When The Box Opens...

[mali]

Whatever happened to PoisonedV?

:lol:
I think he runs his own category Ask Chest

mali, do you have any suggestions on how to channel newbies to the meeters and greeters?

The 'greeter' idea is to address the 'n00bs post anyway instead of reading the faq'-problem. So it's not needed to channel newbies, instead it's the other way around. Better presentation of information will cover a part of newbie questions and the ones who post their questions anyway or have some more complex questions, they have difficulties to resolve themselves, could be served by members of the 'community team', who would answer those questions or channel them to the right place to search. That way not every annoyed old timer would feel the urge to drop his sarcasm in newbie threads.

 

[urjaman]

mali, do you have any suggestions on how to channel newbies to the meeters and greeters?

(me != mali, but...) I think it would be nice to have a "Newbie questions" (or the like) subforum (we're going to have more at launch anyways..) that had a name that attracts newbies and that would be looked after by the greeters - so that the people that would just go flaming on them can skip the entire subforum.

 

[mali]

^ I'm not a friend of separation, but we'd need a tutorial section anyway, imo, so this could be a place for basic questions. It shouldn't mean that newbies aren't allowed to post in the general section and get flamed if they do, though. The 'community team' members could take care of this too.

 

[TaG]

I'm sure the usual suspects will meet and greet when the time comes. I certainly will whenever I find such posts before someone else.

Links in sigs help, and anyone can do that.

(What happened to Chip btw?)

 

[GPJosh]

Perhaps the greeters could give the answer and in a (non snarky) way give a link to the appropriate faq / tutorial.

Example:
Ques. Does the Pandora play X n64 game?
Ans. At the moment it plays it full speed without sound at 600mhz, but this is expected to improve soon when the new version is released in a couple weeks.
The compatibility list for all emulators on the Pandora is here and the Pandora Information Index has a lot of helpful links, particually the FAQ.

 

[mali]

I'm sure the usual suspects will meet and greet when the time comes. I certainly will whenever I find such posts before someone else.

Links in sigs help, and anyone can do that.

(What happened to Chip btw?)

Yes, I agree. I'm still thinking about the good old days when we were parts of a dream team There are many new people around who do a great job, too. It might not be necessary to give those people a special status, but I think it would be a nice symbolic thing. This community might get huge over time with every new batch, so it's best to be prepared. A newbie won't know the structures and individuals of the forums, thus an official logo would help them to focus.
Personally I wouldn't volunteer, like I didn't want to write for the blog back then. The forums nomad might leave again, who knows.

Chip came back around the same time I came back a few months ago, but he seems to be back to lurk mode, right now.

 

[Aninhumer]

Back on topic, I think we should overhaul the wiki and think about structurizing informations differently to get newbies up to date efficiently.

Definitely, wikis are such brilliant resources if they're used right, and a hell of a lot easier to keep up to date than forum stickies.

Another idea is to have a group of volunteers to welcome newbies and help them. A special status for those folks, like a logo attached to their profile similar to gurus could be a nice reward for helpfulness and strengthen the reputation of those level-headed members, imo.

Agreed, the best way to deal with newb questions is a quick answer and a single polite suggestion to read/search before asking further questions.
The newb gets an answer and is happy, the thread drops off the front page quickly and everyone else is happy.
It's somewhat unfortunate that Chip actually had to lock threads to enforce this in the past.
I think having a few people to do this specifically would help, as other people would just say "oh Gruso/mali/PoisonedV( ) will answer that", and ignore it.

 

[traylorpark]

A section of the forums dedicated to new comers and their questions is a neat concept. I dont think it is so much about separation as ensuring the new people have a friendly place where they can ask questions. The community members that help in those places should understand that they will answering a lot of the same obvious questions over and over again ... and they should be cool with that ... and also understand that they are doing a massive service for the community by creating positive first impressions.

Perhaps these forums could contain an official `Introduce yourself` thread.

So yeah, forums for the new comer`s questions, I +1 that.