I've been here on and off over the last few months, and I just recently rejoined. I've had the opportunity to meet some cool people here, so thanks!
I've noticed that there are some frustrations within the community here at LSD, and many of these frustrations stem from the activities of new users. I believe that I may have a solution, and I'd like to here your thoughts.
Problem #1:
TrollsMany people come in here with guest accounts, post a question, and then take off. I don't think that guest accounts are a good idea. Membership is very easy to sign up for, and thus there is no reason why it shouldn't be required.
I'm not sure what kind of administrative options you have, but if you required membership then it would also enable you to implement a disciplinary policy. You can ban IP addresses, prohibit numerous membership accounts for one person, and only allow user-name changes with administrative permission and/or after a certain amount of posts have been reached.
Problem #2:
Repeated QuestionsI think that a fun and NECESSARY group project here at LSD will be to create a central archive of information for questions that are asked more often than once or twice. Many sites have called this a "Frequently Asked Queestions" (FAQ) page.
When newbies and trolls come here asking the SAME QUESTIONS ALL THE TIME it can be extreemely draining for the community. Because these questions have been answered before, and because the members here have already answered them adequately, there are generally only one or two responses given. That newbie immediately doesn't feel helped by the board, and doesn't realize that it has nothing to do with our willingness to help him/her...it is because we don't want to re-invent the wheel every week.
So, what we need to do is to generate a list of commonly-asked questions and go through some of the old threads to form the most awesome set of answers to those questions that could ever exist on the web. We then take those Q&A'a and place them on a general page here at LSD.
THEN! When a newbie comes here and asks one of those questions that we have revisited over and over again, we can say, "Welcome to the board! We've actually created a special section just for you. Click here to read all of the FAQ's and if you have any ADDITIONAL questions on top of that then post them here on the forum".
The result is that the discussion here will become deeper and less 'beginner-ish'.
Conclusion
Those are my thoughts!
I hope that everyone here knows that I respect them highly, and I really believe that this is one of the best law-related forums on the net. I think that if we were able to solve the "troll" and "wheel re-invention" problems, then the community here would flourish and not get burned out.
(I also read through that constitution thread and I enjoyed those ideas as well)
Discussion
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