Just a suggestion, I don't know if it's been thrown out before or not, but I figure if my ideas can be put to use, I helped the community some.

Would it be possible to make the "search" button bright green? That way people will notice it more easily and it may remind them to use it more often so they don't clutter up bandwidth with utterly used-up and worn-out specific topics and questions. On top of that, green is the universal traffic signal for "go", an idea for the function that would be well placed into many people's heads.

This one may be more harsh, but I often see that new members are the ones who ask the redundant questions. Would it be possible to make them click (like 3 times) "okay" on a short and sweet simple, easy to read message politely but sternly instructing them to fully utilize the search function before they post questions?

Just some idea's that I think may help. Let me know what you guys think of them. Constructive feedback is always appreciated.

 

May not likely happen, but on the forum i worked on, i edited the newthread document and template so that certain forums had a yellow highlighted section suggesting to use the search feature before they post their thread.

However, often times people don't use the search because they don't want to, not because they don't know about it. Aside from the common issues and short comings that the search engine has (some of which are due to not knowing how to use the system), combined with that people generally like to have personal and "fresh" responses, even if there is a reminder, it may not really help that much, unfortunately.

A good example of how things are overlooked, is how often people come into this forum (Problems / Help / Suggestions / Comments) and ask/suggest for a non-tech forum, despite the sticky on top of this forum about that topic.