Rosalind - 10:10 pm on Aug 16, 2009 (gmt 0)

It strikes me that this issue is very closely tied to the goal of creating a perfect form. Obviously when you don't know in advance what the right input will be there's never going to be a way to make it perfect, but there's usually room for improvement in the way forms are set up.

Getting it right can really cut down on an unmanageable volume of bad submissions.

An amazing number of folks don't include the basic info even though it's requested right there in front of them! It's on the screen, just read it!

People don't read, and it can be tough when you have a lot of rules for submission and you're trying to fit them all onto one page. Put too many and most will be ignored, put too few and you don't get enough info across, put it on a different page and people won't click through to read the guidelines at all.

One thing I've found useful is a bit of conditional javascript which examines the form and pops up different warning messages if it finds certain words.