[Turbine]

What defines a quality post? Well, personally I feel that a community is only as useful as the content that can be found on it. With no solid, useful content a community can suffer. That said, everyone who is a part of a community and wants to be a quality member should always strive to contribute worth-reading text. The idea is that if your community survives off of 10-15 word replies, you will be surrounded by 10-15 word replies.

How many helpful tutorials and/or instruction guides have been only 10 to 15 words long? My motto is anything I consider worth commiting 5 minutes of my time to is worth commiting 5 extra minutes to make sure I do it right and well. Nothing is more useless than wasted time, and zero-content replies are as useless as they come. There are different types of community members: Members who like to contribute, and those who like to communicate. The ones that like to communicate are the ones that you can often find using a forum as a chatroom, and the former are the ones that usually like to type a paragraph or two, and honestly contribute to the topics at hand.

So, back to the basics. Not every post is going to be good, and not every post is going to be worth reading, so it's up to the educated and devoted few to make the internet a more intelligent and interesting place by promising to do our best at providing content that is worth reading and helpful to others. Basically, quality content and sometimes borderline "should-charge-5.99-to-even-read-because-it-is-so-useful-but-is-free-anyway" content. How else will we counter-attack against the hordes of users that like to inflate their postcounts to reflect their superiority over everyone else due to their understanding of the "Submit" button!

To battle! Prepare your WPM! Prep your home row! Ready your vocabulary!
Tips and tricks to a good post:

• Stay on-topic - Always post on-topic related information. People interrupting a good debate about whatever with completely useless information and trying to turn a forum into a chat room annoys plenty and interests very few, so it's always nice to play by the rules and understand that some things are just better left out of a post.
• Time = Quality? - Spend some time on your content to make it worth reading! Add some personality! Logically anything we actually spend time on will be worth more than something we don't spend much time on, so keep that in mind.
• Be aware of post length - I've been faced with this own point of my own a few times. I spend time on my posts and I always have lots to say about lots of topics, that and I reply a good portion of the time to topics that require lots of input, but be aware that "What is a good pizza?" does not require 837 words. I sometimes find myself replying to a thread that requires lots of typing and once had a member of another community tell me I wrote too much and he didn't want to invest that much time in reading it. I instantly knew at that point I wasn't typing for that type of community member, however, I often add brief segments at the end of my posts to slim it down, but I do enjoy my typing!
• Link worthy - Always aim for your posts to be so good people will consider posting a link to it in their blog. This is not always true in some cases, but this rule totally applies when posting guides/technical information.
• Factual information - Nothing helps a statement like facts. Linkable content that backs up any statement you're making. If you have a position to take on a topic, be prepared to back it up and be prepared to do so with links and show proof of what you're saying.
• No blatant fabrications - Lies. Blatant lies. Nothing gets me the same way as a flat-out lie. Many users often mistake their personal, subjective opinions as factual truth and promote their opinions as such. Often I have to go out of my way and backtrack through a conversation to express to a user how an opinion is different than a factual statement. Just because you heard someone say something, or you think something is truth, don't bench on it because it sounds right to you. Do your homework, otherwise you risk ruining your credibility.
• No offensive/harmful material - On the internet there is no need to offensive. It does no good for anyone so it's always best to keep it at an absolute zero. If you offend someone, there is always going to be someone else who is offended as well.
• Post like every post you're trying to gain reputation points - from god. - I'm in no way a religious person but I found the point funny. Act like you're always trying to gain reputation points. Of course you never ask for it, but consider it a way to set your own standards for yourself. It's always good to know that what you've posted is quality.
• The internet doesn't mean you don't have a reputation to uphold. - A little self-respect can go a long way. I respect myself and have my own standards I hold myself to, and I always promote myself to follow my moral and ethical code. Just because this is the internet doesn't mean I am anonymous and faceless to myself at the end of the day, and I should do my part to encourage people to stay away from the typical "This is the internet. I can act like a jerk and just write everything off to "Well I don't act like that in the real world so it doesn't matter."" attitude, which just makes the internet less and less interesting.

There are so many more points to cover, but you get the gist of it! Everyone is capable of a good post and the actual unwritten rules are just that, very unwritten. Everyone has their own standards of what "Good" is, as "good" is such a subjective term on it's own! Even then, we can all agree with a few of the points I've established above. I suppose this is why the rules of a good post on the internet is often left unwritten.

-Turbine.