Very often, questions on MousePad policy or how-to procedures come up that are already answered in the Frequently Asked Questions forum (http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=30&f=40). To help highlight this, I'll be featuring some of the more common FAQs in this thread. If you want to discuss the featured FAQ, or any other meta-MousePad topic, please start or join a thread here in the Administration forum (http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/forumdisplay.php?f=19).

Today's Featured FAQ is "Why was my thread title edited? (http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/showthread.php?t=18706)" The FAQ item states:
Moderators and Administrators may edit thread titles for several reasons:

correcting misspellings or typos
expanding acronyms
removing excessive punctuation
other edits as necessary in accordance with the MousePad Community Policies (http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/misc.php?s=&action=faq&page=1#policy).

Let's look at some of the most common reasons why Moderators edit thread titles.

Incomplete or confusing title. Probably the most common reason thread titles are edited is when the title doesn't convey the topic of the thread. Titles like "Do you ever wonder..." or "Questions!" don't tell the reader what the thread is going to be about, and are useless for searching. We'll edit the thread title, usually adding explanatory text in [square brackets], to help amplify the thread topic.
Confusing or unfamiliar acronyms, or too many acronyms. Sure, you know what DLH, PPH, GCH, BWPPI and all the other acronyms mean, but not everyone does. MousePad has, at last count, over 19,000 registered users plus legions more unregistered lurkers, not to mention search engine spiders which pick up common topics for Google or Yahoo searchers. We expand acronyms, sometimes editing word order or selection in the process, to make it easier for everyone to understand the thread topic.
Spelling errors. Sometimes you want to get right into posting your thread, or you're not sure of the spelling of a particular word, or your browser doesn't support spell-checking in one-line text-input fields. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but again noting the very large number of potential readers of your thread, it's best to have correct spellings so that search results will be accurate. A search for "Space Mountain" will generally not match a thread titled "Spcae Monitain", so we edit.
Excessive punctuation. If you use more than one question mark or exclamation point at the end of a phrase, or more or less than three periods in an ellipsis (...), we will edit the title to correct the punctuation. Too much punctuation makes thread titles harder to read.
Over-capitalization. vBulletin will auto-correct thread titles posted in ALL CAPS, but for thread titles where SOME WORDS ARE CAPITALIZED but some are not, we will generally edit. Again, correct and appropriate capitalization makes thread titles easier for everyone to read.
Inappropriate content. Not only spam threads, in which both the thread title and post content are deleted, but when a thread title—in the sole judgement of the Moderators—is inappropriate or violative of MousePad Community Policies (http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/misc.php?s=&action=faq&page=1#policy), we will edit it. This is of course a judgement call, and if you don't like how your thread title was edited you should feel free to PM any Moderator or Administrator.


Next up: How to use the Ignore list.