As this is the only forum that I have used I cannot judge between them. But some things I would like have already been mentioned. One very important one is the ability to open a thread so that all relevant posts are in one single document. Another is keeping all previous available posts, lots of good info there! Being able to edit a post would have allowed me to change my last one after a closer look at some of the questions. :o(

I must say that when I first began to read the posts I was struck by what I thought was unprofessional discourtesy in the “go figure it out for your selves you lazy dogs” sort of answers that were often seen. After countless repeats of the same sort of questions I began to be more and more in sympathy with the answer, as all too many questions were really requests, or even worse, were orders, for someone else to do work that was uninteresting to the “petitioner” Many times I was able to put the stiffness of the request down to unfamiliarity with the language, or at least with the setup of the forum. But there was a recent “request” that was in the posters own language and was a direct command. As you all have mentioned, this is fairly common.

I think that in cases like this it would be good if there were courteous, helpful, canned answers that could either be selected by the moderator, or by the consensus of several members. Perhaps this could automatically result in the post being placed at the head of a thread and the thread being flagged as temporally closed while the poster was automatically redirected to the search engine with the search terms already filled in.

The person could even be tracked to insure that he did at least attempt to research the matter. Then when the posting form is presented, it will have two or three items to tic off as having been read. This will then be part of the post. Being just told to go off and read the Bible and pray that comprehension would come, does often not sit well with someone who is lost and can think of no way to turn. But then it doesn’t go well either with those that just sit around and cry GIVE ME CODE in baby talk. Gimme!
Just my ‘two bits’ worth.

Best Regards
Bill
By the BY; who will give the code to do all that ;o)
gimme-gimme!