Following worse-than-good advice can lead to loss of time and to greater misunderstanding. I have noticed, over the past year, a growing proportion of suboptimal responses and advice on the mapleprimes forums.

There are still many fine responses, but slightly incorrect or inefficient (and sometimes outright wrong) responses seem to have been growing as a proportion of the whole. This is probably natural, as the mapleprimes site grows. But some of the ensuing bad effects of it could be avoided.

I'm not interested in making anyone feel badly, or in instigating any forms of competition. But, wouldn't it better help the new Maple users, and members who post queries here, if there were some way to distinguish the superior responses from the inferior ones?

I'm thinking of something similar to what google groups does with posts. Some scheme where registered members may vote a score for each post (and each reply!) -- almost as if every post were a minipoll with choices in the 1-5 range for quality.

acer