How to write a constructive post:

You are passionate about something, or perhaps you perceive an imbalance or injustice in the game, and rightfully so you post your opinion about it on the forums.

All well and good, except so many opinions immediately scream: "Please flame me to hell ASAP."
What could I possibly mean by this?

The Title:
It is important that it be attention getting and relevant to the subject at hand, but so many fail to understand that posting an angry title will only elicit an angry response.
A few colorful examples:

"Attention Dickheads"
Why ANEt is screwing us in the azz!"
"U all suxxor"
etc.

What you are really stating with a title like this is;
"I'm angry and I - triple dog dare - you to argue with me!"

Well then!
I am subject to the occasional surly mood (particularly on Mondays!) and am always happy to oblige!
This usually yields the following responses:

"How DARE you disagree with my "opinion."
"ffsst! fssst! meowwrrr!" (insert cuss words here)
"Oh yeah? well you're MORE stupid!"
...Yes, yes, and my cat can devour your chihuahua...

Give your post a title that catches the attention and imagination:

"GW Economy: the road to hell?"
"How to worship me properly"
"Denied our phat lewts: ANet strikes again!"

Body:

The meat and potatoes of the article. This is your chance to really shine and impress us with your debatorial acumen! Give enticing and convincing reasons WHY you feel the way you do; screenshots are good too.

However, this is also where you can piss off the majority of the forums by using "733Tspeak," writing an entire paragraph without punctuation or spacing, (bleeding eyes anyone?) or avoid spell checking altogether.

As force of habit, always reread your posts before publishing:
To see if what I am trying to convey is what I actually wrote.
To see how badly I mangled the words.

Why?
Because clever, well written posts are taken more seriously than those which are not. (By intelligent people)

Tone:

We can't see you or really hear you, so unless you are really well known already on the forums, the "way" or style that you write speaks as loudly as the words you write. Consider the following:

I F*K'n HATE dem bishes dat PWN u ne timez u not rdy!

versus

Not being prepared to do battle usually spells my doom.

Both state essentially the same thing. But the tone is different. Tone also conveys education, erudition, and style - or more often the complete absence of such.

Rebuttal:

If you state an opinion, someone will always disagree with it. As a matter of fact, there are those who will ALWAYS disagree with you because they are simply contrary people. (we all know at least one)

Don't take it personally - unless of course they address it personally! Try to remain civil, keep your blood pressure down, and attempt to see it from their point of view. Ask them for reasons or details - why do they disagree?

I recently authored a post on how I thought a good way to rid GW of it's negative players would be to charge a monthly fee...I KNEW I was going to get burned for that, but I wanted to broach the subject to see if anyone had ideas how to combat this common problem, and behold! Several did!

Last but not least, don't be afraid to admit when you are wrong or if someone has a better idea.
I never think any less of anyone for airing an opinion if they do so in a mature fashion and often, people I typically disagree with will post something brilliant.

Thats what the internet was originally intended for: the free exchange of ideas and information. These forums are the most direct way to do just that!

May your skills prevail,

Talesin

I disagree. Just joking. Good post, though I doubt the audience you are trying to reach will get pass the second sentence before hitting reply. (I did read the whole post btw.)

i didnt read it maybe sometime i will

Excellent idea. I usally disagree with you but this time you are right. (HeHe agreeing again)

Now as for a suggestion to the forums: Please add a spell check function on the posts that ingores any word in all caps or with symboles in it. My spelling isn't that great even though my vocabulary is excellent and I usally have to dumb down my posts and conversations. Having dyslexia dosn't help me very much so this would be a quite nice fix.

Excellent post. Thoughtful and elegantly stated. Raises the old discursive bar. Also, thought you should know: I'm changing my name to Debatorial Acumen. I've been walking around my office saying it over and over. It's positively thunderous. I'm serious.

ROFL...I better trademark that!

While I agree with what you said, I think you make of the mistake to just apply this posting to threads and not replying to them as well.

I say this because I just got done reading you post in another thread that leads me to believe that you think it's OK to fire shots back at people who say things you don't like.

If that's the case, you might as well rename this thread "How to post so you don't piss me off and cause me to flame you". There's no "he started it" in this, people who snatch up flame-bait with relish are just as liabel for forum strife as the original poster/troller.

Forgive me for being persumptious, but I believe it's the responsbility of all thread participants to keep things constructive.

this post is completely useless and utterly asinine...how freaking pretentious can you be to assume you have any room to discuss proper posting etiquette?

"posting an angry title will only elicit an angry response"
"clever, well written posts are taken more seriously than those which are not" - as written by Talesin.

I can understand why he replied in that manner in that particular post.

I can too, but it doesn't mean that posting angry reponses is any better than posting angry titles. If you hate what someone says that much and want to respond in kind, take it to PMs. It is a personal issue and should be handled as such.

Keep in mind, though, the Forum Guidelines say personal attacks are not warranted at all.

I hatfa say, I'm not normally one to offer praise when someone tries to tell people how to post, but kudos.

I think this one of the few forums where people for the most part discuss things without going off the thread subject. ..and I think you make some decent points without the usual 'talking down to someone' tone

What if it wasn't personal but intended to be sarcastic or humorous?

I'm going to have to agree with the OP...and what a tough decision it was

I don't see anything so wrong with it.

I do see something wrong with this. Why even bother to post that?

I'm totally with Talesin. There's a little group of elitist idiots and negative people with soooooo much time to waste that's bugging the whole forum.

To feel cool and unique, they just post negative answers to everything.

Example: "hey, I finally got to the HoH! I don't play much, but it's been really fun and rewarding. Maybe our group wasn't that great, but we managed to put up a fair fight and won once.

Answer: "who cares.anyone could hold the HoH with 4 henchies at the right time."(a distant echo is saying "stop enjoying the game you looooooser")

Example: "I like the visuals of this game, designers have style"

Answer: "you'll get sick of visuals. They look awful. WoW is better. E2 is better. Pac-man is better. You see that little thing that says -BetaTester- under my name? That means I'm cool."

That said, all my respect goes to betatesters and experienced players who post interesting opinions (even heavy criticism) and have solid REASONS to support their arguments.

Made me chuckle, but it is true.
It is easier to see the negatives and post them.
I will argue with people who post you are wrong, because I am right, I wont post in resonse to 'Answer: you'll get sick of visuals. They look awful. WoW is better. E2 is better. ' as it is not worth the effort as to do so is to just stroke the ego of the poster, who 9/10 is only posting to be argumentative.
That said the only post that have more than 2 pages are full of 'Ego posters'.

Quoted for truth.