"How To Get Help Quickly" original flavor

I think some incarnation of either "how to" would be an excellent idea. If only there were some way to force participants to read the instructions.

Regardless of how such a message might be incorporated here, I'd like to suggest each forum banner a prominent request that help seekers clearly identify their program version and OS. This might not be as important in some forums, but it would be likely appreciated in the Illustrator forum, where we still occasionally field version 8 questions. (AI is now at v.14.)

Many times, the first response has to be "please state version" because volunteers are simply not going to write long-winded answers covering every possible version contigency. Often, volunteers who can actually help won't even answer because they don't want to be a version 'nag' or waste time providing a version-incorrect answer.

The problem is compounded now that the Illustrator Mac and Win forums have been combined -- a decision I basically applaud. Although many discussions are platform-agnostic, there are plenty of OS-specific issues.

Ideally, help seekers would not even be able to post their questions until they provide these two basic pieces of information.

Is the thread that John started located somewhere other than this forum or is there plans to put it somewhere where it isn't going to disappear in a day or two?