This is an awesome idea!!!!!!

Good lookin out.

It's frustrating as hell as a regular user of the forums to see the same ten questions asked over & over again.

Its one of the reasons I rarely use anything but the private messages here anymore.

+1

Hi guys,

We have considered something like this and are looking at ways to encourage users to search for topics first, however we're a little reluctant to put too many barriers in the way of posting, particularly for new users as it's often a discouragement to use the forum at all rather than an encouragement to search. We do keep track of the way people behave on the forum when looking for information and are keeping our options open on what we might implement, but research suggests this isn't necessarily the best way to go about encouraging people to search first. Appreciate the feedback though.

never really thought of it like that, Just from my own perspective. Makes sense I guess. But It can be frustrating as hell to see the same 20 odd questions over & over again. Especially when if they read the manual half of the stuff is all in there.

Yeah we do understand the frustration, but it's "the nature of the beast" in a way.

Rest assured, we're always working on improving the site, and this is definitely part of it :-)

All good, glad to know u guys r on top of it. But can't really say im shocked. Ur customer service model is awesome!

+1 on the awesome customer service (no brown nose).

Adrian, you're completely right in what you say. Would it be easy to have a personal setting to not show new threads from new members? haha

WTF - another one, this is getting frustrating. serato.com

Brainwave - can we have a series of questions when signing up to proove that the person has some genuine knowledge and interest in becomming a member of the forum.

Something along the lines of
or

thats an advert if u click the link it goes to a thai toy company on ebay, dude is from thailand. Do the math, its his 1st post.

Clearly an advert!

Exactly...if you ask new memebers some fundamental djing questions before they are able to register, spammers like that guy won't be able to register!

While this could be a good idea, we also get a bunch of non-english speaking users on the forum who may not be able to get passed a step like this. And if a Google search is enough to get you passed that step, it doesn't stop the "Human Spammers" - which I can assure you we get - that start discussions just like the one above.

Also, remember what you don't see is that for the 1 spammer that gets through occasionally, there's 1,000 we've stopped using various filters and IP blocks. Users also MUST verify their email address they've used to sign up and agree to terms and conditions before posting on the forum, so SPAM that gets through is generally humans sitting at a computer with nothing better to do.

Stopping unwanted discussions is a difficult game, one we don't take lightly and have taken several precautions to keep on top of. And remember if we do the job right, you don't actually see that we're doing our job right :-)

And be sure to always report posts you think are SPAM - Nicky Blunt, I can't help but notice you made an "IBTL" call but didn't actually report the guy :-)

I'd hope you agree that there's a lot less SPAM on this forum than many of them, and we intend to keep it that way.

Oops, I totally forgot to report him!

My bad, I do usually report the ad's. (Thats about all i ever do report)

Sorry.

Ill try to be more vigilant!

You're spot on with that Adrian, and for that you behind the scenes deserve some appreciation. Big Ups!

+1

OK as a noob to these forums:
Firstly this is not a unique issue for this forum. I used to spend tons of time on a forum about hiking and there, there were always the same questions about which gear people should buy. Annoying indeed!
Secondly I always try to search before posting and frankly the search function on this website sucks. It searches the whole website and there's not a forum specific search function. If you want to encourage people (noob or old timer) to search before posting, make the search better. Add the search forums only function and make it such that it has options like omitting words from the search, search in results, etc. Anything that gets me the result I need in an instant.

And another feature these forums need: something like an RSS reader or last 50 discussions function. I spend this evening reading some of these forum threads only to realize after reading half the discussion people were discussing issues or requests for software back in 2006, stuff that has already been fixed in updates now that we are mid way through 2011.
Another cool feature from another hiking forum: there each member got a rating based on how many years people were active on the forum as well as how active they were. Basically someone posting or replying with status 0.3 is clearly a new kid on the block, some people with status 5.0 or higher clearly knew what they were talking about.

The problem with that is the fact that time spent on a forum doesn't equal knowledge. Some "DJs" on here spend more time on Serato's website than they do on Serato's product. Also, I like to believe that there are always new and talented DJs getting on Scratch Live all the time. Their knowledge of the game shouldn't be discounted because they just recently registered on the forum.

Oh the irony!

How about make a basic FAQ on each forum with the top 10-20 questions in them and the answers and make it a sticky. They hopefully will look at the Quick help FAQ first and see the question. Of course that is if its the same basic stuff we get over and over.