One of the things I've noticed (And I've only been around 3 weeks to PM, but long enough on 'net time), is that many of the SoPW posts of late that fit the above patterns have been Anonymous Monk or people that only signed up a hour ago. (That's not to say all posts of people in the above catagories are of poor quality for SoPW, of course.) This is very reministent of USENET circa 94-95, when Netscape brought the 'ease' of reading USENET to the unclued public, which made for a large increase in S/N because people did not just read and lurk, or looked for FAQ.

On the problem with the 1-hr askers (that is, those that create the account just to get their question asked), maybe perhaps they should have to wait 2 or 3 days after they create their account before they can post a new SoPW or any other 'parent-less' node; they can reply all they want and use the CB to ask questions, but at least this will help clear up what are clearly FAQ and other previously answered questions.

But that assumes there's no AM function -- I'm not being critical, but I don't see the point of AM for PM, at least, I know how a AC is supposed to work on /. barring trolls and the like, as it's to protect the poster, but what is the harm in posting and replying with perl information, save in some cases like Node 451, such that it needs the AnonymousMonk function? Maybe perhaps AM's should be limited from posting 'parent-less' nodes as well, or have some filter which can analyze the question outside of the CODE and attempt to point the poster to previous replies on that same subject, priot to submitting the post? Or maybe there needs to be hugh honkin', BLINK'ed text that says, prior to entering the question, to use the FAQ and Super Search to determine if the question has been asked before. The guidelines for posting should be very much highlighted to the anonymous user as to avoid lowering the S/N for front-page nodes.

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