I've been reading this forum for let's say more than two years now, if I'm not mistaken. I learned a lot from in here, that I must confess. But in that time the number of posts in this forum has prolly quintupled, if not more.

Now imagine: Someone has just started dealing with audio compression, is totally hilarious that he's found a way to put all of his music on his hard drive, but is totally unsure about what he should use and what not. A friend of his tells him: 'Ey, go to hydrogenaudio.org, they now everything about it'.
Would all of you who you regularly read this forum stand straight and say: 'If I was in that position I would hold my feet and first do a two-month internet and book study about the matter and only THEN start discussing' ?

The reason why I'm writing all this: For a few months now I've seen it happen over and over again, that someone comes in who is in exactly that position, makes a post and gets bashed and beaten out of this for the sheer fun of it, it seems. All they get is cynism, phrases like 'use the search function' and 'this has been discussed before' and so on. I claim that only a fraction of them are really trolls who deserve it that way.

But that's so silly, folks. And gives the site such a bad reputation, one that it actually doesn't deserve. If all of the people coming to this forum would already know everything, then this forum would be stuck on things like 'what are you listening to at the moment'.

I know that I could prolly grab my own nose when I now say: couldn't someone put together a collection of articles and sites those guys could be directed to in a friendly way? But I'm far too less scientifically knowledgeable and would probably only create more 'half-knowledge' than real understanding.

So this is my plea: don't treat them like underdogs or idiots, it's not necessary and not nice. Show them their way round and let them come back with more substance.

Something like Pio2001's thread here?

Edit -- see my post in this thread.

RIV@NVX: yeah, cool collection. I'm thinking about gathering that information on a website. Or simply pointing to that thread. Or both

Hah, it's not too easy. I didn't know about that FAQ myself, 'cos I always visit this site via 'new posts since last visit', not via the board index or so...

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....10766&hl=newbie

You miss the point why newbies ask stupid questions without reading: They want their own topic! There it is in it's shining glory - top of the list and ready to get attention in anyway possible from all these important people! It's like a new land in the world of the internet and they're staking their own claim. Who cares how many flames they get - the more the better. It keeps their stupid question and noble quest for knowledge at the top of the list. It gets viewed and ranted about but we've all missed the fact that we've fallen into the trap - we made him feel special. Sigh, we've created a monster.

I think we also have to not attract idoits to this forum. On other forums (noticeably the DivX.com forums) there has been a great influx of users who do exactly what defiantiger has pointed out. They seem to ask questions that have been answered on every DivX encoding site known to man, yet they don't seem to have checked. Maybe idiot is bit harsh, but it defiantely needs to be more strongly reinenforced that newbie's should do alot of background research before posting on this forum. I know that I myself spent a fair bit of time reading over this forum, the audiocoding.com wiki and numerous other webpages before I started to contribute to discussion.

Here's a quote from fewtch...

I think this is a good step towards educating newbie's.

Gee...I can see entrance exams being introduced before you're allowed to post. Maybe that's not such a bad idea....you allow people to freely add and read posts, but you have to pass some basic MCQ test in order to create a new topic. Sounds a bit regulated, but a quick MCQ test on registration could help these people and stop them from making an ass of themselves.

lol? A nice way to keep the board stable at its current size forever..