ID request etiquette

Hello all,

I'm interested in the critter ID forum but my level of interest depends on what needs to be identified and where it was observed. Many already use the topic title and/or topic description to indicate what advice is sought but it may help to formalize this in a pinned "how to best use this forum" message so the regular "I need help", "what is this", "unknown critter", etc messages can become "Midsized Cuttlefish - Indonesia", "Anemonefish IDs/From Layang Layang", "Maui shrimp goby ID?" to give just a few recent examples of informative topic titles.

Such a pinned message could also include a few tips from the experts on what to report to help the identification. Depth is an obvious one but for the various critters there may be other contextual information that can help in the identification process.

Cheers, Bart

This was already been laid out by Eric .. and repeated many times by him on individual topics.

It looks like the post got lost though ..

This is what he normally says:

"in the future, can you add a short description to the subject line of your critter id posts? it helps keep things organized a bit. "

Maybe someone can pin a post with some brief rules like....

Topic Title = Type of creature (fish or coral or snail etc) and Location

Topic Description = Identifying feature or colour maybe a guess at what it is ?

Subject content = Photo, description of anything not seen, size, any markings or colours, behaviour etc.

It would make things a lot easier to search for history before posting.

Giles

Consider it done. Giles (and anyone else) - feel free to make suggestiions in the pinned topic http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17763

Hi Leslie,

That's exactly what I had in mind, well a lot better actually. Great!

Bart