Forum Suggestions & User Assistance - An idea to cut down on "What _________ should I buy?" threads

I don't know about other forums, but the MTB forum gets loads of threads created by new users in some form of "What _________ should I buy?". At least 5 a day, and it's annoying. Sometimes they're legitimate, but the vast majority aren't, and pretty much all of these questions can be answered by either reading the stickies provided or using the search function.

A solution would be to enact some barrier so that people can't just join and right away create threads, perhaps a two week waiting period or a 50 post minimum.

Ideally, this wouldn't be a forum-wide restriction, just in areas where it's a proven problem such as the MTB forum. Newbies could still create threads in Foo and such, but would be barred from spamming the forums with simple questions and leaving forever.

Thanks for your consideration.

Sorry, everyone is busy 'focusing' in a secret forum. They'll get back to you when they have focused.

East Hill

I agree that it is annoying. Not a bad idea to limit new members from posting for a certain time, since most of those what should I buy posts are probably new and short term members.

In all seriousness, I think someone else asked this question a while back, and the answer was that (and this is off the top of my head, I didn't do a search) Joe Gardner didn't want to discourage anyone from posting. I think the question and answer had something to do with why first time posters were allowed to post photos and put in links with signatures (because links are a significant resource for spammers, and the photos, of course, were pornographic).

So I would imagine that the answer would still be 'no'.

Perhaps a blue star person would like to answer, though?

East Hill

My question in return:

Would it really be conducive to open and inclusive membership to raise the bar on being able to post threads? Best advice I can offer is if you've heard a question asked too many times, and happen to know the last thread it was asked and answered in, post a link to that thread, politely.;) Remember, we all started out somewhere on the learning curve, and someone helped us......it's just time for us to pass that help along, true?:D

Or just post this link :)

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting.php

You know, the Classic & Vintage forum has a lot of people who stop by, and briefly visit. They sometimes want to know how much they could get for a particular bike, or whether or not it's worth the price listed in the ad, or at the thrift shop.

We try to answer all of them to the best of our ability. We never know when someone will become a productive member of our community, but we certainly don't want to discourage them. In the case of C & V, the information that the person shares may also become part of a larger database, to which future members may refer. It may seem unimportant and frustrating at the time, but think of it as part of a larger picture.

My first response to your question was lighthearted, but I know I like to see at least one answer to every question I see asked. As Tom said, think of your positive response as a 'thank you' to the person who helped you get started...

East Hill

My tendency is to favor Tom's viewpoint. I also can see DevilsGT2's perspective very clearly. Perhaps a way to split the difference is to have a new forum participant respond to a series of automatically-generated messages which will serve to verify their ongoing interest in BikeForums before their first post? I'm kind of thinking out loud and a way to verify a response would be needed.