If you were daily welcoming new members, you would see that many, in fact, more than half, say that they have been reading posts and looking up information on the site for a while - some years, and are impressed how much information, how responsive, and how kind our site is. They spend that...
Thank you for being helpful without assuming my intent. When I do point to something older on BYC, I make sure and tell the person it is older and this is what I found. I also read through it. Today there was a donation tax question on the new members forum. I pointed to an older post on BYC but...
And I think you did the right thing, especially with these posts that are a few weeks old. There is nothing worse then posting thinking you will get an answer and not getting anything.
Some of these people have not been answered for a few weeks. Is it so wrong to help them find another way to get answers? If you want, I will happily show you how many "other bird" coop discussions there are in that forum. Sometimes, I answer the questions by giving them the link to an old...
I am not saying something that really isn't helpful to get it off the list - I am trying to help them, and if I cannot - I leave it alone. I am spending a lot of time trying to get people to the right answers if I do not have it.
But if they are not in the right place, then this could be why they are not getting an answer. There was a person asking feed questions that posted in predators and pests. And sometimes, they should cross post in two places, like the person asking about quail coops who posted in quail, but...
I have answered many of these over the past few days. What I am doing when I am not comfortable is...if they did not post to the best thread - is giving them the link to cross-post.
What I mean is that since we are constantly monitoring the new member postings, we could take the unanswered to make sure they are answered if there was a way to redirect them to us. Especially since a high percentage of the unanswered are people who are posting for the 1st or 2nd time.
I have now answered about 15 unanswered posts. I noticed that all of them are posting for the first time. Why not have first time posters redirect to the new member introductions forum. There are about 10 of us there that routinely welcome people and if they have questions, either answer them...