in reply to Loads of Nodes

I think that I generally agree with your thoughts, although I'm not sure that forcing a search before allowing a post would solve the problem.

Implementing something like that would potentially have a knock-on effect into other sections of the site: forcing a search before allowing an SoPW post is fair enough, and probably a good idea, but would this not simply push the "Code this for me" problem into other areas of the site? Having to search before posting to, say, Meditations, or Snippets, would be fairly pointless, in my opinion - even if they cover old ground, it's often a good thing (to a point) to revisit ideas and gain new ideas and suggestions.

Something I would be very interested to see is some sort of "Related Nodes" link that can perform a quick search based on the content of the node being viewed - that could help refine searches immensely (the "That's close, but not exactly what I'm looking for" scenario). I think that something like that may help to cut down the number of duplicate questions that seem to come up time and time again.

I guess the more extreme solution is to point-blank delete nodes that are nothing more than a code request where no attempt has been made to solve the problem. Again, though, I'm not sure that's the best of ideas either.

Something tells me that things like this are something we just have to live with (and ignore?), at least for the time being.

Just some quick thoughts.
-- Foxcub

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Loads of Nodes
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 09, 2003 at 01:50 UTC
    Instead of forcing a search, how about making a strong suggestion to do so for the first five questions that a user submits? This can be as simple as offering a link to SuperSearch for the words in the title of the question, or as prominent as a "Before you submit a question" page with links to the SuperSearch, CPAN, etc. that is displayed before a user can submit a question. Any comments?

      Sounds sensible :-)