Let's pretend I accept that. Let's pretend that all the duplicate thread starters (often on the same page) are completely new to forums and don't understand how they work.u must know that some people never used a forum before. they dont know whats a thread, a post, a poll.
Let's take somebody on their first new and exciting journey into the world of forums.
Ok, so you get to the main page. You see a bunch of things you can click on. I'll take the liberty of assuming that even somebody who's unfamiliar with a forum will be familiar with the Internet and clickable links, if I may...
One of those "things to click on" says "New Multi-Boxers & Support". Hmmm. Ok, I'm clearly new. Let's start there.
Hey, there's a couple of clicky things in the description too. It says "New To Dual/Multi-boxing? Checked the Wiki and still not sure on something? Having problems? Need a Guide? This is the place for you!".
Well, a Wiki sounds like a small furry animal but I know what a "guide" is.
Right there, in the forum description, are two links to perhaps the most important resources we have. The people I'm ranting at are the ones who come stumbling in, register, click somewhere and post their mind-numbing question without ever having had the common decency to look at the links RIGHT THERE in the forum description.
Or to read the first couple of pages in the forum they're thinking of posting on.
None of this demands any prior knowledge of forums - it demands a modicum of restraint, respect, and common sense. Nothing more.
The search often sucks. I said that to begin with. Those of us who have been around for a while can often think of an obscure keyword to find an old thread that we remember from some time ago and it wouldn't be reasonable to expect a newcomer to know that.the search is great, but sometimes, it wont show the results ur after, and new ppl will give up if they never used a forum before.
A case in point is a question posted on General about account ownership names. I remembered a similar thread from ages ago by the keyword "mickey mouse", which was used as an example fake name. Of course I wouldn't expect a newcomer to know that
But things like affinity? Is keyclone free? What free software is available? Why doesn't keyclone work with <game>? Questing vs. instancing? Is x+y+z a viable team? How do I do collection quests? Why do all of my characters talk at the same time? Why do my characters go off in different directions after a while? The thee hundredth simple permutation of a recruit-a-friend question?
And my all-time favourite - "I'm too lazy to even bother reading anything, so can somebody post a personalised guide right here in this thread for me, or even better maybe talk me through everything", usually accompanised by a sprinkle of "lol"s and a couple of sticking-out-tongue smileys?
Come on.
MOST of the frequently occuring questions can be answered by the original poster regardless of their level of familiarity with forums. I bet most boxers never post anything to be honest. They come here, find all they need, and then go off and quietly just do it.
When I respond with my standard bunch of links, I absolutely 100% guarantee you that the answer can be found there, because I would have already checked, but there's no way on God's green earth that I'm going to encourage people to keep asking questions that they can answer for themselves, given sufficient motivation.
If the answer's in any way obscure, and doesn't pop up when I try the search for myself, I'll sometimes post a direct link and a hint on what the keyword was (formations and picture-in-picture are good examples).
I think the problem is that we sometiems give people too much of a break. We encourage them to be lazy and disrespectful by indulging them.we keep building this huge edrama towards new ppl to this forum, when in fact they can be even new to any kind of forums, so give them a break.
I don't accept that a lack of knowledge on how to use forums means they don't know what a box labelled "search" means.
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Originally Posted by 'merujo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=111168#post1 11168
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