Part of the social experiment here @WillWorkForChocolate is to determine if the new users can be encouraged to use the search feature first, and contribute to an already established thread. That’s the way it works on Frostcloud, where threads have been alive for years with thousands of responses.
But Fluther is definitely different than Frostcloud, as it seems to invite off the cuff questions that do nothing more than start up casual conversations… for the sake of company. Not all questions mind you, but many are ill conceived out of boredom rather than genuine inquiry. I am probably the most guilty of all at this.
“Sorry, but I DO see a double standard”
I did too. And still do sometimes. But the longer I stick around here I fully realize and appreciate the underlying goal to keep Fluther troll free, and to encourage actual thought going into a question. The search engine is there for a reason, and I’m consistently updated with new answers to very very old questions that I’m still following.
I took it personally sometimes too. And honestly, I still feel that sometimes it was. But I earned Fluther’s lack of trusting me, actually getting banned a couple of times for three months. Soon enough I discovered that Fluther is not my personal playground. There are flowers here previously grown by others. The gardeners simply want to protect those flowers, whilst encouraging new users to plant their own. We’re all free to start our own personal garden if we don’t like this one.
Don’t take it personally. It’s not, mostly. And in the rare cases it may be, consider the benefits of developing a thicker skin and not being so sensitive. Different guards in the guard tower have slightly different methods of watching over the yard.