Please read before opening new topic!!!

I do not understand the forum members who are seeking help.
I am asking the Forum administrator
Why in the forum do not set rule, which from a member forum, before posting threads requires setting attachment problem?
Sometimes the problem description is not enough.
I understand that some members may not always attach set examples but at least give the user a faster and better problem solving

Something like

We ask all members of the "excelguru.ca" who want to open a new topic and ask questions to try to adapt the following guidelines in order to facilitate understanding of the questions or help other members.

Please read before starting the topic and asking questions

1. Before opening new threads perform a search for the keywords of your problem in the forum.
2. Describe the problem with as much detail and information that is relevant to present what it is about.
3. If the problem is more complicated, set the example (attach) your problem with someone (the changed) data that can contribute to better understanding of the problem in order to solve problems faster

Click to expand...

This rule could be sticky.

btw: I'm sorry, this is just my opinion
If this thread is not suitable, please administrator to post delete

Hi there,

I've got no issue with the question at all.

The challenge is moderating the amount of spam versus the legitimate users. Oddly, I thought our policy allowed the posting of workbooks, although I am aware that it doesn't allow users to post links. In an ideal world I'd love to open up the security to allow real people to get things done, the problem we've got is that there are a bunch of jerks out there who get in the way of this. My first few months of running this site were a constant war on spam posts, and I'm not eager to re-live that, as it drives real people away.

Hope that explains the position.

I thought (maybe wrongly) that posting attachments was withheld for new members with less than 5-6 posts, which doesn't seem a big restriction. Ive also seen an alternative that builds a HTML page showing key information on the Excel sheets without the need for a lot of supporting data.

Ken Puls said:

Hope that explains the position.

Click to expand...

OK, You are administrator

Hercules1946 said:

I thought (maybe wrongly) that posting attachments was withheld for new members with less than 5-6 posts, which doesn't seem a big restriction. Ive also seen an alternative that builds a HTML page showing key information on the Excel sheets without the need for a lot of supporting data.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but to be fair, the part that has always bugged me is that the more barriers we throw up the less likely they are to post and come back. That's not a good thing. And while I agree that the restriction isn't huge, it's still enough to put some people off.

navic said:

OK, You are administrator

Click to expand...

Actually, I'm the site owner. What that means though, is that I can change the policy if I'm convinced that it's not working. I'm not dismissing your comments out of hand, merely explaining the thoughts that drove the current state.

Hi Ken
I myself moderate another XL forum ( a small one) and almost never encountered spamming these last weeks,although posting attachments and inserting links is authorized as of the first post. Of course it's a small place ( I won't quote the name here) and probably goes unnoticed by spammers.

@navic

The "rules" you propose are great and will help get OP's faster help.
In my experience,the first one is the most ignored ( you could probably add " first try your search engine")

Hey there,

Agreed, the workbooks don't worry me too much. The links though... we do use Akismet to catch spam, and it does a pretty good job. (I have spammers that still slip the net and try to post links, believe it or not.)

Maybe we can try a trial and see how it goes... I definitely agree that it would help get better help to the users. (A while back I did look into whitelisting some domains so that links could be posted to common forums... mainly for the cross posting article direction.)