Is there anything we can do to get fewer off-topic questions?

Question

Having read Josh61’s considerations about “Thanks for not laughing at my question”, I stopped to ponder. There are days, and I think you all agree, when only 10 to 20% of the questions we get deserve an answer. Most of them are off-topic, be it because they are unclear, poorly formulated, very elementary for EL&U, or they simply have no answer (“Is there a word for seeing your neighbor in town and not being able to talk to him?” as someone here posted as a pertinent example of a lousy question).

Couldn’t the mods or “the powers that be” do something about this? Shouldn’t the “Don’t ask about…” instruction be more emphatic, clearer and, perhaps in bold type? A clearer reference to ELL as the appropriate site for beginners would also help but I don't see it there. Also, I believe some “first-timers” never even take the time to read the instructions. Wouldn’t it, then, be the case that we had these instructions repeated on the “ask your question” page? Something like “WE DON’T ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT…”

While I realize that it is frustrating for newcomers looking for an answer to have their questions closed, it is also frustrating for those of us who care about this site to see that the latest ten or fifteen questions shouldn’t be here at all and all we have to do is close-vote or direct the new user to ELL. All this when most of us were expecting to find questions of a better caliber. I'm not sure everyone agrees but I believe it's much better for EL&U to receive five good questions a day than fifty questions which nobody cares to answer.

Is there anything we can do? If we don't, we will have to work much harder to deal with the review queue.

Answer 1

I once made a suggestion, and posted it on meta. It garnered a few upvotes but nothing changed. So I'll propose that same suggestion again. (Does that make any sense?)

Declutter EL&U's "Newest" Page

Rereading it, I sound mightily pissed off. Or perhaps today I am because recently I have seen newcomers who post questions that could have been answered, or have been improved upon if they had looked up the definitions in a DICTIONARY.

1. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/244768/what-is-demeanor-and-how-is-it-measured

   Please define "demeanor" and discuss how it is measured.

2. What does "plough" mean in this context (“they would plough you”)?

The following excerpt has been taken from The Time Machine by H.G.Wells:

‘One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,’ the Very Young Man thought. ‘In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.’

What does 'plough' mean here?

3. What is the meaning of "tank" in this sentence?

I think that to tank means to become strong, huge in height and weight. But I can't place the same meaning in this context:

When the economy tanks as it did in the recent recession, How does the economy become stronger in a recession ?

Amazingly, that last question earned three upvotes. This is nothing short of crazy voting.

Questions 1 and 3 are currently on hold.

UPDATE

Question 2 has received a very good answer, which makes me very pleased for the OP, but that doesn't mean it is a ‘good question’. If the OP had shared his research, and explained why he was confused that would have made the question more interesting for users.

Answer 2

One approach to reducing the flow of subpar questions from non-native speakers of English might be for the 'Powers that Be' to use IP data to analyse the national origins of the traffic flowing to ELU (and ELL, for that matter), and then to post links to FAQs that correspond to the main language(s) spoken in those countries. One of the primary aims of these FAQs would be to clarify what type of question is best suited to which forum.

My reasoning is that the eye of a native speaker of, say, Russian, will tend to be caught by a link written in Russian (which would only have to express the concept "FAQs in Russian"), and its owner would then be reasonably likely to read that FAQ before deciding where (or even if) to post his or her question.

Of course, there are far too many living languages in existence for it to be practical to cater for them all in this manner. But my unverified educated guess is that FAQs written in Arabic, Bengali, German, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian and Spanish would find readers among a good proportion of non-native speakers of English who visit the ELL and ELU sites. (Some tweaks would no doubt have to be made to that list to reflect the actual demographic characteristics of site visitors.)

I'd imagine that compiling relevant FAQs in a dozen or so other languages that describe at least the most important posting criteria should be doable.

Answer 3

Of course, the owners are of a different opinion! :D We might prefer five questions a day, but they would sure as hell prefer 50! It's the Internet, so, whatever floats your traffic! :)

Plus, no one would like to see frowning red lines saying, "We don't do this, we won't accept that, etc."

Most people have short attention spans and are just looking for a quick answer in a relevantly-titled forum. A lot of the traffic flow is owed to these individuals. Make it too hard for them, and they'll leave for another website. Suggest something to entice, rather than deter, and the supermods will more likely listen.