Those previously said things are ignored over and over and over
I must have seen the translation for the spanish on the board at least 5-10 times. I've seen people being told not to post binaries to this group for certain reasons 10-20 times. Now, I can only think of three reasons for this:
1) The servers are lagged and people are getting stuff late and responding yet again to an already answered question (might have to do with the mailing list that is posted here) 2) The group grows at a tremendous rate and there are a fuckload of new people constantly here to break rules set by those who know what the hell they're doing. 3) Half of this group is on crack, stupid, or just doesn't want to listen to the people who are making sense so they can be slick as shit rebels.
If its 1, there is nothing I know that can be done. If its 2, we'll have a regular posting of the FAQ soon, and the inflow of people will be vastly slowed. If its 3, we're fucked up the ass and all around the block. We might as well form a moderated group for the most uncensored show on the planet.
Okay, now that I've stated the obvious, who has anything to say?
All are somewhat applicable, but (3) is closest (and Item 1 doesn't really put the blame where it belongs, since we're all supposed to know about, and allow for, server lag. Yeh right....)
IMO the problem is the same one that infests much of Usenet -- that too many new users [the people in your Item #2] are just too tickled by their newfound ability to broadcast whatever they write, no matter how lame or repetitive, to thousands of people. To people so giddy with Internet-induced euphoria, it means nothing that the answer they're so frantically/eagerly pounding out probably appears 3 times in the same heap of downloaded posts that they're currently cruising through. This will probably never improve, as more and more ISPs neglect to provide new users even a *nudge* toward self-education. ("Netiquette? Whatz thaaaat? Who cares? Aerosmith roolz. Yeah well U suck.")
And even when they tire of posting the same 9 answers, the concept of making one's post worth reading still escapes them. (At this stage many "graduate" briefly to Junior CyberGeek, where all their messages contain some tiredass rhapsodizing about how kewl the Internet is; it can make you *nostalgic* for the larval form just described.)
So where is it leading? Well, it'll probably just get progressively worse, and those users who take the time to provide *worthwhile* content will drop out, each at his or her own personal breaking point, and only rarely will they be replenished by enough likeminded fresh troops. Finally, when true *voice input* becomes affordable to all, the signal-to-noise ratio on 99% of Usenet will dive to essentially zero, and we can all just say hey, it's been fun but i hafta scream now, ciao baby. Next!
Or not.
Ummm yeah, that's a more concise way of saying it. Universe equals dildo.
There already is a moderated South Park *mailing list* (not Com-Central's), with exchanges that generally beat hell out of what you see here. But even it shows occasional signs of strain, partly because even legitimate/approved traffic can be just plain too heavy to cope with, and partly IMO because we aren't even halfway through the long wait before the next first-run episode, so fresh discussion topics are scarce and the sense of withdrawal is -- well, intense.