Fluther Help
The Guidelines: Questions
All content on Fluther should be:
- Genuine
- Well-written, and
- Promote good discourse
Questions should be well thought out; use proper spelling, capitalization, and punctuation; and provide enough detail to adequately answer them and/or prompt a good discussion. Titles should be clear, concise, and in question form.
The following types of questions may be removed:
- Jokes
- Duplicates
- Flame-bait
- Trolling (hate speech, people bashing, etc.)
- Tragically misspelled and/or contains txtspk ("u" for "you", "ppl" for "people", etc.)
General Section
In the General Section, questions should be about getting a knowledgeable answer or having a thoughtful discussion. Some examples of questions suitable for the General Section:
- What smart phone would you recommend?
- How can we change the political system for the better?
- Does bottled water expire?
- How would I go about becoming a police officer?
- Is the minimum wage in America enough to live on?
Generally speaking, this is not the appropriate place for dream interpretation, most relationship advice, fanciful hypotheticals or poll-type questions.
Social Section
This section is for questions that are more open-ended, opinion-based, or polls. A note on polls: They must have enough supporting detail to prompt a discussion. Extremely simple polls such as "Which is better, red or green?" will be removed. Some examples of questions suitable for the Social Section:
- How do you know when you're in love?
- Would you want to be able to read minds?
- If you could trade places with anyone in the world, who would you choose and why?
- How do I attract the attention of the guy I like?
- What makes you feel happy?
Meta Section
This section is for questions about Fluther itself. How it works, about the community, etc.
Question-Specific Guidelines
Computing Questions
Remember to post details that will help people to answer your question, things like what operating system is installed on your computer. Whether or not you’re using a Mac or PC is a good start! Here’s an example of a good question:
- “My Windows 7 PC suddenly and unexpectedly restarts a few times a day, what are things I should do to see if I can fix it?”
Here’s an example of a less than great question:
- “Computer restarts, help!!”
Remember to include details in your question that describe your problem in detail. The more details you provide, the better the help you’ll get!
Homework Questions
Feel free to ask for help on your subject, but simply posting your homework question verbatim and expecting an answer is rude! We’re not here to do your homework for you.
Relationship Questions
We welcome questions asking for relationship advice, but they must be:
- Well written, fleshed out with at least a paragraph of details about your situation
- Unique; don’t ask questions that have obvious answers
Remember to search before you ask; your question might have been asked before.
NSFW Questions
Fluther etiquette requires that you mark questions that are “not safe for work” with an “(NSFW)” in the question title. Questions that might not be “work safe” include:
- Questions about that rash on your genitals
- Questions about your sex life, or sex in general
- Questions about pornography
Your questions still need to meet the guidelines for the section in which you post it in, and the question title must still be “safe for work”.
Controversial Questions
Feel free to ask questions on controversial topics; all we require is that you don’t just do it purely for the sake of it.
Asking a question on a controversial topic because you genuinely believe in the question and want an answer is acceptable, whereas doing so solely because you want to spark off a touchy discussion is not.
