Aha! You got directed here for cross-posting, didn’t you? Don’t worry. No one is cornering you. We are just showing you how to not lose the respect you expect from the online community. Oh by the way, let me assure you, you're not the first person who ever cross posted in this forum. No, of course not! I’m sure the person who directed you here has had a dark spot or two on their white robe sometime. Hey, I think I see some really clean ones too. Thanks guys. You're the best.

Well then, let’s take a minute to understand what is cross-posting?

Surely you’ve rode on a taxi / cab to travel from one place to another. These cabs are great. You often wonder how these guys do—and the gals of course—know the exact road/street/exit to take. And when on the move, they can also have a conversation with you regarding what’s the cool place you can go shopping / sightseeing, or what’s the easiest route from one place to another. There’s also the nutty ones, but let’s just ignore them. Now let’s say these know-all-roads drivers started to do charity, and they all serviced commuters for free. Cool, isn’t it. Yes. OK, let’s leave it there.

Mr. Bob has some assignments from work to finish. He’s good with the business understanding and all, but he isn’t sure how to get the data look right on his report. He knows that if he can reach office an hour early, he can get some help via e-mail, from a friend who sits 3000 miles across the globe. So what does he do? He looks up the yellow page and dials in a taxi vendor and books a cab. As soon as he keeps the phone, Mr. Bob gets an idea. “I’ll book another cab from another vendor too. Maybe a third one too. That way, I can hop on the one that comes earlier, and reach my work place sooner”, he thinks. So Mr. Bob books 3 cabs, and hops on the first one that came, and he reaches his destination. It’s all cool, right?

Oh what’s there? Two cab drivers waiting in front of Mr. Bob’s door. Now that sucks! On top of that, both the drivers were the ones we discussed earlier—the ones who decided to do charity. Now that is totally ridanculous (read utterly nonsense). They didn’t deserve this.

So you’ve got the picture of Mr. Bob (who’s a very good employee and didn’t have any other intention, but to get his report done properly), let’s just look at what Sam and Chris (the Samaritan taxi drivers) are thinking.

Sam: “Where is this guy!!? I wanted to help the old lady with her luggage and drop her, but this guy gave me the impression that his job is on the line, and so I came here to find his door locked. I’m never going to do charity anymore.”

Chris: “Whoa! That’s a bummer. He was yanking that his rear end was going to get kicked. So you try to be a hero, and this is how they treat you? Oh well, sometimes shit happens. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Maybe the next guy won’t be such an idiot”.

What Mr. Bob did above is similar to what the moderators and administrators of online forums such as these refer to as cross-posting.

Take a closer look

So you post your question on a forum. And then you post the question on another, and then another. And you do the tick-tick-tick for someone to respond and pounce on to that thread. In the meanwhile, another developer who has no clue that you’re already on your way to present your report in front of the board and get all the appreciation and applause and the promotion, spends 15 minutes of brain-wracking to get you a solution, only to find that you had posted the same question elsewhere, and got a solution already.

Yeah, you now get the picture, don’t you? What’s that you say? Well of course you didn’t mean to cause any trouble to the developers who ‘volunteered’—and let me repeat, ‘volunteered’—to help. You just wanted to get a solution. We understand that. We totally do. What our little brains cannot understand is why you didn’t want to tell everybody that you’ve cross-posted the same query/question at other links too, clearly mentioning which those links are.

Put yourself in the developers’ shoes. You’d be really put off if somebody did the above to you, wouldn’t you? Next time, you’ll be careful not to even bother reading that user’s post. So you must understand that it’s detrimental to your popularity in the forum(s) too. On the other hand, if you are courteous to the developers, I’m sure they’ll go out of their way, beyond what they are already doing, and see you through your needs.

What would be the best thing to do regarding getting a solution and cross-posting?


  • It is always best to wait for a few hours—or even a day—before you cross-post your question in another forum. That will give developers of a forum the impression that you’re not a globe trotter, and that you’d like to stick with one forum if you are getting answers at a reasonable pace. Those brownie points will keep you on the good books of the developers, and it will expedite a solution within the forum.



  • Try to ‘BUMP’ your question before you decide to cross-post. Sometimes, due to time-zone differences, it may take a bit more than a couple of hours to get a solution, and that may push your thread down the forum, and not catch the eye of a developer. So you can write another post in that thread with just the word ‘BUMP’. This will bring your thread up to the bottom, and also tell the forum members that you are awaiting a solution.



  • If you decide to cross-post in another forum, immediately after you posted in a different one, make sure you give the link to the original thread. Then come back to the original thread, and edit the post and give a link to the new thread. But try to do this within the first few minutes, so that you don’t waste time of an unsuspecting developer who already started to implement the solution for you.



  • The vBulletin forums (and many other) are equipped to change a URL link to the actual thread title, so all you need to do is just copy the entire URL, and paste the link in the other forum.


Closure Note

It is advisable to follow general forum guidelines also. It only enhances your chances of getting solutions and answers to your post. And please remember that questions on the forums are answered by ‘volunteers’ who are taking time out of their schedules, and helping you to be successful at what you do. So please help them to help you.

All the best!

Excel Fox Administrator