I so don't agree with you guys on this one. A forum is a terrible way to catalog information... it's not a wiki or an encyclopedia. There are no definitive answers or consensus. I sure don't want to search a site for loads of time when what I want is to drop a fast question. You may not know the search terms, you may not want to read through five hundred million results from your search or read through page after page of long threads. You may not know what you are looking for or who to trust.Just some random guy who owns a GTI. I mostly lurk here and the other sections, because just about every question that could be asked about a GTI has already been asked. So I search a lot. After all, we don’t need any more “original” threads consisting of “hey, can these cars be tuned?”… “what is the best tune?”… “what oil should I use?” … “what octane gas should I use for my 93 octane tune?” (smdh) … and so on.
Additionally a forum is a social construct. People want to interact and ask their specific question and get help. You don't have to help them if you don't want to and remember this is a community. If they first thing a new users sees is "don't bother us, your not worthy, you haven't looked enough, you're doing it wrong, you haven't earned my help" then there is a good chance they could just turn around and leave when they might have been a valuable member of the neighborhood.
In the immortal words of Larry Flint... "If you don't like Hustler magazine then don't read it".