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How about PITA icons, you could have a whole range of them for serial askers of lousy questions, serial garbage answers, the various stalkers, serial jokers .
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Mycroft Holmes wrote: a whole range of them for serial askers of lousy questions, serial garbage answers, the various stalkers, serial jokers .
Now that, Mycroft, is out-of-the-box thinking !
I think the medieval use of public shaming in "stocks" as punishment could be adapted for use on CP.
What would be the term for a forum so full of icons that text-content is hard to find ?
cheers, Bill
“I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.” Jorge Luis Borges
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This is the same vein as advocating whipping for masochists - there would be a fight to see who could get the most.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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More tears from Blubba Watson after he wins the Masters.
He needs to man up and stop weeping.
I let it slide when he cried last time, but hell man, are you going to cry like a little girl everytime you do your job?
---------------------------------
Obscurum per obscurius.
Ad astra per alas porci.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur .
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Quote: are you going to cry like a little girl everytime you do your job?
You know you tear up a little when you write some VBA code that does awesomeness. Admit it. 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Recently I have been visiting quick answers - view unanswered questions. Today, a member posted the question
How to get count of occurrence of characters in string using c#?
That was it! No attempted solution. No report of Google searching. No nothing!
OK. So now I agree with OriginalGriff regarding misuse of the discussions forums. So I think that we, as a community, need a way to tell the OP that his question is rejected for lack of trying. We also need a mechanism to tell the OP that we think that the answer to his question could be used for nefarious purposes that we, as a community, do not support. Under the Report flag, all we have is
Unclear or incomplete.
Repost.
Not a question.
Off-topic.
Spam/abusive.
The question cited above is none of these. A Google search of "c# occurrences of a character in a string" returned more than 90K answers. So apparently the OP didn't try Googling. The OP may not have been aware of the wealth of online resources. So how do we educate our junior members?
I would suggest adding two items to the list
Rejected by the Forum. You must at least try to get a solution before you post here.
Rejected by the Forum. The answer could be used for bad things.
Both of these should remove the question from the forum and send an email to the OP explaining why the action was taken. The OP should be able to click a link in the email and defend his question.
Gus Gustafson
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Or just make the [Post] button disabled if length is short and there is no code tags in the post?
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No, I don't think that's good - there is a minimum length limit on answers which frustrates me from time to time, and I have to add "this added to make the answer long enough to post"...
Trouble is, something like that is difficult for real beginners, who do need our help - not the solution to their homework, but actual help to start working out where to start!
I remember when I got started, I didn't have a damn clue where to begun writing a program, and that can "freeze your mind" and you can't produce code. If the site you turn to for help won't let you even ask the question and you don't understand why not... It's bad enough that some people will just be rude because you didn't ask using exactly the right words... 
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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A fair point - maybe a link to a "How to ask a good question" post
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There is already a list on the right hand side of the screen when you post your question, and they don't read that!
A few simple rules when posting your question.
Be courteous. Everyone here helps because they enjoy helping, not because it's their job.
Have you searched or Googled for a solution?
Be specific! eg "How do I change the dialog colour?" instead of "My code doesn't work. Help?"
Tag your question appropriately.
If you have a school or university assignment, assume that your teacher or lecturer is also reading these forums.
Do not remove or empty a message if others have replied.
Your question may be edited or retagged by others. Anything inappropriate will be removed.
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Yes, but the clueless newbee is OVERWHELMED by the sheer volume of data on a site like this; data so extensive that the most realistic survival technique is to "fog it out" mentally while focusing on the immediate problem in the newbee's head.
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I shouldn't be allowed near a computer on Sunday 
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100% agreed with you. +5
My Latest Article : What is DRY ?
Nothing is Impossible for Willing Heart.
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Given that Mr. Maunder's goal for this site is the maximum amount of visitors possible, I don't think he will agree to any policy that makes people feel unwelcome, no matter how dumb their questions are.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I agree with Richard Andrew x64
I'm smirking: How many of us (including myself) would be here today with an anti-stupid-question policy ?
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I think that's an excellent way to phrase it - an anti-stupid question policy.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Unless they are using textspeak  . CM hates that, so lobbying for a "Text speak not allowed" report option just might get through  .
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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I want our community to be able to help as many people as possible, but encouraging laziness helps no one.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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No one should suffer any backlash as the result of the action of one single user.
I'm just a little bit scared of your idea, and here's why: Search the internet for these two terms: "LinkedIn, SWAM"
I speak from personal experience in this matter; and I don't consider myself to be a troll, spammer, or other negative influence in any online site in which I participate. (For more details, just ask.)
Now yes, you are correct, it may be time to consider expansion of negative reporting. Here is my (considered, based on experience) opinion: The negative report should factor in...
-- The number of people who view it as bad
-- The ranking of those people
-- The good-to-bad ratio of opinions about that specific post
-- The amount of time the new user has been here
-- The amount of time the complainers have been here
-- The number of times the new user has screwed up
-- The complaint-to-praise ratio of the user in question
-- The complains-to-praises ratio of the persons who are complaining
What I'm getting at is this: your immediate complaint is totally valid.
After reading your suggestion, I can quickly see this degenerating into the SWAM disaster which LinkedIn thought would fix their spam problem, but which has in turn become the plague of LinkedIn groups.
Believe me, LinkedIn's SWAM policy doesn't invite abuse by people of low integrity, it absolutely guarantees it
What you are suggesting has many parallels to the disaster that LinkedIn has brought upon thousands of victims needlessly with their SWAM procedure.
Here's what your plan (and theirs) fails to factor into the system: malicious actions by unethical persons. It is so easy for an unethical person to attack someone with a system like this that it inevitably happens. I can give you links to demonstrate this if needed.
Perhaps something like StackExchange does in their groups would be a good idea. One screw up doesn't kill you, but it does cost you, and you get to know exactly why it occurred, when, where, the people who were involved in the censure, and it costs you in your reputation. I have had this personally happen to me, and I'm still surviving there, contributing positively to others' problems, and getting a good deal for myself in return.
Whatever, whatever, please do NOT entertain the idea of letting a person be victimized by one (or a small number of) person(s) who just [doesn't] [don't] like the guy.
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Regarding reputation, I received the following from CP staff:
As for your comment on reputation, it was never our intent for reputation to entirely represent technical competence, since it is also tied to behaviour we want to encourage on the site. Also, total reputation isn’t used to apply privileges, it’s always based on certain types of rep, so while one member may have a higher total rep than another, the second member may have a higher Author or Authority rep conveying higher privileges.
Gus Gustafson
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You could be the "better man" and help the poor bastard level up his/her question to better standards;
Or if you really feel offended, just let it slide into oblivion.
I'd rather be phishing!
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I do that. See my response to the OP's question.
Gus Gustafson
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"How to get count of occurrence of characters in string using c#?"
You actually have lots of options here.
1. Mark it as unclear or incomplete if you feel that it's too ambiguous
2. Downvote it and move on.
3. Answer it.
4. Post a comment asking the user to expand on what their problem actually is given that a simple Google search brings up a million answers. Maybe they have a specific issue.
For me there are no stupid questions. There are lazy people, or people who can't ask questions properly due to language or personality, and people who don't know enough to know how to ask the question.
Option 4 - getting the poster to update their question to explain why he's asking such an obvious question, and asking for a rundown of what's beem tried - is by far the best.
The trick is: how do we do this, and how long do we give a question before it gets categorised into the Lazy Question bucket.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I think that my main concern here is not the number of visitors but rather the number of professionals who are willing to put up with this type of question. I think that Gemmell hits the nail on the head with his post Gus Gustafson
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You may wish to fix that link.
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