I'm sure this might have been brought up already but at least in my time here at this forum I have not seen the suggestion come up yet.

As many of you may have noticed, at random intervals there is an influx of new users to the boards who ask a lot of questions. I have probably answered the same ones multiple times in a row. I have no problem doing this at all but sometimes my answers may be quite long and so I have recently resorted to making a small pre-determined response and just copy/pasting it with the necessary modifications.

Do you all think it would be useful to come up with a fairly simple sort of sticky topic that we can simply link to if necessary? It would save many of us the trouble of reiterating certain ideas or recopying links for a specific topic and it's certainly more effective than the infamous "use the search function!"

Essentially the topic would be more of an FAQ than anything else. I was thinking of ideas along the lines of basic tips for getting faster, links to youtube tutorials, links to cubing website, basic explanations for the common solving methods, list of links to different shops, basic explanations of notation and commutators, memorization tips, link to p|astic's building FAQ etc. Something along those lines.

Your thoughts?

yeah i tried to put up a fuss about stickies a few months ago.

fruitlessly.

i'm all for a cleaner forum.

How about a beginner's forum? I think http://www.speedsolving.com handles this well. I'm not so sure about other subforums, but I think a beginner's would do the most clearing of annoying posts by new users and would be the most beneficial.

Yeah, but didn't Sandy say he wanted to do that stuff after he upgraded? Too bad the full updated didn't work the other day.

My 2 cents are the same as for p|astic's good work on the Building-FAQ:
-Don't make it sticky but make an article out of it.

Additionally: I am against the idea of a beginners forum. I think the beginners leave this board after a short enough time or they become "experienced" in an comparably short time.

A 'Beginner's' board scares people off.

I certainly would not feel welcome joining a forum and getting sent to a beginner's board.

That would also cause the members who are new to the forum, but are experienced to have to wait longer to share with the community. For example, VeryWetPaint, DLitwin and the.drizzle were great additions to the community right off the bat. To have them go to a beginners board wouldn't be the best.

A beginner's board is just a place to post questions if you're a beginner and don't know whether to risk posting something pointless in another forum (or want people to approach your post willing to help out and explain unfamiliar things). It doesn't seem to hurt at speedsolving.com, and I like allowing newcomers to post virtually anything without clogging up serious talk.
And it's not mandatory, anyhow. I don't remember VeryWetPaint, DLitwin and the.drizzle posting "i wannu lern how 2 put stickers on mai coob" in the speedsolving forum; their posts belonged in the appropriate forums, and there'd be no need to make them wait...

A FAQ sticky or a Read Before Posting sticky would help I guess

i think that would make newcomers feel unwelcome, and besides, how can they learn without experienced person's help?

The experienced people who want to help would visit the newcomers forum. It's not like they would be left alone.

All I do is check "View posts since last visit", so anything posted gets noticed. I'm sure that many people do the same.

Also, a little red flag saying "Hey, you might have to deal with some inexperience if you look at this" may just help stop some complaints from both ends.

Well obviously you need this sticky just as much as they do...Think about this

Rule 1

Post in the Appropriate Forum.
Please post your topics in the most appropriate forum. This is primarily to seperate the advertisements from the general conversation.


Maybe you should've posted it under Comments and Suggestions.

Point well taken; you are completely right. and look at this - I've been going here for over a year...

But I guess it's too late now. So in any case, I think if a sticky isn't feasible (a lot of people may ignore it/not notice it anyways) a text document that we could simply link to would be really beneficial. As far as the beginner's board idea I'm not completely sure. I think it could be useful but I also agree with Pembo to some extent.

If there seems to be a consensus on creating something like this I'll go ahead and start compiling topics. Anyone want to volunteer a section or submit ideas for different ones?

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