On 02/12/2007, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Exactly how are newbies *supposed* to act? If they come in all clueless, blundering around ineptly, they're likely to get bitten, especially if something they say or do in the course of their random flailing is (mis)interpreted as a personal attack or legal threat, getting them into a spiral towards indef banning they have no easy way of averting given their lack of knowledge of all the arcane rules and procedures that get tossed at them.
On the other hand, if they act like they know what they're doing, and actually get through any of the convoluted procedural stuff correctly, that proves they're a sockpuppet. Ban them!
This is where trying to put them on rails comes in. Only new users use fromowner and one of the intended features is to limit the amount they can screw up (doesn't entirely work since they seem to have a knack for creating messy copyright situations).