Review of Posting Guidelines on Askaboutmoney

I think that the time and effort given by the moderators in general, and ClubMan in particular, far outweighs any financial contribution given by contributors.
This thread is meant to be about moderation in general, not how thankful we all are to the moderators for their time and effort (and I think it is clear that pretty much all of us are). While I have no problem with the moderation of this site others might have and if I may be so bold, that’s what Brendan is looking for; feedback about how the site is moderated.

I think you might be missing the point of some of us "back-clappers", Purple and Gabriel. If our feedback is that we think it is fine as it is, please don't mess with it; then that's as valid as any other member calling for change. There's no point in Brendan et al changing the way they moderate the site if a) they don't want to and b) the majority think it is fine as it is.

Rebecca

I agree MissR, It's just that the thread is becoming about funding the site etc. A worthy topic but not what this one is about IMHO.

Most of the thread is not about funding but is about feedback and suggestions on moderation, management and layout of the site. The funding issue has distracted from things a bit largely because of the suggestions and subsequent confusion in some quarters about moderators benefiting from donations. Brendan has been doing sterling work in separating the wheat from the chaff in this thread and keeping it on topic. If necessary he might want to split funding related issues into a separate thread.

If people are concerned about the level of posts that could be avoided by the poster doing a quick search first, perhaps the search functionality could be highlighted when the person registers? Maybe make all new members visit the search page?

(A little Flash demo of the search functionality that has to be played for a person to register might be useful, or something similar that is available as a permanent link on the homepage? I don't have that skill though, or I'd volunteer.)

However, in giving out about repetitious posts, we should remember that we all started here posting what we considered to be very important questions that hadn't quite been asked or answered before. (I certainly did!) I think once people see how to search then they use it, but it's not always obvious to new visitors to the site.

sun_sparks said:

However, in giving out about repetitious posts, we should remember that we all started here posting what we considered to be very important questions that hadn't quite been asked or answered before. (I certainly did!) I think once people see how to search then they use it, but it's not always obvious to new visitors to the site.

Click to expand...

True - and I don't think that most people (contributors or moderators) are hard on people who are new and post queries that happen to have been asked already. In most cases they point them to this fact, the search feature and sometimes even specific threads or search results. However established posters who are more familiar with the site and the fact that many issues have been previously covered are a different matter.

That suggestion about highlighting the search feature at registration time is very interesting. A simple way to do this might be to tune the registration/activation email that is sent out to include an explanation. However this won't help the three or so people a day who contact Brendan because they are unable to complete the registration for one reason or another (often because their spam filter gobbles the AAM registration/activation email or they simply don't read it).