Getting PM's is one thing... being asked basic info: where is she, how much did you pay, WHAT’S HER NUMBER... seriously? How about you F%$#*&@ scroll onto page 1 or better yet? I mean, why would you even want to wait for my slow ass to answer?
The reality is there will always be a minority of reliable people that post on a regular / semi-regular basis... and lurkers that will benefit from it. And when I say post, I mean actual valued information. As others have previously mentioned, there are so many members that just post to increment their post count without ever really contributing, that probably annoys me more than an actual SHILL.
I much prefer to see it stay this way instead of seeing the threads get polluted to no end. I've been using all sorts of forums (not all SP related) and some try to encourage users to introduce themselves, enforce a posting quota and all sorts of mechanisms to encourage postings... all it does is create a crap load of air.
If someone doesn't want to post... who cares... it would probably be crap anyways. And since all they do is lurk and benefit from regular posters what extra value will they actually provide by just acknowledging what we already know? Should they actually TOFT and report it... 90% will be a shill, and the actual 10% will sometimes be taken seriously... at least until someone with board creds actually confirms… sorry for the vent.
Back on the topic of careless PMs, I think there are plenty of newbies that probably have very limited forum experience and just don’t get the required etiquette from the get-go. They might not even know what stickies are. They don’t always deserve to be burnt at the stake for it… even though it really can be annoying and when the flaming starts, it really is a waste (no matter how cruelly entertaining it can be at times) and once they do get it, they get trigger happy and can’t wait to bust the next newbie == more polluted threads.
I think the best solution would be to keep improving the stickies. Lots of good info in this thread:
BEFORE YOU POST , however a little dated. Our reflex should be to simply re-direct them to the right place… and eventually they would get it.
There might even be a vBulletin plugin that could force new users to read through the stickies before they have access to posts. Or not be allowed to PM before a given probation or # of quality posts ? Perhaps a system like reddit by using an upvote/downvote system on posts that will reflect on the OP's (Original Poster) reputation score. The more quality posts; the greater the rep (example:
Ajax Helpful Answer module)? Why not some kind of reward system for people that actually TOFT? Why not redeem that into a lottery ? … or even free access to a lawyer? lol
In conclusion, I think merb is still very well organized. The community is thriving and there really is only a handful amount of crap members and we're pretty good at keeping things clean by alerting MODs when needed. As for those newbies… if there was a way to educate them before we bash them, perhaps it would encourage them to become quality contributors instead of feeling unwelcomed?
Just my 2 cents.
