you that where your second discussion is likely to be of wider interest, it is generally best to reply directly, rather than via PM, so that later readers can benefit from your reply to the reply. Where it becomes embarrassing is when a second somewhat off topic thread becomes dominant within the post, hijacking the original intent of the post. Yes I've been guilty of that too on many occasions. I'd suggest that as soon as the non parent post replies start building, close it off with a final reply saying that you are opening a new post and include a link to it. In your new post, you might like to mention the earlier post, even including a link to it if the topics are closely related, so readers can check that post too.

Thanks for your good questions,

Neil

[AussieNeil Administrator]

Would posters PLEASE take more time when choosing a post title to make your post work better for you and our community. Lately I find that more and more of my admin time is being taken up modifying post titles so the posts are more likely to be read and helpful responses both provided and the post more easily found by our membership of over 4,000 in the future. Perhaps the easiest way to think about this is:

1) What post titles would encourage you to take the time to read a post if you were looking for specific information?

2) Long post titles are supported - use the opportunity to clearly state what you are seeking in your post, so that

2a) others that have shared your experience will take an interest and proved a helpful reply

2b) Those with the same question (but new members or too shy to ask), can quickly search out your post and benefit from our community wisdom!

Here's how to search among our 4,500 posts:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Thank you!

Neil

[AussieNeil Administrator]

A reminder, given mistakes (especially with predictive text) are easy to make; You can always edit anything you want, the title, the text, an accompanying photo, etc. Just press/click on the 'v' to the right of '+Follow post' under your post and make what changes you require. (You can likewise edit any of your replies by clicking on the 'v' to the right of the Like (n) under your reply.)

Neil

[AussieNeil Administrator]

A reminder to those posting to: "Choose a title that while not too long, summarises your question. A meaningful title will greatly increase the number of replies you'll receive in our busy forum."

Equally if not more important, a meaningful title greatly increases the likelihood of your post turning up in 'Related Posts" or being easily found in searches and thereby helping many, many others. It's often well worth looking in the "Related Posts" section after you post while you are awaiting replies.

Don't forget to provide some basic history of your CLL journey, including which country you live in, in your profile. healthunlocked.com/profile/...

Anyone reading your post can then easily click on your avatar image for background information so that their reply is more helpful.

There are plenty more tips on how to get more out of our support forum here:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo....

Neil

[AussieNeil Administrator in reply to AussieNeil]

I've just updated this post and would again ask members to take these basic steps to increase the likelihood of their post being read and responded to. We average 10 to 15 posts daily. Make your post stand out!

- Choose a title that while not too long, summarises the purpose of your post. A meaningful title will greatly increase the number of replies you'll receive in our busy forum.

- In your first sentences, try to provide some context for your post. Then members can quickly decide if they can help you, or are interested in reading your referenced article.

Per item 19 of our community guidelines, cllsupport.org.uk/informati...

19. If you post a link, please at least explain briefly what people can expect to find if they follow the link. Links without such an introduction/explanation may be deleted

Providing informative titles and including context for a link is becoming increasingly important for another reason - spam. Spammers go for generic titles with just sufficient information to entice you to click their link. That way they can repost in lots of communities before they are banned - with just links a prime indicator that the post is spam. URL shortened links (Bitly, Tinyurl) , ShrinkMe), are another classic indicator, which is why I ask that these not be used unless HU can't handle the full link.

Thanks,

Neil

[PaulaS Volunteer in reply to AussieNeil]

Thanks for this timely reminder, Neil. We are getting so many new posts these days, that I find it impossible to keep up with them all.

I'm much more likely to read a post that has a clear title and meaningful first line - things that help me see quickly whether the post is relevant to me and therefore worth reading. I'm probably missing some interesting stuff this way, but there aren't enough hours in the day to check out everything.

Paula

[AussieNeil Administrator]

I've updated this post to note that we now have the option to format our text and notify members via the toolbar below the text entry box in both posts and replies. Currently, you can only add emoticons via the reply toolbar.

Neil

Format your text with bold, italic and underline options or add a photo via the toolbar