Can we please be more friendly to new users?

Question

I've been monitoring closed questions for a few days now. I noticed a very common pattern emerging:

• The question is closed ("on hold")
• It was closed by a single diamond mod
• The mod closed it within 10-15 minutes of it being asked
• The user (OP) had one rep only
• The question is a poor fit to the site

Now, in all these cases, the only clue the poor mod left to this new user, who may not understand how SE sites work, is a generic statement under 'The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:`

While this is sticking to the technical and intentional design of the site, it's not helping. If the question texts themselves are an indicator of how poorly these users understand the site, they won't "get" why the question is closed.

What's worse is that many of these questions could be recast, salvaged, or even answered -- but all we're left with is, um, the close reasons. It's not intuitive, and I really don't think many of these users will edit their question or even come back.

Can we please be more friendly with new users who don't "get it?"

I suggest some small changes to our collective behaviour.

• Say hi, hello, hey there, or something that indicates you're human, and friendly.
• Indicate via a comment, if it's not bleedingly obvious from the reason of closure, why the question is poor
• Give some concrete suggestions for how the user can improve their question -- for example, narrowing down a code-block; specifying where their problem is, etc.

I think this is a good step toward helping new users of the site become long-term users and quality contributors.

Answer 1

I'm one of those "existing users who don't use the site well" that Josh mentioned.

I mostly don't vote any more, though I have the rep to do so. I almost never go through the review queue, though I have the rep to do so. I almost never see a question I feel interested in answering any more, despite having been making games professionally for the past 15 years (and as an amateur for a lot of years before that).

One big reason that I don't do these things is that I don't actually visit the site much any more. Maybe two or three times per week, down from four or five times per day, a few years ago.

My impression is that all of a sudden, about a year and a half ago, the questions being submitted to the site changed. They stopped being general and conceptual and broadly-applicable, and instead became ultra-specific to providing help to individuals (with the vast majority of these individuals being absolute novices). They stopped being "explain this concept to me", and instead became "write some code for me for free." Or to put it differently; the questions stopped being interesting resources for learning, and started being a do-it-for-me service.

Deep down, I feel like spending time on crafting answers to the majority of questions on this site doesn't add value to the Internet any more, the way that it used to; it's just helping individual users one at a time, by giving them my time in exchange for nothing at all; often not even gratitude.

So I kind of feel like maybe I'm not in the site's target market any more. It feels like we've become some sort of free get-help-quick service for novices. And I'm sure there are people who are interested in participating in that sort of a site; just not me. And that's why I'm not interacting with the site much any more. And haven't been, for more than a year.

Bringing it back to the actual "Should we be more friendly to..." question: If I'm still supposed to be one of the target users of the site, then I'd argue that the very last thing we want to do is expend our moderators' limited energy trying to coddle and retain new users who are cluttering up the front page with yet more "How do I write an 'if' statement" questions.

Answer 2

Now, in all these cases, the only clue the poor mod left to this new user, who may not understand how SE sites work, is a generic statement under 'The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:`

The precise reason the close-reason templates exist is to avoid having to invest time in repeating information that is in the help center. I, for one, am happy to provide clarifying comments when it seems necessary, but if all I'm going to do is restate the automatic close reason text, I don't see any reason to waste my time.

Anybody who wants to leave a comment further clarifying why they, as a more advanced SE user, perceive the question to be closed is welcome to do so. Or to vote to disagree with a close reason. Or to edit the question to make it better.

Quite honestly, getting new users to be "long-term users and quality contributors" is relatively low on my list of priorities for the site. It's probably dead last. What I'd like to fix first is the existing users who don't use the site well (users who don't vote or flag, but can; users who answer bad questions anyway; users who don't edit questions well or at all; users who don't answer any questions because they are afraid of being down-voted). Fixing that will remove an entire class of problems associated with unilateral close votes because we won't need so damn many of them.

Answer 3

Let's count the number of ways we show new users how to ask a good question.

First, when the user hits the homepage of this website.

Second, when he clicks "ask question".

Third, after their question is placed on hold. (Not closed. The difference is important.)

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If a new user can't be bothered to take a measly few seconds and read any of these things, how can he possibly be selfish and inconsiderate enough to expect others to spend even more of their equally precious time to help him?

If someone asks a bad question and it gets closed, then just leaves the site instead of trying to ask a better question, then it's not because he's unaware of the rules. It's not because the rules haven't been explained to him "nicely" enough. He just doesn't care about the rules.

Personally, I don't want that kind of user here.

But here's the clincher. When I see a question where my comment could be more helpful than the close reason, I do leave a comment. I've seen other people do it too. It might be a link to a tutorial, or a piece of terminology to google, or advice on how to improve the question.

Want to know how many times the OP has either responded to the comments or edited the question? So far, I've seen it three times, and two of those three just said "lol no the question is fine" (paraphrased). Out of all the questions I've seen get closed, that few have an OP who is willing to even put a tiny amount of effort in.

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Equally bad, however, are the experienced users I see who keep saying, "The site sucks, so I stopped being involved." No, the site sucks because experienced users like you are no longer involved! How dare you refuse to put forward any effort in fixing the problems, then complain that they're not being fixed!

If you want the site to become better, then make it better. Jump into the unanswered questions list and start flagging, editing, and answering things.

Answer 4

I'm with Josh on this one being a low priority, especially with so many unanswered questions hanging around right now that need clearing up. However, we could maybe create a new feature regarding what comments to leave by adding in customisable templates.

If you edit or review questions every day it might be useful to integrate your own choice of words on the type of close being performed. So if I am voting to flag a question and I pick "unclear what you're asking" and tend to always reply with something like this

"Hey, welcome to GD:SE, I'm not quite getting what you're asking for in this question, try to narrow down a single problem and explain it with these guidelines in mind [link]"

Maybe GD:SE could save this as my last response to this type of flag and place it in the comment field for me the next time I flag a post with this type. This would kill two birds with one stone by promoting appropriate and "newbie friendly" comments for flags by popping up the comments box and preserving personalised comments to make commenting similar things more efficient.

To avoid making unnecessary clicks or extra work for users to flag a post, those who don't want to bother and are happy with the comments provided by the automatic system could toggled this feature with a profile setting. This would then make it a useful feature for regular members who like to leave personalised comments but doesn't interrupt the current flow for those who are content with the way things work.

Answer 5

I disagree with Josh and Blue on this one.

I see the same thing you see ashes999 all the time and it gives the impression that a mod's time is more important than the main reason for the site being here which is to help a community flourish and grow.

How can that happen if the people that run the community come across like all they care about is removing your annoying question from their todo list? (i'm sure this isn't the case and I have a lot of respect for the mods here)

Yes it may be costly and repetitive for mods but if they don't like being a mod then maybe step back a bit and let others pick up the workload, offloading your pain on a noobie that doesn't understand the community is not fair on that noobie.

I think there needs to be a bit more effort from some mods that appear to be annoyed by repetition and take it out on noobies to step up and welcome noobies to community with a more positive templated response in some way (although i don't know what the correct response is).

Also dev time, should not be the most important factor for a community by a long shot, if developers build something once then it helps people thousands of times over.

Answer 6

Just today, I had a question, searched google and this came up:

Deep Cloning C++ class that inherits CCNode in Cocos2dx

To me this question is perfectly valid, unless I misunderstood the site. It's specifically asking How to do something (which is deep copy) In some specific framework (which is cocos2d-x)

Of course you can interpret that question a general how to deep copy things in C++, but that's not what the OP was after at all. In fact that question has a very simply short answer:

For some types like actions, there is a method called clone available, but there is nothing built in to make a deep copy for rest of engine (nodes for example)

I'm not saying this kind of things happen a lot but there are other examples like this, that are either misinterpreted by high rep users or are valid questions asked badly. Maybe it's better if at least we let questions to be open at least a day before closing them. That means with out current number of questions being asked, let them reach the second page before closing them. All users (and not only mods) will have more time to both see and if applicable fix those questions if possible.