Think about the User-Interface Design of the System. What will the user assume? What would be the first thing he’ll do? What is he going to notice? What is he going to ignore? What is he going to do mechanically? These are all questions that are as pertinent to IRC networks, programming languages or web-sites as they are to Microsoft Word.
I gave the IRC channels examples of bad UI design. OK, gurus, once upon a time there weren’t too many newbies around. But if you don’t want to completely reject them, it is a better idea to move to a different channel.
I believe the Perl Monks site also suffers from such a lacking design. First of all - its name. Do you honestly expect someone to be a Perl “monk” and live in a Perl “monastery”? (I’m Jewish, an Atheist, and very sexually liberated for God’s sake!) Secondly, the site’s design is unattractive, overcrowded and confusing. I remember I was reluctant from participating there, and had troubles understanding what it was all about.
Web forums should involve no registration whatsoever (just fill in the name and E-mail), and not use too fancy a markup syntax, at least not by default. I actually saw a forum (not particularly Perl-related) where markups were placed in brackets, and I wanted to paste some Haskell code... I could not understand how to do it, no matter what I tried .