This is an ongoing discussion, and I’d love to hear feedback on this topic:
We could require trust level 1 for everyone to start new topics in any developer category. And while I pushed this idea back at first (because I thought the requirement was posting a certain amount of topics), I think this is the way to go for the developer categories because developers are used to digging in first, and it will help to decrease moderation and frustration work in these categories. (by a lot of wrongly started topics with technical support questions on wallets and whatnot)
Trust level 1 means:
User must “enter” 5 topics before promotion to trust level 1.
User must “read” 30 posts before promotion to trust level 1.
User must “spend” 10 minutes reading posts before promotion to trust level 1.
If we add such requirements, it must be clear and visible for any new users that they have to reach them before they are able to post in that category.
I agree with your concerns @adatainment . And it would be nice to post a pinned topic somewhere that informs the new user that we do have “Developers” category and it requires them to reach trust level 1.
@andreassosilo this is not needed. If we do this, the developer categories will be visible for everyone; only to start a topic or reply you need to read a certain amount of posts.
(In contrast the Contributor category, which is completely hidden until you reach a certain trust level)
@adatainment have you measured that in the past? It’d be interesting to know what percentage of (sub-standard) posts we are talking about. Yes, less noise would help everyone to focus more easily on the relevant stuff. On the other hand, a low entry barrier creates an open and welcoming atmosphere even in technical categories.
I personally, don’t mind skimming over lots of irrelevant topics and I’m well aware that some of those topics are just too silly to put my energy into them in the same way that some of those topics are just too advanced for me to be able to contribute anything meaningful - it cuts both ways.
I’d say, if you can show that you can successfully weed out some significant percentage (e.g. 15%) of posts that are not suitable for the category, it may be a good idea to raise the entry barrier - otherwise I wouldn’t bother.
I don’t have numbers for you, but the moderators are moving posts from the developer categories daily which sucks up too much time if you ask me.
The question is really: can we expect a developer to spend at least 10 minutes reading through 5 topics with around 30 posts before he posts something? And in my opinion the answer is a clear yes to this.
(You need this time just to be sure that the question you have has not already been asked.)
Yes, requiring a certain amount of research before posting can be expected. In case of doubt, I’d say go ahead and try it out. Folks can always post in a more general category i.e. the cost for them is low
I am 100% with tthis approach, we have countless topics from users (not their fault) perception which somehow gives an impression that:
Wallet queries can be directly solved by devs (misunderstanding being developer subsection will help them get response from directly wallet devs).
Pool Operations often confused with dev group
Also, this does not limit any new developer joining the forum from posting, as they’re able to comment on general tags.
I can vouch myself for having atleast 25-30 posts (weekly) having to be edited out from developers groups in the recent past. Important to note here: Users might not see this happening because moderators are already on it and moving topics to other groups actively.