I thought I could harness some of the energy that seems to be going into the current "disappointed at the female thread" thread into what seems to be an increasing issue - new posters coming in, asking a question, taking up people's time and apparently not bothering to return. If they do return, they certainly don't bother acknowledging the assistance. Often, but nowhere near always, questions are homework-like.

I'm sure Jeremy and the mods have given this a lot of thought over the years, but I thought I'd open up debate on the issue. It certainly seems to have escalated recently (perhaps it's just my perception). I've also sensed an increased level of frustration from the more helpful members at LQ at this behaviour.

One solution may be to have new members locked into the intro/general threads until a mod chooses to release them into the wider forum.

Another may be to give a wider membership the ability to push suspect posts into a "potential troll" forum (not called that of course).

Or even a separate reporting category that highlight mods to a suspect post (I'm sure the guys don't have anything else to do with their time!).

Just a couple of ill thought out suggestions to open with.

BM

I agree it is annoying and I, too, have perceived an increase in the number of "hit and run" posters lately. Maybe its cyclical? I don't think we should lock new members until released by the mods. I think we just need to suck it up and accept it's part of this forum experience. The fact is, the OP that never returns to acknowledge our extremely accurate answer may still help someone else in the future having the same problem.

Maybe we could start a thread in the newbie subforum for quick questions/homework/etc. It may not solve the problem but it may lessen/contain it. One problem that I see wit this approach is actually redirecting them to the correct place.

There is a difference between generic questions and specific issue related questions. I think that homework is quite easy to spot depending upon:

• The intelligence of the poster. Many cheating students are too lazy to even try to disguise the homework question.
• Lack of factual context. Poster does not mention any specific Linux distribution or version or other particulars of the issue.

The greatest encouragement for folks who post this type of question is for members to answer the simple questions that are easily Googled or searched in the LQ archive.

I wish I could offer some solution, but as long as members answer the questions there is no reason for "fly by night" or lazy students to post them.

As I understand it, soon there will be winter exams in schools (depends on country, but I think most countries have exams before "new year" or christmas). I think this is the cause of getting "flyby" posters. They will magically disappear... within two months.

I think it is a bad idea. IF poster has little amount of messages, it doesn't mean he is "flyby". Sometimes people might register just to get answer for one complex question, get info, say "thanks" and never visit forum again. If you'll add limit that will depend, say, on number of messages, some people will start posting short messages only to reach required number of messages. I saw this happening on other forums.

Personally, I have nothing against homework questions, as long as posters don't expect that someone will waste their time without gaining anything in return. It would be nice to have some kind of freelancer site where "homeworkers" could be redirected - so they'll solve their problems quickly, without much effort, but not for free.

I just choose to ignore the fly-bys. Sure it's annoying when you take time to work something out, but what else can you do? If you start making up too many rules, you'll just scare people off.

For me, I ignore anything with 'URGENT' in the title; that just reminds me of all the Nigerian princes and princesses who want to give me money and want a response in 24 hours - hahaha - it's an implicit ultimatum. I figure anything with 'URGENT' can wait until hell freezes over before anyone bothers to read it.