Hey. Just something that might be usefull. Why not create special forum section where unregistered guests could post and therefore could get answers without forced registration? Sure i know people might abuse it but then could create time limit based on ip address for creating multiple threads or posting 100 posts in row. Not sure if registered people should get post count there but still having special place to ask anything without registration sounds reasonable and fair. Would be nice addition to already great forum. Some people just want answer to one or two questions..

Wouldn't that be a paradise for spammers?

That solution won't work.

The kind of people who would intentionally abuse it are also the kind who would manipulate their IP addresses, e.g. with proxies.

The people who actually "care" to answer wouldn't/shouldn't find it to be "too much" to spend a few minutes to register, IMO. On the contrary, it is the people who land up here just to seek answers to the ill formed questions and then vanish (without following up ever), are the ones for whom this "Guest forum" will be useful.

1 members found this post helpful.

Registering has been made as easy as possible while adhering to good practices. The "guest" section would be abused (this is the internet, after all) and who do we ban in the cases of abuse? If someone wants an answer without registering, well, we already provide that. I can't see what LQ would gain by this - no extra registered members, no longstanding members and so on - and we could only really lose.

If people want an answer to their question without registering and don't like to search, they can always jump on an IRC channel and do it that way.

@XavierP Actually you would gain. I was thinking that only registered people could answer those threads so that they had reason to register and not fool around when making reply. And guests could make let's say 1 thread per day or longer period. There could be automatic thread deletion for casual stuff problems to make people interested in registering and if not then they would just get answer. Also friendly forum attracts more people. Abusers? Anything can and is abused if needed but one small area is easier to control than whole forum. Anyway i was waiting official response. Okay then i will mark this as solved but no need close this yet.

Are you saying that the forum is currently not friendly, and the only way to make it friendly is to implement your recommendation?

Also, I fail to see how a new forum design specifically for hit-and-run posters (who just want to take what they want, as fast as they can, and leave) would end up being "friendly."

And what will be the way to ban the unregistered people who post spam and call others names?
Ban their IP address?

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i think this will bring more trouble only and would divert our real intentions....
spammers are now hard to block only on the basis of ip addresses.
There will be countless blocked ip addresses and that would definitely create a lot of mess around here.
And BTW,it is no hard job to just register and get your job done

Warning
This is the private opinion of a member who happens to be a moderator:

I would like to the registration process tightened a little, not loosened or eliminated. I would like to see one or 2 more fields made mandatory: say, location & distro.

2 reasons: I want to know more about who I dealing w/, & I want to deal w/ people who value my answers enough to take the time for a more lengthy registration.

archtoad,

What are you going to judge by knowing their location, BTW?
I have seen many regular members here still not filling up their location field, and even when asked, they choose to keep mum. Forcing information from people is not a good idea, IMO.

The goal should be to attract the quality people rather than just more people.

1 members found this post helpful.

Maybe having the distro field mandatory is a good idea, but I don't understand making location mandatory whatsoever. In my opinion, it shouldn't be any of your business to know where everyone lives, and it's not like it matters anyway.

Making the distribution field mandatory is not a good idea in my eyes. While it may help sometimes, if the OP doesn't give that information in his initial post, it can also scare away newbies. I have seen many posts where it had to be explained to newbies what a distribution is, before they were able to tell us which distribution they use. Forcing those people to fill out a field in a form that they simply don't understand can drive them away from LQ before they even have the chance to get an answer to their problem, and this clearly can't be the intention.

1 members found this post helpful.

1st, I obviously should have said something like:
Even though "say" means "for example", I wonder if your reactions would be different if I had phrased differently.

In any case, my main point is that I would like to see the registration process require more investment of time & thought. People value things that take effort.

From http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/:
Now why I chose those 2 as my examples.
Location gives me insight into the probable native language & possibly the culture of the poster. It's not about judgement, but understanding. If I know where someone is coming from, literally, as well as figuratively, I can better understand him/her.

Distro should be an obvious choice.

Age could be a guide to, an indicator of, maturity.

Again:
The goal is more important than any particular mechanism.

My concern was not about judgement but about privacy. And I would be surprised if no one else feels similarly.