Seems like many Evo questions fall into two categories: questions that new owners/site members have, and questions more experienced owners/members have.

Newbies get yelled at to "search" (which they should in most forums), but maybe we can give a nod to them and create an "Evo New Owners" forum to make the searching easier, or better yet give a more relaxed atmosphere for people who don't really know the ins and outs of their Evo or vBulletin.

The idea would be that posting rules would be a little relaxed in this forum: if somebody didn't do a search for a topic first, they wouldn't get jumped on like they might in another forum. In fact, we'd expect to see the same questions again and again, and that would be OK, but just in this forum.

The nice thing about "newbie" forums like this is that they tend to attract people who are patient (and often most knowledgable) and so they stand to spread evolutionm goodwill far and wide.

It also keeps the more experienced owners happier because it increases the "signal : noise" ratio in the other/tech forums.

 

Isn't the Newbie forum OK for that?

 

My take on the Newbie forum is that it is too general - the forum ends up attracting questions about regular Lancers, OZ's, Ralliart, Evo's, as well as general evolutionm questions.

Judging by the scattering of newbie questions, a lot of folks seem to see the Newbie forum and think it's a general evolutionm question forum, so they post in Evo General or one of the more specific tech forums, where depending on their luck they'll either get an answer or told to search.

The vBulletin search function is no Google and sometimes you have to hit the right keywords to get good results; this is an acquired skill. So ideally new Evo owners could have a little more leeway in their own forum.

To be fair, perhaps other Lancer models should have their own "New Owner" forums separate from the Newbie forum but I am biased since I more of the see the demand for an Evo New Owner forum.

 

maybe a "newbie guide" would be more appropriate, or a FAQ section that they be directed to.....

 

i think you guys are right becasue i have a Evo and i am a newbie and no one is nice so thankyou for making this post site for us new users and ownes

 

Personally I think creating more forums at this point is just asking to cause more confusion/frustration and moved threads.

I do think a Newbie FAQ could be useful, BUT I also think a lot of the problem lies in that people often disregard this type of info. "I'm not a n00b!"

I dunno. I'd lean way more towards the creation of a FAQ than another forum. And of course new users will be tested on the information therein.

 

I hear you Hobie. The "New Evo Owner" forum would also need some promotion i.e. on the front page and Forums lobby.

 

This does make sense. Maybe an FAQ to start and if things are still needed for the site, we can add a newbie forum for each vehicle type.

I think the forum will prove handy so that each section has progression of knowledge and we can avoid a ton of repeat questions mixed with great new info.

Mark

 

Playing a little devil's advocate here, but I think it would be just as well if the moderators (including me) stopped "yelling" at people to search and just chalk it up as part of their job, so we'll move/merge the thread and PM the user to let them know in a FRIENDLY, FYI manner.

But on the other hand, it would be nice to split the newbie forum into Evo, Ralliart, and Lancer sections.

 

I personally subscribe to the "help search unless the person is making no effort whatsoever" school of thought. You post for someone to e-mail you with a result and I'm not gonna bother searching for you. Chances are pretty good you're not contributing to the forums if you post an e-mail address for responses.

I think the real issue is that these forums and reposts will further complicate search results, causing more newbie posts unless they are ignored in the standard search (Since there aren't really technical answers in the newbie forums). I've been pushing for this for a while now, but something like multiple newbie forums I think would definitely make its importance more apparent.

 

Right, we don't want to just add more forums to search results.

evolutionm has (what seems like) an underused "Search in a specific forum" feature. It looks like vB is customizable enough that we could have a special page that only searched New Owner forums?

Another idea for the sticky topics in New Owner forums (stolen from the world of web search):

Make sure the first post of a sticky topic has a "keywords" section that contains all reasonable keywords that might be used to search for a topic. This keywords list could be updated by moderators, as they see what words people are using to search for a topic. This could turn a New Owner forum into a real knowledge base.

 

Great post EZ76,
Here's my 2 cents: I think a sticky thread named "glossary for new evo owners" at the top of the General Forum could be extremely helpful. I still often get stumped by technical jargon and have to think twice before figuring it out: bov, egt, evc, lsd, FMIC, DB, TB, cat, SAFC, A/F.... This would be very helpful.