OSDev.org

I know of one other forum that employed such a delay, namely amiga-news.de. It failed to have any noticeable effect ont he problem it tried to solve (extensive OT discussions and flames), and it annoys the hell out of the regulars.

I feel that it would be over-regulation. A community - no matter whether it's digital or real-life - cannot solve social problems with digital solutions.

If anything, I would suggest a different approach, not knowing if the forum software would offer this:

Significantly reduce the amount of options in the "new topic" screen.

Right now, you get emoticons, markup options, formatting options, attachment options and poll options pushed at you, while all that is necessary is the topic line and the text box.

I could picture a "new topic" screen that has only the forum title bar, and screaming (think 32pt boldface) warning that you should make sure you did use the Wiki / Google / Forum Search, know How To Ask Good Questions (TM), and that your question is a genuinely new one instead of a reiteration / modification of one that's already discussed.

Below that, only the said topic line and text box, without all the (distracting) options.

Add to that a forced preview (for new topic only: first screen has only a "Preview" button, only in the Preview page you get a "Submit" option), and a button that gives access to all the advanced options (polls, attachments, formatting help).

While I wouldn't want to have this level of limitations imposed on every posting, it sure makes sense on new topics.

::shrug:: I've posted a few questions here and have gotten very helpful answers.

On the other hand, when I tried to help someone else, I was given lip for linking to perfectly valid information, except it wasn't the link to the wiki but to an older article that I had found via google search and had no knowledge of it being in the wiki. Shame on me

madeofstaples wrote:::shrug:: I've posted a few questions here and have gotten very helpful answers.

On the other hand, when I tried to help someone else, I was given lip for linking to perfectly valid information, except it wasn't the link to the wiki but to an older article that I had found via google search and had no knowledge of it being in the wiki. Shame on me

You did the right thing. The person who gave you lip should have simply alerted the thread to the most recent info.

If you knew everything before you came here... why would you need to be here???

madeofstaples wrote:::shrug:: I've posted a few questions here and have gotten very helpful answers.

On the other hand, when I tried to help someone else, I was given lip for linking to perfectly valid information, except it wasn't the link to the wiki but to an older article that I had found via google search and had no knowledge of it being in the wiki. Shame on me

I think he is talking about this one.
http://www.osdev.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.p ... ght=#96656

Just an idea, what about moderated thread creation for people under a certain post count? Moderators would have to approve new threads by users who are new to the forum, but not discourage them from posting replies to existing threads.

Now there's an idea, actually... however, this too depends on what the forum software can be tweaked to do.

What's the admin's take about this?

Solar wrote:Now there's an idea, actually... however, this too depends on what the forum software can be tweaked to do.

What's the admin's take about this?

Has already been proposed to other moderators and to the admin.