We welcome everyone in our forums. Putting people in categories Iām simply against it. It doesnāt matter what your skill is. It matters if you are interesting and explore new stuff. Also there are no stupid questions. If we have too many recurring questions, we may write a wiki about that problem and how to solve it. Quote the needed part out of it and link the full info to the wiki in the users post. Also we should try to point them into the right direction and help them to help themselves.
For me there is no need for a dedicated Newbies section as we created the forum in the proper categories so it is easy to be found were to go and find the needed information.
Removing the Newbie & Off-topic sections were the best calls you could make. Newbie corner was actually a bit of a mess in the old forum, consisting of various topics, some difficult to categorize as ātrue newbieā ones, with a spectrum of low to high skill leveled answers, essentially creating 2 places for support. I applause.
Iām kinda newbie too, but Iād agree with the decision this time. from the old forum, thereās a lot of posts from newbies, some unanswered, some duplicates, which is a mess.
I only like to suggest that posts never closes, so that whenever a newbie like me needs help and found a solution from an older post by another user, I could directly comment additional questions from their post, rather than creating another new post. This also helps right?
Especially when whilst the symptoms might be similar, since so many things can and do change with rolling or bleeding edge distros like Manjaro, the actual cause of a problem is likely to be different after a few months anyway. And if it isnāt, requiring a new thread be posted will end up indicating that the issue is still relevant.
I see your point, just in my experience from other forums I am into, you should always make use of the search button. 2 or more people having the same problem could be help in just one post is not a bad thing and less clutter. but hey, you guys are the admin, I just follow. Iāll stop here, thanksā¦
You DIDNāTā¦ oh, now, youāve gone and done itā¦ shouldā¦ :shudder: Sorry, couldnāt help itā¦ since what people should do and actually do on support forums often donāt meet expectation ā¦ hence the old ālet me google that for youā being a thing!
I get the teams point "every one is equal weāre all starting from scratch ". But you have to try and understand new manjaro users and those less knowledgeable like myself can feel intimidating and be scared of posting incase its a daft question. The newbies section did make you feel safer to post and thatās just human nature which wonāt change
The thing is lowering the barrier will help some who wouldnāt post otherwise. But it will also incentivise some others to avoid the effort of creating a more useful help request. āThey have Newbie Corner here, I donāt need to use my brain, theyāll do it for me.ā
Yet, we will do our best to move a help request to the right category even if you happen to post it in a wrong one. This is not meant as headmastering, just that the right category will increase your chance to get a good answer.
However, what might make sense is to create a differently named first level support category. It will catch all requests unfiltered and unsorted and then the community voluneers together with the mods will move them to the appropriate place.
Yes that makes perfect sense. I donāt think it matters what its called like you said but a section where new users and people with little linux knowledge feel safe to post will definitely encourage them to join the community, I was scared to post anywhere apart from the newbie forum when I joined. When I was a moderator on xda we had a special section for none members and new users to post in and only selected volunteers could reply to them, that sort of worked. It kept the forums clean but new users and none members got help
You are 1,000,000,0000,000% WRONG about the off topic section. I always great to see items of interest posted that have nothing to do with the Os as long as they have nothing to do with politics or religion.
Good luck getting the staff of most forums to understand the benefits of doing this. That automatic close function is pure BS.
Youāll be glad to know that Iām a moderator on another (discourse) forum, and Iām pretty sure auto-close is disabled. However, I can see the value in auto-closing threads, especially for software projects where in say three months time so much of the code might have been re-written that the original problem no longer relates to the problem a person has now.
So the Will the off topic return topic is going to be the new off topic forum? Just keep posting off topic there until it gets closed on us?
Getting back to the topic - other than the āintroduce yourselfā - I donāt think there is really a need for a newbies section. discobot could be tweaked so it shows newcomers the ropes, or that automatic PM that newcomers get on other forums.
As a newbieā¦ I didnāt pick up that subtlety but your point is taken. I shouldāve changed my thinking when I saw that Support section to hey, I really do need support!
Maybe that paragraph wording under the word āSupportā could also point newbies to this particular sub-forum and reflect something about a starting point when one doesnāt know where to startā¦
To be honest, Iām glad that Newbies Corner itās gone beacuse it was a total massacre there, everyone can now head to Support, to whenever they need.
Iāll stop here, thanksā¦ 
Sorry, couldnāt help itā¦ since what people should do and actually do on support forums often donāt meet expectation ā¦ hence the old ālet me google that for youā being a thing! 
