What I REALLY would like in this forum...

[eluser]slowgary[/eluser]
But you'd still get posts asking questions that have previously been answered.

I saw a nice feature in a forum somewhere that does a search on your subject when you attempt to create a new thread. In other words, when someone tries to create a thread with the subject "htaccess problems", the forum would do a search with that subject and output something like "Are you sure your problem hasn't already been answered?"

I also like the idea of a "Yahoo Answers" style FAQ that would answer the commonly asked questions more directly. As it stands, some of those so called "easy problems" still require a lot of digging through threads, and not everyone has the patience for that. If there were a more definitive source for answers, moderators could begin removing new threads that ask those questions. I realize that there's a wiki, but it seems very difficult to find anything by searching. As an example, I know there's a good guide somewhere in the wiki regarding htaccess, but if you go and search the wiki for 'htaccess' it's nowhere to be found, why?

[eluser]Evil Wizard[/eluser]
Most Knowledge base web apps check keywords in the post to do a search to list potential articles which could answer the question. I know my hosting does this for submitting support tickets. Although I suppose there will still be people who will look at the response/answer and think "that doesn't apply to my problem because..." and post the thread anyway

[eluser]kurucu[/eluser]
Interesting (old) thread!

I help to manage a forum and these problems face us all the time. To be honest, after 8 years we still haven't found an answer. I think it boils down to the following symptoms (but I provide few suggestions for their alleviation):

- Weak moderation. I don't mean poor moderation, I mean not gutsy. Scrub the scrap and direct the user toward the guidelines. There is a fine line between doing this in a friendly manner and not, but to be honest, you have to decide on the purpose of the forum and then be pretty hard-lined on things that don't fit that aim. Not all forums can afford to do this, and many are afraid that they'll scare people off. However, you can't please everyone and by keeping only the useful/unduplicated material, you'll have more people reading the forum and improve the contributions to it.

- Reputation is difficult, and often discriminatory. However, it can be a quick and easy way to provide automatic moderation (-10 hides the post etc). A new member might make one mistake and quickly feel flamed though.

- Professional doesn't work. People don't always know the level of their questions; and they rarely know the level of their own 'professionalism'. You end up building a clique and turning off newcomers who, to be honest, just don't need to be special on your forum. Instead, try to promote a good culture and trust that others will want to post with the same quality as they read. If not, question whether you wish for them to be a large contributory force.

- Put new users into a new user group. Read on before flaming... This is not the same as making people work towards a professional status or building cliques for one reason: They are there for only a few posts or a short amount of time. We have set it to ten posts, and during that time all posts are moderated. Most people sail through without even noticing, and the rest will question their input. It is not sufficient to make anyone feel left out, and it makes a massive difference to the quality on the other side as during that time they have read and absorbed the forum culture and content.

- Remember that the forum is a forum. It is where you ask questions and discuss. Like in real life, questions will be asked and answered many times. The wiki should be the destination of those answers and progressive answering used to evolve the wiki content. I don't know how you'd encourage that.

- Duplicate Jedd. I love his responses to clearly ridiculous and un-researched questions, it has me laughing out loud and seems to get the point across. It probably upsets a few people though!

Either way, the community here is great and the amount of work that goes into the management and contribution of members is evident. My blue-sky ideas would be things like prompting users to move certain posts into the wiki (maybe allow other members to recommend posts by clicking them), (automatic) tags to quickly cross-relate content (e.g. a hundred 'how do I use form validation' questions). Merge the related threads. Perhaps also make links to the two main sources of documentation more prominent on every page, and try to provide links to the wiki/ug when someone searches/posts.

[eluser]Damien K.[/eluser]
@thomas Hunter: I wonder how you came up with the 100 posts threshold. You have exactly 100 posts, what a coincident!

I just recently joined the forum, primary to give back to the community as I find CI to be quite a nifty framework. I haven't had the need to ask a question yet so all my posts are just my 2-cents to questions. I have to concur with some of the previous posts regarding people asking questions that they should really not. Some questions are clearly to solicit help to finish their school assignments. I just ignore these. Actually, I only try to be helpful in responding to questions that don't have yet a reply for like a day's time -- no need for a new comer like myself to bloat up the thread when all the experts have already commented on it.

A user ranking system might be a good idea to "improve" this forum.

[eluser]Xeoncross[/eluser]
[quote author="xwero" date="1246369663"]i suggest a forum that is only accessible via search, just a wild idea.[/quote]

Oh, I didn't know you could fine posts another way. Maybe I'm spending too much time with google...