Pre-forum requirement page

[Lone Wolf]

I was thinking about this recently. You know, like when you install a new program but you have to read all the crap before you can use the program? Like when that 'accepting the terms' thing comes up...some programs will make it so the accept button will not appear unless all of the legal text is scrolled through. How about having something like this for the forums? Right now, someone can just jump in, not have any idea where or what the rules are, and just post away.

You could make a thing like stated above stating rules/etc. but have some trick that makes the person actually read the text or else the 'accept terms' button doesn't come up. With the safeguard stated above, all one has to do is quickly scroll through the whole thing without reading it and the program will recognize that they've 'read it all' and gives them the accept button. What if you had little check boxes scattered in the text so even if they scroll through the whole thing fast, the 'accept' button won't come up. This will fortunately get people to read the rules. THEN they can use the forum.

Hopefully I don't come off sounding like an idiot. You all know what I mean by this.

/end

[trythil]

I doubt that this'll force people to read forum rules. You said it yourself -- people just scroll past all the licensing terms, or at least until they get sued under said terms.

Check boxes -- in fact, just about any HTML form elements -- are very easy to defeat. In the case of check boxes, one can use the Tab and Space keys.

I suppose you could do an image-recognition thing similar to what Yahoo! does. But that's designed to stop automated registrations, not to encourage rule-reading.

[aznfs]

how about rather on the end before they are allowed to hit 'i accept' u have a set of questions they need to fill out by READING the rules

[Akai Rurouni]

Instead of a simple button, you should have a text field where they have to type "Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>" before they can continue.

Seriously though, I have a sneaking suspicion that this would not be easy to implement at all. But I'm not one of the site devs, so take that statement with a grain of salt - I shouldn't be speaking for them...

[Lone Wolf]

I, too, was thinking of a quiz/question like thing that they'd have to answer to progress. I guess there's not much we can do. I just hate having myself or others deal with people time and time and time again for the exact same reasons.

[Katsuru]

yeah i hate the rule breakers 2, but it would be annoying to have 2 do a questionair or something like that. but i think that it would be worth it if people actually followed the rules...
-Katsuru