A plea for improving tech tips on the Internet

By on May 10, 2013 - Opinion

If you work or play with computers or phones or technology in any form, you probably spend more a significant portion of your life looking for answers on the Internet. If you are a kind and sharing person, you may even post answers you have found or created to a blog or solutions site. When you do, please ensure that your post has the following information, as it really would improve its usefulness to the reader:

  1. Ensure that there is a date and time on your post.
  2. Include the versions of the [ product | software | project ] that you are writing about.
  3. Avoid the phrases “only”, “no way”, or “nothing that exists” without these qualifiers.

I find it hard to believe how many people post detailed information about the state of this or that today, yet their site theme does not include a version, or a date and time posted. Trust me, your detailed post about the state of something will not help someone six years down the road if they cannot correlate your thoughts with the timeframe of their relevance.