After all no-one likes to be ignored or even down-voted because of bad formatting. After a while, if nothing happens (probably because the poor monk is busy reading all the messages s/he received!) then you can send the node to the list.

While in principle I agree, people get voted down because they are expected to be at least a little clueful before posting. This means reading the site FAQ, and actually doing a minute bit of reading, before posting.

There are things that could facilitate this. I've been a proponent of being forced to read a page before the first time a monk posts. Even a random 3 question questionaire that must be answered. Something to be try and be sure as possible that they've read the FAQ, and understand the implications of using HTML in posts.

One thing that would help a little is having the code tags prestuffed into the code box on the code page. Or perhaps prestuffing the text boxes with a little bit of help text, i.e. "Have you read the FAQ? Do you know what you're doing? Can you justify this posts existence?"

Of course, the other major issue is that even if they do suddenly realize they're a complete screw-up and want to fix it, if it's a root node, they're hosed.

--Chris

e-mail jcwren