I just copied and pasted the original post and once it was up, discovered I'd got a dead link!
Back to the topic under discussion.
My thesis is simple, you are "spoon feeding" when newbies should be discovering for themselves.
When my three year old grandson comes out with "why?" I tell him, but when he does it for the fifth time for the same topic, I do say - "you know already!"
I agree we have to cater for all abilities, but I think that the serious side effect of needless repetition is that it has a damaging effect upon the number of visitors and interest in this board.
The limited number of regular contributors is symptomatic of this malaise.
There are tricky problems and interesting events related here that could encourage people to return, but how many times are you going to re-visit a discussion board that tells you how to turn a microwave on?
Far, far more interesting are the real life problems - eg did the insurance pay up for that Guitar or did it turn into a police investigation?
If you received a letter from the New York Police (as I did last year) saying that a seller had stolen the camera he sold me (with a feedback of 640 - all positive I might add - his crimes were not exactly on a small scale!) my ponderings on an apt reply to them would have interested you all! (I agreed to retun it, but in the end they said, give us a statement & keep it!)
No, I think the answer is to ease these "newbies" into helping themselves. Come on, now that's why we have an education sytem. Shut up the one at the back who just said "containment system"
So in conclusion, members of the Jury, we must provide an easy to use help system
My case rests m'lud.