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I've been thinking of a way to help new users write better entries, by which I mean, to discourage them from writing entries about "memes" they created themselves or that they've seen their facebook friends using.

On the Add an Entry page, there is a guideline in the right-hand sidebar of the site that outlines some tips for making a good entry. What I'd like to see is this sidebar moved to a full-page guideline, maybe on an intermediate page between the main Memes page and the Add an Entry page. I think it should clearly and specifically says things like "DO NOT add memes you created yourself," and anything else that would help prevent new users from making entries like this and this.

I think that what the sidebar currently says is great, for the most part, but people tend to ignore sidebars. I would also group all the DO NOTs towards the top just to make them stand out a bit more.

Anyways, that's just my two cents on the issue.

Hate to break it to you, but our former forum mod Watcher made the thread A friendly, helpful guide for the newbies a while back.

Yes, but how many new users do you think would check the forums for that sort of thing? My point was that even though the guidelines are in place, they need to be more prominently featured when people add a meme.

No, seriously, this is a good idea. Too many fail entries this days.

No matter how much you try, you won't stop crappy meme entries. I remember this being suggested before, "What if you have to have done 50 posts or something along those lines to create an entry." Therefore, it shows you are dedicated, and there will be a great drop rate of random and useless meme entries.

The problem with this is it dissuades new members who would rather not have to make an arbitrary number of posts before making their entry, having us possibly miss out on a meme that should be documented or an important web-person or event.

It's better to have more and have to weed out the crap (which is fairly easy), than to not have any information whatsoever and not be able to make the entries.

I see what you mean. This is a rather sticky predicament we are in.

Further evidence as to why we need to improve the system. I still think my idea would be reasonably effective.

As someone who has been interested in memes for a long time, I finally have decided to make an account here. :) Even as a newbie I can see where you guys are coming from, though. I’ll check out that link to the guide that was posted earlier. Thanks!