When to Start a New Topic

Curious — why/how do you use FastScripts?

Mitchell - Start new topics for questions like that!! :slight_smile:

I think if I did it would be judged inappropriate for a KM Forum topic. I really don’t see what’s wrong with side-discussions with a topic. Mentions of applications for shortcuts, scripting, graphical markup, GIF making, screencasts, etc. are not strictly-speaking appropriate for the KM forum. I don’t see how to appropriately handle mentions of non-KM manipulations/applications (e.g. finding or manipulating icons) — I can see why you think in-topic discussion is inappropriate, but I know many people would find a separate topic on the inappropriate too. (A topic for how you find and manipulate icons? I don’t think so.)

@JMichaelTX, care to address this?

We seem to be fairly tolerant of a small amount of minor off-topic posts in the Keyboard Maestro forum. There are no hard-and-fast rules, but I think common sense applies:

  1. Off-topic posts tend to pollute the main topic, and may discourage readers from continuing to read the topic at hand.
  2. A minor branch that is clearlly related to the main topic would seem to be acceptable, as long as it does not generate many posts about the off-topic subject.
  3. Be considerate of the OP (Original Poster) as well as future readers, and if you have a topic that can, and maybe should, have a substantial discussion, then it’s probably best to start a new topic.
  4. It is in your best interest to start a new topic when it deserves a good discussion, so that it can be easily found and read by future readers. The forum search gives more weight to topic titles.
  5. @peternlewis has seemed to be willing to accommodate topics that are not strictly about Keyboard Maestro. However, I would suspect he might start objecting if they are not at least tangentially related. Probably “basket weaving tips” would not be well received, unless KM could help you in some way. :wink:
  6. When in doubt, start a new topic. You can always use the “continued from existing post” option. See How To Create New Topic Linked to Existing Post

As you no doubt noticed, I moved all of the above posts to a new topic in the “meta” section, so that we don’t pollute the main topic with this important discussion.

1 Like

@JMichaelTX summed it up pretty nicely. If there is a concern that a question might not be appropriate as a topic, then it probably isn’t all that appropriate as a reply either.

In this case, just pose your question as a relationship to Keyboard Maestro along the lines of “Given that I have Keyboard Maestro, when or why would I also use FastScript?”

The problem with tangential replies in a single topic is a) they clutter the topic for people who are interested in the original topic, and b) they are not easily found by people who are interested in the tangential topic.

So I would say generally it is better to start a new topic. If the topic is inappropriate, all that would happen would be deleted and you’d get a note suggesting there are better places to ask the question. In this case, there is probably no better place to ask, except maybe on the FastScripts forum if there is one, and quite probably not even there, so you’re good to go.

1 Like

That's actually my biggest issue. For instance, I know I read about something, but I can't find it because it was in a topic with a completely unrelated title.

1 Like

A post was split to a new topic: Using FastScripts vs Keyboard Maestro To Trigger Scripts