I have a hunch that most new users don't read through the entire FAQ before participating. This leads to poor-quality posts and sometimes even hostility from veteran users. This makes it hard for a new user to appreciate the site and get the most out of posting questions and answers.
I'd like to propose a more visual FAQ, or maybe a different area of the site containing a few short walkthroughs with pictures (and less text) that you can step through quickly.
A "richer" FAQ experience could be applied to the following topics:
- How to accept an answer
- How to use basic formatting (specifically code formatting. It seems like a lot of new users don't do this)
- How reputation works
- ..etc.
Of course, we should encourage users to read the FAQ, but we can't force them to read it. However, I think something that's easy to look through quickly and get main points out of would be a little more user-friendly.