Irrlicht Engine

Would you forum mods consider cleaning up the FAQ in the Beginners Forum please and then locking it down? It's gotten somewhat dated and littered with posts that really aren't FAQs. I'm asking this so that noobs can be referred there and find useful info without reading through the other non-essential junk.

Thx for your consideration.

yeah or completely wipe out the faq and restructure it. because its a real mess right now. and add all the n00b questions that are out there, that would be such a great addition

hmmmm, you guys don't really want me to have a nice vacation, do you?

I'll comment it with Niko to see what's best.

i would do it but i am no administrator or moderator so you have to do it hehe


ps: if you want us to help, just drop a line if this will stop the newbies from posting so much 1000-times-answered questions, then a few hours of work will be worth it

I might wipe it off so that a new FAQ thread can be started with your tips to newbies. This way, instead of cleaning the existing one, we can monitor what's being posted.

let me know what you think.

but we have to rescue the other faq threads that actually contain useful information

@afecelis - thx for the consideration on this and sorry 'bout the vacation...

I think the existing FAQ is worth keeping if the extraneous posts were deleted and the FAQ got re-focussed again. Bal's original post is still very helpful IMO with a bit of updating. I know there's good info to be read but it's kinda mixed up with the "other stuff".

I agree with GFX in that if we could get things tidied up, we might be able to direct the noobs there more readily and perhaps cut down some of the, shall we call them, "abrupt" responses.

I would be happy to lend whatever help I can.

I think that we could also remove a lot of useless noob posts from the Advanced Help forum by only letting people with over 50 posts post in any forum other than the Beginners Help.
Just an idea.
________
SMOKE WEED EVERY DAY

good idea disanti! this would also force people to actually log in for a change instead of lazily posting as guest (me included)

disanti wrote:I think that we could also remove a lot of useless noob posts from the Advanced Help forum by only letting people with over 50 posts post in any forum other than the Beginners Help.
Just an idea.

that would only encourage spamming tho

i think we should use a ranking system instead of post counts. if the user has a "noob" ranking, just ban him from the other forums.

but this will be more work, so why not just ban the guest account and leave everything (except the FAQ forum) as it is now?

The only downside I see to a ranking system for who can post where, is that it happens that a user might be new to the forums, but is a highly experienced programmer.
I'd hate to see someone like that locked out of some forums, if they can contribute to advanced topics (3d maths, etc)

I agree with dropping the "guest" feature, except *maybe* keeping it just for the open discussion or something.

The only downside I see to a ranking system for who can post where, is that it happens that a user might be new to the forums, but is a highly experienced programmer.
I'd hate to see someone like that locked out of some forums, if they can contribute to advanced topics (3d maths, etc)

100% full ack so a ranking system is useless. the only way to keep the forum clean is:

a. turn the guest account off (at least for a few forums)
b. clean out/re-organize the FAQ

i would suggest to first save the faq, then look at all threads if there is something useful. then create a thread in the new, empty faq, with a thread like this: "[FAQ] How to load a level" or "[TOOL] Blender .X File exporter" for example. i think we could use several tags like [FAQ], [TOOL] and maybe something else, so that the FAQ stays clean and can be readed easily.

The ranking would work, just prevent users from creating topics, but allow replying to existing ones. Anything posted that's decent can be moved to where appropriate. Then they can still reply to their own post.

The guest account is more of a hinderance (I always forget to login) but yes, it should only be enabled on a few forums. Then maybe appointing another mod to help clean up the duplicate questions.

I think the FAQ should be done in a wiki where everyone can put in their two cents. Then possibly copy some of the big ones to the forum so they can be found with searching.

That's my couple pennies.

We won't solve any problems by limiting what new people can do on the forum, we just need to make it clearer what's expected of them, and enforce forum rules with maybe a warning, X-day suspension, or a ban.

Cleaning up the FAQ's wouldn't hurt either.