Originally Posted by nako
While I would personally like to see more searching done before posting, I'm not sure that the biggest problem with the signal-to-noise ratio comes from a lack of searching, but rather the increasingly nasty reactions (in certain fora) to that signal-to-noise ratio, making the signal-to-noise ratio even more out of whack.
That said, I'm also not sure just how the mods could enforce this rule (short of deleting posts) without making newbies feel even less wanted than they may already feel.
Mike
Absolutely agreed. The search feature can be quite frustrating and unintuitive (usually pulls up pages and pages of non-related information). Instead of simply flaming the individual for supposedly not performing a search, ANSWER THE QUESTION DIRECTLY (or abstain from posting). Certain forums are notorious for these kinds of attacks.
Mods should be enforcing decency standards before deleting or locking posts that have been addressed previously.