the thing is, the reason the forum got so popular in the first place was like minded people (people involved in the plastering trade or people having plastering work completed etc) coming together in one place and sharing info...
whether or not you call yourself a plasterer or a 'wet trade technician', as long as the question is valid, it should be answered... though i agree the search engine gets used far too little...
maybe its time for another category re-shuffle, without over complicating the forum... maybe re-label the newbie section 'information' and split the general into basic and advanced? easy to moderate and should stop people taking the p'ss if a basic question is asked in the basic section?
this is, after all, 'the best plastering resource on the net', lets keep it like that?
just ideas... ???