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A recent user has been posting a lot of questions recently, none of which add much value to our site. They are all part identification questions, and the user has not shown any initiative on their part to do any research. It feels like we are his free employees to figure out what LEGO sets he has acquired.

Besides downvoting his questions, what other options do we have to either force this user to do more effort (and hence post less) or prevent them from posting similar question barrages in the future?

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  • I think it is fine, if a user needs help to identify one bag. But it seems here are users who are not using the information about the set once identified and open a question for each bag without visible own effort. see bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/17201/…
    – Jonas Stein
    Jun 4 at 22:03
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    I don't see what could realistically be done. Ideally upon selecting set-identification as a tag, a tutorial would pop up to educate the asker about piece identification and Bricklink's search functionality, but this would be a no-go for many reasons. The closest we could get would be to write a canonical post detailing the identification process and linking it in the tag description - but if anybody is too lazy to read the answers to their own previous questions, they won't read a tag description either.
    – zovits
    Jun 5 at 10:25
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    How about a warning after 3 posts, another warning after 5, and a ban after 7?
    – Phil B.
    Jun 6 at 23:59
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    @PhilB. You mean a policy to be enforced by the mod team?
    – zovits
    Jun 15 at 10:15
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    @zovits - exactly
    – Phil B.
    Jun 15 at 11:38
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    Shall we hold back on answering questions until effort is shown? I sense that answering effortless identification questions encourages users to ask them more often. Whereas linking to a canonical post would make it easier for users to find, and sets a better precedent
    – Matthew Jensen
    Jun 27 at 22:39
  • @MatthewJensen That's what I've done and would suggest others do as well. If we stop feeding the help vampires they'll either leave or make an attempt to improve.
    – zovits
    Jun 30 at 11:38
  • The user was apparently "Last seen this week", but I can't see any contributions since June 26. Should we just let it go (until more such activity is observed of course) or does someone want to actively pursue contact regarding the past actions?
    – zovits
    Jul 4 at 9:47
  • Apparently a warning is due after the latest no-effort question.
    – zovits
    Jul 14 at 9:53

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