4

... and other observations.

We, as a community, are asked to be nicer so how about the SE Employees help us become nicer by providing a question wizard for new users on the SE network???

No, not asking for a tag-based question wizard but a generic one across all sites in the SE network with just three simple questions being asked of a beginning OP:

  • What is a summary of your problem?
    (limited to the original tweet limit of 140 characters, NOT NULL)
  • Please describe your problem in detail.
    (Size > first screen, NOT NULL)
  • What have you done to solve it already?
    (can be NULL after confirmation)

with one screen per question and a Skip button that fast-forwards you straight to the end which shows the OP the current question screen.

The 3 strings from these 3 screens can then be concatenated with a <br> in the middle thus becoming one question as we're used to see them today.

So no database update necessary, just a UI adaptation for the first n-m questions a user asks limited to a user's experience threshold (a 10K rep user who's answered 100 questions already should not be forced to go through this, regardless of the existence of a "Skip" button...).

This would allow us to better enforce the "How to ask" rules on this site as in-between each screen we can respectively enforce:

  • Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question?
  • Be on-topic, be specific
  • Make it relevant to others, keep an open mind

Added bonus: do the same for answers from N00bs users unfamiliar with all the rules...

;-)

P.S. Yes, I'm old enough to remember that the creator of the first Compact IBM PC Clone used to have a Knowledge Base article that actually explained what the Any Key was...
P.P.S. Yes I once was young and foolish and I thought that I knew everything but now that I'm an old fart, I know that I know nothing...

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  • 2
    +1 They have these on the Mozilla Bugzilla and they are very useful, unless they don't allow you to easily not do them because sometimes whatever you are writing does not fit the format. But for new users and perhaps even users who are often flagged up as 'too broad' or 'unclear', this could be a very useful functionality which I am in full support of.
    – user364819
    Commented May 9, 2018 at 22:48
  • 3
    Not all questions are about problems. We are not tech support.
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 6:35
  • Related: meta.stackexchange.com/q/16843/217657
    – Melebius
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 6:51
  • 1
    I'm a young burp struggling to read what's inside <sub><sup></sup></sub>.
    – dessert
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 10:21
  • 1
    I think this post lacks a link to (and maybe a discussion of) Oli♦'s wizard idea.
    – dessert
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 10:32
  • 1
    Yes it does... @dessert
    – Fabby
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 12:10

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