About the off topic thing - The problem I have with being more strict on that is that often newbies can be offended, and start rumours about being unfriendly, and cycle repeats. [/b]
i think your wrong... if its done in a respectfull way (PMing the person and giving and explanation plus maybe a refrence to guidlines on the forum) there's no need to be offended unless you're an imature 12 year old boy who doesn't really care about anything except being "heard"

plus... people should be incoredged to use PMing... i'm not used to it at all but it can save alot of topics from being derailed and evantualy useless

and having read the thread all the way through i think i can also add this../

biggest problame with noobs is that most of them dont take the time to read all the info that's out there... they prefer asking questions or having their dream inturpered (if that what they came for thinking that poeple can do that for them)...
so you get alot of questions that are basically the same all the time...
so why not pick some good threads that already explain most of these questions and gather them on one sitcky thread (as links with self explinatory names) and incuredge noobs to read these links befor posting a question (mainly on a forum like "ataining lucidety")
and it makes answering noobs's qeustions much better cuz the questions are much more insightfull and specific so you can help them better once they know exectly what they want to ask and how