Newbie Button

[Big D]

the newbie button

I've seen mention of it and complaints about it before.. people who don't really know much on how to use a forum effectively.

I've had that problem before on forums I've run and moderated as well. We ended up putting pretty much a shiny red button above the menus saying 'click here if you've never used a forum before' basically, and it went to a basic instruction manual for how to use forums, etiquette. Might be of some help.


side note: how much control over this forum software does the admin(s) have? given its vBulletin (one of my favorite commercial software packages), I believe I saw mention of a plugin during my travels that might help with the link spam. If there's an interest, I'll see if I can track it down.

 

[KaraCooks]

I'll push the suggestion out to the Admin.

Honestly having a "newbie button" (IME) doesn't work all that well. You can post things everywhere and people who aren't going to read them, just aren't. Even if they click through, they probably won't read the materials.

I also have run, owned, and admin'd message boards and there will always be poeple who just don't want to be bothered with all that.

 

[Big D]

Oh I definitely agree, some just don't care, others are that clueless. I saw on average... about a ~25% drop in the more mundane questions. I figure if that's maybe 10 a week that get taken care of, that's 10 less to worry about for the 30 minutes of work it takes usually. true?

Which sites have you run? just curious

 

[ChefChiTown]

the newbie button

I've seen mention of it and complaints about it before.. people who don't really know much on how to use a forum effectively.

I've had that problem before on forums I've run and moderated as well. We ended up putting pretty much a shiny red button above the menus saying 'click here if you've never used a forum before' basically, and it went to a basic instruction manual for how to use forums, etiquette. Might be of some help.

Just to play Devil's advocate here...

If people don't know how to use forums, then they're not going to understand that they should click on some sort of "Newbie Button". Learning to use a forum properly (at least in the "I'm-no-longer-annoying" sense) comes with experience, IMO.