Hit and run signups

[jmacavali]

And to go off of BK's comment, I don't agree that people NEED to tell us why they are here. If this forum demanded that I pleaded my case as to why I deserved the honor of being a member here I would have gotten the impression that this was a place of up-tight egotistical jerks that I didn't want to be a part of and would have gone somewhere else.

This +1...

 

[setishock]

An Inquisition is not necessary. You don't want to spook them off before they sign up. Honestly that idea is absurd. What I was driving at was to sent them an email to prod them a bit to come back and be a part of the forums. Not have a bully at the gate demanding to know why they're here. We'll find out when they post why they're here.

 

[Tech Explorer]

Because who's going to want to do it if they need help ASAP? They answer the question and need to wait for on of the site team members to react. We do not have someone on call 24/7, 365 so if it's Christmas most of us will be out with families and not spend much (if any) time on the forum. But what about for areas of the world that don't celebrate? They'll have to wait a day on what might be a big issue just because we're not here. I'd rather sift through the extra 10-20%.

And these questions are not the same as getting asked questions in an interview IMO. At an interview you're being asked a question to see how you can help them. Here it's usually the other way around: they are looking to get help form us not help us.

If anything Seti's idea is the best because it doesn't negatively impact legitimate potential members like yours would.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are about a dozen site members. How many people a day on average sign up? Sure it's work, but anything worthwhile would require some effort to weed out. Have you polled the staff to see who'd volunteer to do the screening? As far as 24/7, 365 days a year, maybe you can have enough staff members to
take up the slack, maybe not but I don't see this of great importance because most applicants would understand that things slow up during holiday time anyways.

As far as losing good potential signups goes, there's always that risk but I believe it can be minimalized with proper screening questions and again most legitimate applicants would
understand when you explain the basis of the screening questions to them properly (just to let you know, I've done interviewing myself).

I don't have anything to add so you'll have to decide if my idea has merit.

 

[Celegorm]

I already have, and it doesn't. And again I don't see what interviewing outside of the forums has to do with grilling potential members and I've been on both sides on multiple occasions.

So what if I said well you want to continue being a member here, so why do you need to be a member of our forum? You can socialize on the millions of forums on the net, why must we let you on ours? You've already said why you want to be here, but that's not why you need to be here. Oh and if I don't like your answer you get banned.

That wouldn't be fair now would it? That's pretty much what you want to happen to members before they even get the chance to post. It's not fair and it's very confrontational. Particularly since no one ever NEEDS to be part of this particular forum. I never needed to, i wanted to. You never needed to, but you wanted to. Seti never needed to but he wanted to. You don't need to join this one because there are a million of them out there. You join this one because you want to. If we analyzed based on who needed to be here, no one would ever be allowed in.

 

[1337G33k]

When i joined this website, i didn't know how to post threads and such, but gradually over time, i got the hang of it.. Just as Celegorm said, it's not that i needed to, it's because i wanted to. There's a huge difference.

 

[Tech Explorer]

When i joined this website, i didn't know how to post threads and such, but gradually over time, i got the hang of it.. Just as Celegorm said, it's not that i needed to, it's because i wanted to. There's a huge difference.

You know what? It's an interesting question as to why people do join up with this website
I.e. what makes this computer website so special so I'm going to do a survey on it. Thanks for the inspiration.