There would seem to be some consensuses that it's not a good idea to be too helpful or go into great detail on a public forum.
Mainly the lines of thinking being.
- Helping end users and those in I.T support takes away genuine service work from trained engineers.
- Manufacturers don't like their support material and higher tier support information being shared in the public domain.
- You are only helping the competition and those that don't use official channels to succeed.
So I suggest adding a few new membership groups and private sections that are only for qualified engineers.
The criteria would be members would have to prove they are a trained engineer by private messaging a moderator or admin with screen grabs from an current manufactures website or scans of valid certification that proves they are a qualified.
You could also add a minimum post count requirement before consideration to stop inactive membership from gaining access.
If the member is successfully verified by mod / admin then the membership group of that member is changed.
A example on how it would work:
Those in the Xerox qualified engineers group can view and post in a private Xerox section, but those in the Ricoh qualified engineers group or the normal members group cannot view the private Xerox section (and vice versa).
It's not a perfect solution but it does open up lines of communication among qualified engineers around the world in that they can discuss and share more sensitive information and procedures in some privacy knowing that the knowledge is not being shared with the entire internet.
Also it makes the moderation of posts and attachments in the public forums a little easier.
Comments on the proposal welcome and appreciated.
[EDIT] To make a point of sorts... at the time of posting this: 47 members and 459 guests online.
That's a lot of end users looking and searching the forums for a solution to a problem they have.
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