How does the site (or how should it) handle the "little-effort" or "no-effort" questions?

Question

Out of curiosity, what currently is and what should be specific policy of gamedev.stackexchange to handle the "little-effort" or "no-effort-at-all" types of questions?

Today, what motivated me was the asking for closure in this question: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/116103/unity-app-accessing-gps-on-a-mobile-phone It is not the first time I see that, however, and it always raises doubts in my heart.

So, I did some research and didn't find specific conclusions on the subject in the past meta discussions, although a few months ago the following question basically touched the subject: How to handle trivial questions?

There, Josh Petrie, one the current moderators, said that "Trivial questions aren't off-topic or banned or any of that, simply by virtue of being trivial". I tend to agree. I tend to think that "low-effort" or "zero-effort" questions should not be closed down, but just down-voted. However, I would like us to have a clearer definition on that.

Specially, because the issue at hand seems to be quite controversial in many of the sister sites (and I don't think it's different in our case). Different positions can be found in discussions on the subject that were already held in sister sites. Se for instance the debates on Meta.Stackexchange and Meta.Stackoverflow: How to best handle no effort questions? and Do we need a close reason for zero-effort questions?. For a seemengly harsher position, see the answer for that in the Meta.Physics: Closing “Insufficient Effort” questions.

Answer 1

"This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear, or not useful."

That's what the downvote tooltip says, and I say that's just fine for dealing with these. People don't like getting 5 downvotes; it makes them feel bad. So they'll either fix the question and learn how to do it right, or leave the site. Either way seems ok with me.

Answer 2

As it's been stated here or in one of the links you posted, donwvotes should encourage bad questions posters to either delete or modify the question.

These questions don't technically fit in any 'close' categories, but as DMGregory suggested in this situation, a close vote with a 'custom' reason could take care of it. At this point, it's in the hands of the community. If the community feels that the reason given is valid, I believe that it's fair, up to that point. If the question gets closed, then edited (and improved enough), the community will get the chance to re-open it.

At the moment, I don't think there is enough of this kind of question on this stack to overly formalize what should be done with that, but off course, as a community it's good to ask ourselves this kind of question once in a while :)

Answer 3

As I've stated before, trivial questions aren't off-topic simply by virtue of being trivial. But that's different from questions that show absolutely zero research effort (or rather, the two concepts are orthogonal).

I'm not sure it's possible to set a broad policy on this, as I think the issue will come down to the kinds of analysis of the question that's best done on a case-by-case basis. For example, in the case of the GPS question, there's two ways we could interpret the question as written:

• "How do I access the GPS in Unity?"

This form of the question is asking us to plug "access GPS unity" into Google or whatever on behalf of the OP. I think that's worthy of downvotes on the question, personally, but I don't think closing it because of "lack of research effort" is the right interpretation. Rather, look at question differently:

• "I want to accomplish in Unity?"

This is almost certainly what the asker really wants, and in any event is a much better question for posterity than the original. Does this look familiar? It should; what we're looking at here is an XY problem and we have a solution for dealing with the XY problem already: vote to close as unclear, and ask for clarification about what is really trying to get accomplished so we can provide a better, higher level response that's better suited to our unique perspectives as game developers.

Answer 4

I mistakenly thought these were already officially off-topic, hence my (potentially misplaced) vote on the question MAnd links.

On one hand I think there is value in discouraging using StackExchange as a Google proxy. We expect users to search this site for existing questions before asking and close duplicates, so it doesn't seem unduly onerous to ask them to at least skim a Google search.

As an absurd example, if someone systematically worked their way through the Unity API, asking "what does the gameObject.AddComponent method do?" "What about gameObject.BroadcastMessage?" - technically each of those is a question about game development with a concise correct answer, so although trivial they could be on-topic. But it seems silly for StackExchange to mirror the contents of an existing official API documentation. (Which will generally/hopefully be kept up to date better than SE answers)

Although the scale of that example is absurd, I think "How do I use GPS location in Unity" is this kind of question that amounts to duplicating the manual - searching the API for "gps" or "location" both turn up a useful result at the top of the list.

(Then again, making "how do I get started/which technology" questions off-topic hasn't exactly stemmed the flow of those questions either. Users who don't do their own research before posting don't seem to read the tour either, so maybe any benefit of such a deterrent is moot. ;) )

The downside to considering these no-effort questions off topic is that it might pose a barrier to users who have difficulty with even these basic searches - say someone who speaks very little English, or because they're just getting started doesn't know enough of the gamedev jargon to locate the answers they're looking for.

I still feel like that's solvable though, by the user following the usual advice of "describe what you've tried so far" to show they've tried searching and need specialized help understanding.

So, for those reasons I'd lean toward closing questions that can be answered by the top hits on the product's own documentation, as in this particular case.