Newbie handling!

Joined the forum not so long ago, and have been mainly using the Java Help section, and so this relates to my experience of using the Java Help forum so far, though the suggestion probably applies to other areas too~

I noticed that there are a significant number of newbies who come just to post q's about specific (usually homework related!) problems. The thing is they usually don't bother to read those stickies at the top about "How to post a question" or "How to answer a question in a helpful way" (and I must admit as a newcomer myself, I've only very briefly scanned these articles); and then almost every newbie is then given a lengthy lecture on "How to post a question without annoying forum members" with advice not dissimilar to "Have you tried coding at least SOME of this yourself? We are happy to help but not to do your homework for you", or "Re-submit your post again using CODE tags making it more comfortable for us to read then we'll help you"

So I'm thinking, it might be an idea for newcomers (maybe those with under 10-30 posts, for instance) to receive some kind of forum-specific 'welcome' or 'guidelines' message when they post their first couple of messages, with helpful advice on how best to post questions in a way that will attract helpful answers.

Then we could eliminate all the unnecessary talk of HOW to use the forum, and actually use it instead

If there are newbies posting in the forums that I mod, then nine times out of ten, I'll give them a 'welcome to devshed' in my first post in their thread.

I'm not sure about a guidelines message as there isn't really much you could put except link to the forum guidelines and faq's.

Anyway, you'll notice the ones that don't get any help with their homework - they are the ones that have one post asking you to do it for them, not for how to do it, they want you to post the 10,000 line code as it's due tomorrow and they haven't started it! Those newbies don't get any sympathy, not in my book anyway!

Oh, and a belated welcome to Dev Shed, SilverCapo.

oooo I like the new "You haven't wrapped your code in code tags" message you get when making a new post with non wrapped code, figured that might of come from this suggestion :¬)

Is that new? A script was implemented ages ago that checked to
see if stuff like >script> or <? or <% were in the message with no
[code] tags.

hmmm I never noticed it. Happened to me for the first time today when I stuck a JS include line inside some italic tags instead of in a code block (since it was only line). I do that all the time with Flash stuff, ahhhh, I see, I'm a dork ignore my posts :¬) anyhow, nice feature.

I say make them take a test on the guidelines for posting before they are allowed to post. That will make them remember what they have read when posting!



But Java and other programming languages rarely have </>'s in the code.

That's not exactly a friendly welcome now is it !?

is this part of the test? is 42 the answer? can i stay?