qwerty: It would perhaps stop some, but i really doubt it would stop many, there are just too many ppl who would continue to post for misguided reasons. Yes, its a pain wading thru a bunch of junk and/or irrelevant posts and i hate it when someone new tells me they used the search feature and found a bunch of bickering so they gave up. But i still think that when you have a public forum you have to expect to see ppl with diff motivations and degrees of common sense. Human nature being what it is, idiotic posts often engender several replies expressing annoyance, which only encourages the original poster to reply yet again.
Seems to me the titles are more for a bit of humour, ie "poohbah" and "carpaltunnel", but i agree that some ppl would take them as some kind of merit badge. As for the rating, i think its pretty much useless.
Altho every case is diff, like codemastr if i see a user has a lot of posts i am more inclined to feel i dont have to explain every little detail and can use more technical terminology. If i see a user has 1 or only a few posts, then i feel i have to explain every little thing to be on the safe side, for example explaining what MOTD is or detailing how to get to options. Considering the number of ppl who rudely reply that they arent an idiot just cause they only have 1 post and already know that stuff, that logic doesnt always work
Masked Critter: re your question, i recently read a comment by a Japanese official about misuse of cell phones that take pics and it reminded me of all forums, IRC and life in general. Essentially he said that regardless of technology, there will always be some ppl who lose their manners. So yes, while there are things/changes that can be done for us to make our world better, so too will there always be ppl who misplace manners and common sense. Its more than a bit unfair that the rest of the world has to be subjected to them, but thats life.
