Post #56497 by Humuhumu on Thu, Oct 23, 2003 8:56 AM

True enough, Jay, and I do think that old conversations are sometimes reinvigorated in a positive way by someone reasking a question we'd asked ourselves earlier.

However, there is a reason the search feature exists. It doesn't hurt to make sure a new user understands it's one of the tools available to them at TC.

No matter how genuinely and warmly you welcome someone, when the honest best way to answer someone's first post is with a post with links to the forums with all the answers a new user is looking for (essentially just being a human search engine for them, which I personally don't mind, but it is a bit silly), about half the time they seem to feel bad for not figuring out to use the search feature themselves. I feel it's a cruddy introduction.

The primary purpose of a FAQ is to make new people feel more welcome. A FAQ is the best introduction you can get to a new online community, and we essentially don't have one! That's not very newbie-friendly of us, in my opinion.