And this all comes down to the fact that we need a sort of 'waiting period' to remove those seeking the fast answer from those seeking enlightenment. New users should not be able to post for a day or so, AM root-level posts should not appear on site for a day or so [...]

At this point, AM root-level posts take a fair length of time to appear in any case, if this thread is to be believed. I disagree strongly with the notion of muzzling new users, both because it seems gratuitously obnoxious and because it is an insufficiently targeted response.

My reaction to this is colored somewhat by the fact that I finally got around to setting up this account (after lurking for a while) specifically so I could post to a specific node, which I'm guessing is not a unique situation. In my case it was a reply, so your idea (at least as originally expressed) wouldn't have made much difference, but I'm not willing to make the blanket assertion that anybody who's in a hurry to post something should be flatly refusesed, and sent back to the cloister to contemplate the nature of the Buddha for a day or two.

On the other hand, you seem to be strongly of that opinion--would you mind explaining a bit more why?

I consider myself to be an ancient based on internet time (I've had access more or less for 11 years running, certainly not from the start but predating Netscape). At my first exposure to newsgroups in the earlier 90s, a strong mantra was propigated, "Read before you post"; generally most NG FAQs (which were posted at least weekly) suggesting that new users should lurk before they post anything for at least 3 days. This drastically decreased noise, and generally most questions that were asked in such groups were beyond the FAQ. In most newsreaders at that time, this was even in the documentation for those as well. Of course, being sufficiently archic at that time, it did take time to learn how to use the newsreader itself.

Come Netscape and AOL, and the lack of distinction made for USENET and the web. Because of how the USENET interfaces are handled, users rarely saw anything that told them to lurk before posting, and people would jump right into the group without looking at FAQs or other topic headers. Many of these were FAQish questions, and thus began the rather major shift of USENET from being useful to being only mildly so. (this is about 1995, just as far back as Google has the archives at this time; you need to go back even further than that to see this). While there was a lot of noise generated by spamming newsgroups, the remaining posts still had a worse S/N ratio than before. Today, it's only gotten worse, as we now have HTML posts, and newsreaders that break standard convention with how posts are formatted.

But in terms of PM, the fact that it's easy to post any question could artificially be lowering the S/N ratio that other monks have found to be disheartening. If there was a *small* barrier to prevent those that might be posting a FAQish question, the S/N ratio would increase dramatically.

Is it neccessarily muzzling new users? IMO, no, because it only happens once (for the first time you post), and you have the ability to lurk even then. I can think of situations that you might come in as a new user and wish to post ASAP where the question is legit and an answer needed quickly and can't be handled easily in the CB, but the number of other situations where you want a fast answer as a new user (homework due, workwork due) outweight these.

There's lots of other things to put up a small barrier to the first post to prevent the noise, such as restating how to post, where to post, where the FAQs are, pointing the user to searches and other possible answers, etc etc. But these are easily ignored no matter how much visual clues you give the user, and those new users that are in the case where they need the answer fast and don't want to do the work are going to ignore such warnings moreso than other users. So some mechanism built into the site that slows down the first post seems to me to be the only way to reduce the number of FAQish questions and improve S/N.

---

Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

Recently there have been a number of suggestions for a separate 'newbie' area to deal with the perceived distaste of answering simple questions. I don't think that people are tired of answering simple questions, but, as you say, are tired of poorly-formatted questions that make it clear the person didn't consider RTFM (granted, the person may not know the manual exists, but the basic search facility on the site is obvious enough). Having a separate area for these types of questions might be better than a complete ban of impromptu questions and could address the source of frustration.

What I suggest (without completely backing it myself) is a distinction between anon and non-anon posts. The proposed waiting period as well as other possible measures (for example, displaying a random site tutorial instead of the gates at first connection) could be applied only to named accounts. Deciding to register a name would then demonstrate an intention to participate in the site. Anon postings could be free of such restrictions, which means that someone could still pop in, ask a question, get an answer and never return (but perhaps go on to build some amazing free software tool, for all that we know).

Once the questions are divided (roughly) into member and non-member questions, an option could be added to 'display (or not) anon root-level posts'. People who want to could concentrate on the (possibly) researched questions, and those who don't mind the other questions can go right on answering them. Since there's already an option to not display unapproved posts, I don't think this would divide the monastery too much (but I may well be wrong).

My background is actually economics. I wanted to be an economist, but I wound up programming. Go figure.

One of the lessons one learns in economics is that if something is perceived as valuable, but it's free (in terms of money, time, effort, etc.), the demand will outstrip the supply. I think this concern is being raised here.

An interesting example that I recall reading about was in the early days of the Medicare program. Many elderly people were enjoying free trips to the doctor but apparently had nothing wrong with them. As it turns out, many of them just wanted to do something. As a result, Medicare was going broke. Simply by adding a minimal co-pay (it was around three to five dollars, I can't recall), the number of trips to the doctor by this group dropped dramatically. I'm not trying to debate whether this was right or appropriate. The point is simply this: even the slightest barrier to getting an answer could potentially improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

Cheers,
Ovid

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