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What should I keep out of my posts and titles?

I often see questions that end with things along the lines of "Please help", "Any tips are appreciated" or "Thanks in advance"

Is it appropriate to edit these posts to remove the pleading language at the end, or is it not worth it?

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But also look over the rest of the post. There's probably more to fix or at least improve. –  Daniel Fischer Jan 4 '13 at 2:27
Essentially the same problem here: Should 'Hi', 'thanks', taglines, and salutations be removed from posts –  Josh Caswell Jan 4 '13 at 2:44
@JoshCaswell Ah, so it is, that did not come up in my searches. –  Simon Goldeen Jan 4 '13 at 2:49
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marked as duplicate by random Jan 4 '13 at 2:38


2 Answers

up vote 12 down vote accepted


They serve as nothing more than extra noise to the question, and should be cleaned up as part of an edit.

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It is appropriate to remove irrelevant Ps and Qs anywhere in a question, but you should remember that the ultimate goal is to grease the wheels of the problem solving process.

Some occurrences of the word "please" are perfectly acceptable:

Please note that I have already tried froobing the woodle.

You could remove the "please" if you were feeling particularly zealous, but it isn't really necessary. On the other hand:

Please help me I just can't it doesn't work ohgodwhydoesntitwork I don't know how to do it haven't been doing this long my parents told me I should be a lawyer but I just didn't lis...

This has no relevant information, so erase it.

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Excellent point about distinguishing incidental usage versus non-useful content. Content-less preambles should also be removed; stuff like "I'm new at xcode ipad programming, so please read my question" or "I've been banging my head against the desk for an hour, I can't figure this out". –  Josh Caswell Jan 4 '13 at 2:42
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