Poll-4 Is More Emphasis on the Forum Guidelines Needed?

[mmm4444bot]

This poll is for the active membership. This poll is anonymous (no one, including moderators and site administrators, can see who participates).

There are a variety of mechanisms this forum can implement to encourage/force new members to not only read the complete forum guidelines but to comply as well. This poll concerns whether additional protocol is needed, in order to increase compliance with the guidelines. The question of how to accomplish such changes is not a part of this poll.

 

[stapel]

This poll is for the active membership. This poll is anonymous (no one, including moderators and site administrators, can see who participates).

There are a variety of mechanisms this forum can implement to encourage/force new members to not only read the complete forum guidelines but to comply as well. This poll concerns whether additional protocol is needed, in order to increase compliance with the guidelines. The question of how to accomplish such changes is not a part of this poll.

Is there some way to, perhaps, prevent posting until they've at least checked the box for "I have read and agree to comply with the above guidelines"? I mean, they'll probably all just click the box and proceed, same as we all do with EULAs, but....

 

[mmm4444bot]

Is there some way to, perhaps, prevent posting until they've at least [met bare minimums of protocol] …

Yes. All threads submitted by new members are automatically moderated by the system. These threads are posted only after a moderator approves them.

My thinking here is that any student request by a new member that does not conform to a protocol (to be determined) for students' first requests for help would be bounced back to them for editing and reposting.

I need to conduct some experiments with dummy new-user accounts (I don't have first-hand knowledge of the current registration process), but I sense that something along the lines of the idea in this thread could be made to work.

 

[mmm4444bot]

Ah, another thought occurred, stapel. Perhaps you were thinking of students who've had their first three threads approved in a thread, only to start a new thread that's still lacking some required, basic information. If so, you're corrent -- threads posted by such "repeat offenders" will not be automatically moderated (i.e., students who already have three approved posts).

Off the top of my bald head, I can't think of a way to automatically catch such situations. My first thought is that such students would have already been exposed to our protocols in their first thread. Those who continue to start new threads that violate the guidelines (i.e., seriously lacking basic information) would need to be manually caught by moderators or flagged by other regular contributors (and, perhaps, bounced-back -- or handled however the majority decides).