I didn't realise that this didn't work on Newegg.
Well, a great many reviews I've read at Newegg have had, "advanced" attached, yet they made no earthly sense. I've seen reviews where people admit to have sent product back, only to admit there was another problem with their machine. So, Newegg eats whatever piece of equipment, and these fools are still, "experts".
Perhaps people who post on tech support sites are odd. Not any of us in this thread of course. I think it's more likely to be the teenage posers. Sorry, I missed a "t" out there. I don't want to be banned for being ageist.
I'm old, and odd all at once.
This issue seems like it's your pet idea, and you're going to push it relentlessly. I think you're wrong, and it isn't necessary. But I will afford you the courtesy of a detailed explanation.
Many people seeking help are posers also. If you don't think there is a lot of, 'young blood', among active members, you're sadly mistaken..
In "Virus & Malware Removal", there certainly already is a level of qualification. You or I, couldn't even offer to help in that forum.
So, let's go somewhere else. say, motherboards. Cream rises to the top. I think the average person is able to tell when someone is capable and someone is bullsh!tting. Plus, we have moderators, many, most, or possibly all of which, are well versed in computer tech. So,if one noob wants to let another noob with 10 posts under his belt try and solve his or her problem, so be it. Hey, tech savvy people join all the time, it might work out fine.......or not..
I've never seen any true instance of someone in these forums intentionally trying to break someone else's computer. Members offer solutions, some work, others don't, but I doubt that anyone's suggestions are malicious.
And then I enjoy the people who start threads asking for help, and every suggestion which is offered, gets turned away as being wrong. The thread ends, with the TS doing exactly what they were doing before the thread was started, and everyone that posted trying to help, just managed to waste a ton of their precious time.
Speaking strictly from my POV, I don't really ever need help from the equipment forums. So, I guess that should go to me not having to offer help either. It follows logically, I have no immediate plans to take a competency test, arising out of this bright idea. I'm competent to keep my own equipment running. I joined with the idea of communing with others, up to and including trying to help others. A lot of wind got knocked out of those sails, when I got into a four pager with some woman I tried to talk me into telling her that buying a copy of Vista was a great idea. I said 'stick with XP'. I guess I was proved right, just not in her mind.
Oddly enough, this forum was thriving before I got here 8+ years ago, which is 8 years before you got here, and I expect it will be thriving after we're both gone.
If you read the published membership stats, there are 131,000 members, about 3 dozen who are active at any one time. I guess the other 130,964 joined, got bad info, and left? Well maybe, but frankly, I doubt it.
Then too, these forums are a free playground for those select three dozen. I tend to doubt the forums have as much to do with Techspot surviving, as you choose to believe.
Julio has to fend off complaints about ads, about this, about that, about whatnot, practically every week. I suspect sometimes, even he wishes the forums would go away.
Very simply, I'm here for the laughs..Take that, FWIW.
EDIT: There are any number of advanced technical forums on the web. Some are quite stringent. You can't go off topic. It would be best if you had some sort of engineering or IT degree to make sense of what's going on. Those forums tend to be rather dry, unfriendly even. Perhaps your desires for a more rigorous format, might be better served in a place such as I've just described..
EDIT TWO: I saw at one of the Linux forums, (Ubuntu IIRC), where you could be banned for suggesting a certain command or set of commands, designed to wipe an unsuspecting noob's HDD. So you post to the forum asking for help, someone tells you to do this, and it wipes your HDD. OK, your suggestion sounds like it could be used to great advantage over there. But, I've never seen anyone offering help here, do anything at that level of evil here at TechSpot. There seems to be a custom of, "do no harm", observed here, as it is in the medical profession.