Disclaimer: Pie in the sky. Lots of it. Bring a bib.
I have an idea RE: Q#7, but it requires backend coding to aid in "training" the user. SE is likely to resist this approach due to the unique features it would entail us having compared to other sites, but here we go anyway. Deploying pipe dream:
- A way to get small amounts of +rep for demonstrating an understanding of our on-topic subject matter:
- (@ChrisS) On the About page, make a 4 question "quiz" with drop down boxes. Each quiz question is worth 1 rep (so getting them right meets the requirements). The 4 question should be dead simple: "Target Audience: Professional Administrators", "Questions should have: Details & Actual Problem", "Questions about Home stuff: Off-Topic (See SU)", and "Voting: Just Do It™".
- (original proposal) Reading documentation about this SF's targeted subject matter provide a user with very, very small amounts of +rep. No way to prove that they actually read it though. All we can do is track that they landed on certain pages, or that they scrolled past certain points (if using about style AJAX).
- The site-wide +100 rep is ignored for SF's rep calculations.
- Users below a minimum rep cannot post questions. (5..10ish)
The end result is that questions can't be asked without faking a willingness to understand our subject matter first. Supplying a 1 or 2 good answers bypasses this obviously, but that's not a bad thing.
If I really want to crank up the pipe dream, we might allow the +100 cross-site rep if the user meets a minimum rep (say, 1000) on certain sister sites to SF (Unix.SE, SU, etc.), but I'm stretching things enough with inane feature requests as it is. SO would not be one of those sites.
Yes, I know suggestions like this are generally terrible and unlikely to be implemented. I would not be suggesting it if I did not feel strongly that this would go a long way toward modeling the correct user behavior and reducing # of bad questions.
