A simple proposal towards improving question quality

Question

Encouraging Better Questions

I would like to encourage the asking of better, more substantial questions.

Every day we receive many brief, low-quality questions that are unlikely to elicit anything but low-quality answers which are equally unlikely to be of any help to future visitors of our site.

I therefore propose that the initial Ask Question dialogue, which has only a nebulous link to the Help Center, be modified to state its most important point:

Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you found and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer!

As far as I am concerned, the gold standard for how to ask a good question is best demonstrated by Yoichi Oichi, our only member to hit 10k let alone 20k sheerly on the strength of his well-researched questions — and whose wonderful work may soon be recognized, too.

Case Study

There are hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands of these. They get closed but they never seem to get deleted.

In the example set presented below, I’ve noticed quite a few similarities standing out. If I were writing an expert system for training our Low Quality Review Queue auto-flagging, some of these observations would definitely make it into the trainer:

Not one shows any research or effort.
All are extremely short.
Most of these questions have been closed for one or another reason.
None have been deleted as of this writing.
None have been revised.
Almost none have been migrated to ELL, even though these are clearly questions from English language learners.
Most are asking a boolean question looking for a yes/no answer, or else are forcing you to select between two alternatives as though they were mutually exclusive.
Most involve asking whether something is “right”, or “correct”, or “grammatical”, or “proper”.
Many have meaningless titles. This is useless for searching.
Some have ungrammatical titles.
Many have ungrammatical questions.

Here are just a few examples, alphabetized in reverse so that the Wh- questions come first:

I believe that if a PROMINENT BANNER were to be presented to these askers when they went to ask their question, one that read . . .

Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you found and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer!

. . . then those questions would not have been asked in that way. They might not be asked at all, but they might have been improved and made better questions, thereby soliciting better answers and improving the site overall.

Even if not closed, poor questions tend to generate poor answers. If we can encourage the asking of better questions, it’s better for everyone.

Related Questions on ELU Meta

+1 but your banner is too wishy-washy (which surprised me a little) — Frank, Jul 1, 2014 at 9:40

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-15 07:39:08Z

A few thoughts:

I realize the suggested language comes straight from the Help Center, but the word "thoroughly" jumps out at me as sounding kind of, well, cranky. As far as I'm concerned, SE is part of the process of conducting thorough research. We don't want to make it sound like we don't like being asked questions at all. Along the same lines, I assume that by "PROMINENT BANNER" you mean something other than the help box that's there now, something that reaches out and smacks the questioner across the face and forces them to read it before they can do anything. I'm not opposed to this, but if the show-your-work message is the only thing that appears in the smack-you-across-the-face banner, it will make it look like that's the only thing we care about.

I would prefer to provide first-time askers with a more rounded set of guidelines that also promotes ELL as being a site that's more suited to the needs of people learning English. It's clear that a lot of "low quality" questions come from people who don't know ELL exists and would probably have asked there first if they'd known. Perhaps the banner for first-time askers could say something along the lines of:

Welcome to English Language and Usage! The key to getting a good answer is knowing how to ask a good question. Please see the Help Center for our guide to getting the information you're looking for.

Stack Exchange works best as a supplement to basic research, rather than as a replacement for it. Many basic questions can be easily and quickly answered by consulting commonly available online references. If you've researched your question and haven't found an answer, tell us what you found and why it didn’t meet your needs. Sharing your research helps everyone, and will help you get a more specific and relevant answer!

If you're not a fluent speaker of English, you may get a better answer if you ask your question at English Language Learners, our sister community for speakers of other languages learning English.

Other than that, I think this is a good idea and you have my upvote.

Well, I thought of putting it in the sidebar where the link to the Help Center is; basically, just expand it a little. Clearly, people simply will not follow the link, so we need to put what they need to know right where they can see it. This critical part is rather hard to find. — tchrist, Jul 1, 2014 at 2:08
I don't know that your suggestion is any better than what we have now (the tour). It might be too long for people who aren't fluent to read, and it's no more than a polite, friendly suggestion. While I'm all for polite and friendly, there are a number of users who continue to ignore the polite, friendly suggestions that I keep posting under their questions. I like @tchrist's suggestion better; shorter, more direct, and less similar to the tour. — anongoodnurse, Jul 2, 2014 at 7:24

Frank · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-02 05:37:46Z

-3

Can't you be a bit more forthright ?

There is a StackExchange site for people learning English (ELL), so just make it clear to anyone asking a question that if they are learning English then their question is not welcome on this site.

I would say that having a banner is a good idea but it should state clearly what the site does NOT want. I propose

This site is not for people learning English it is for native or fluent speakers of English.

ELL(with a link) is the correct site to ask questions if you are learning English.

If you do not understand the words native or fluent then this site is not for you.

If you ask a question about learning English it will be deleted.

If your question is not written in fluent English it will be deleted. **

If you are a native/fluent speaker and you ask a question that is answerable by using a General Reference (with a link*) it will be deleted.

Notice that I've suggested that 'bad' questions should be deleted. Closing them seems like the nice thing to do but it will just encourage people searching for a similar term to be directed to EL&U. A deleted question will not.

*The current General Reference link takes you to a garbled page of nonsense that no-one will be bothered to read. If there is a proper list of General Reference sites, not cluttered with comments and chit-chat then people might be more inclined to actually look at the linked sites.

**This seems to be unpopular guidance, so perhaps it shouldn't be here.

Stats from websitelooker claim that 17% of traffic comes from India, 19% of traffic comes from the US and the next highest at a mere 5% is the UK. That suggests to me that most questions are coming from people learning English in India and most answers are coming from 'native' speakers in the US and a few in the UK (I'm sure SE could provide more accurate origins for Q vs A). The Chinese haven't yet found EL&U but when they do ...

edited Jul 2, 2014 at 5:37

answered Jul 1, 2014 at 9:39

Frank

4,7751 gold badge9 silver badges8 bronze badges

1

A question not written in fluent English can still be interesting and worthwhile: an automatic assumption otherwise smacks of snobbery.
– Tim Lymington
Jul 1, 2014 at 12:11
@TimLymington What assumption ?
– Frank
Jul 1, 2014 at 12:15
You seem to have a thing against non-native speakers. One tenet of ELU is that it is not primarily for fluent or native speakers. Many of our best questions come from NNS's (two of our moderators are NNS's). It might be difficult to ask a good question on ELU if you are not fluent, but fluency is not the demarcation line. See PHenry's answer for a reasonable way to deal with this instead of being xenophobic.
– Mitch
Jul 1, 2014 at 12:24
@Mitch - You're joking right? Both of the NNS moderators appear to be fluent and Matt appears to British which makes him native he also appears to be fluent. Show me the xenophobia. While you are there show me that EL&U is a better place for questions from people learning English than ELL is.
– Frank
Jul 1, 2014 at 12:32
2

That's the problem with the demarcation. Non-fluent people can certainly ask very interesting questions on ELU (likewise native speakers can ask really basic ones). Yes, if you're an NNS, you may want to consider ELL first. But the grammar and fluency of a question is definitely not what makes a questions good or bad for ELU.
– Mitch
Jul 1, 2014 at 12:35
@Mitch Surely if a question is raised on ELL by someone not very fluent in English that is outside the remit of ELL then ELL will transfer it to EL&U. That will probably happen a lot less frequently than the amount of ELL type question that are on EL&U that should be on ELL.
– Frank
Jul 1, 2014 at 12:38
See also meta.english.stackexchange.com/a/4771/8019.
– Tim Lymington
Jul 1, 2014 at 17:12
@TimLymington Is that in reply to 'What assumption?' or are you drawing my attention to something else without answering the question?
– Frank
Jul 1, 2014 at 17:59
@Frank: It is an important part of the discussion that has been going on around this point for two years to my knowledge. Comments are not the place for an argument, but since I'm here: "If your question is not written in fluent English it will be deleted" only makes sense if you are assuming that only fluent English questions are worth answering.
– Tim Lymington
Jul 1, 2014 at 20:13
@Frank: Yoichi (one of the mentioned NNS moderators) specializes in asking Very Good Questions(TM), and he is definitely not fluent.
– Marthaª
Jul 1, 2014 at 21:33
@TimLymington I wasn't looking for an argument, I couldn't relate the linked content to your previous comment regarding assumption. Now you've made it clear I can see you point, perhaps it is an overly stringent rule, I will mark it as an optional feature on my answer.
– Frank
Jul 2, 2014 at 5:35
@Marthaª Do you mean he is not naturally fluent and he takes a lot of time and trouble to write his questions in a fluent manner? Or do you mean he doesn't speak fluently? Nobody speaks on this site, they just read and write, I thought that my use of native/fluent speaker would be readily understood to mean reader/writer by everyone fluent in reading English. I'll happily change it if it's causing confusion.
– Frank
Jul 2, 2014 at 5:48
3

@Frank: I'm puzzled. Have you never read Yoichi-san's posts on this site? I adore his turns of phrase, but you often need a healthy dose of intuition to figure out what he means. Take a look at his moderator nomination, for example.
– Marthaª
Jul 2, 2014 at 14:22
@Martha Yes I have. I'd say he's sufficiently fluent to write a well thought out, usually lengthy, question without losing any meaning by dropping the odd article. Perhaps I'm just used to the way he writes because that's what I hear every day.
– Frank
Jul 2, 2014 at 16:29

Add a comment |

Stack Exchange Network

A simple proposal towards improving question quality

Encouraging Better Questions

Case Study

Related Questions on ELU Meta

2 Answers 2

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged
discussion
feature-request
appropriate-questions
ell
low-quality-posts
.

Linked

Hot Network Questions

A simple proposal towards improving question quality

Encouraging Better Questions

Case Study

Related Questions on ELU Meta

2 Answers 2

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged discussionfeature-requestappropriate-questionselllow-quality-posts.

Linked

Related

Hot Network Questions

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged
discussion
feature-request
appropriate-questions
ell
low-quality-posts
.