How to ask a good question. Sticky?

[jamesh]

The text should be carefully designed for this forum.
I don't believe that a sticky would really help but the following might work:
First posts are moderated. It should be easy for the moderator to fire an automatic email to the user with the "Howto ..." text. At least that will catch more attention.

I like this idea...A "Needs a better title/more descriptive report" button on the reject post page perhaps.

[gkreidl]

I find it annoying when there is simply no acknowledgement sometimes when questions have been answered, but I guess that's the internet for yah
Texy

Even worse: people asking for help via PM and never read the answers (lingering in outbox).

That's one of the primary reasons for my forum signature. Keep the questions on the forum, keep the answers on the forum as that means the folks who do bother to search have a better than zero chance of finding things.

Right, Dougie, but sometimes people have to include private data and then it's better to use PMs.

[CarlRJ]

Well technically you only see the first posts in that category that get through - you don't actually know about the posts that get stopped

But when you see 100-200 first posts on a daily basis, and a great deal of them are spam, it's really no surprise that a few badly titled posts get through.

Wow! I had no idea it was of such volume.

I want to take a moment to thank all of our moderators here - over the years and across many forums, I have witnessed moderators all the way from very good to really pretty bad, and the moderators on this forum are way over on the good end of the scale. It's one of those iceberg type jobs where 80-90% of it is invisible, and people think things "just work" (the way electricity just naturally comes out of the wall socket), until there's a problem.

Sure, sometimes they turn off the tap on the pink ponies and unicorns just when we were really starting to have fun (I sometimes think pink ponies are like a special version of Godwin's Law for this forum), but they do a really excellent job of keeping folks in line gently and solving lots of problems before they start. Thank you all for your tireless work.

[PeterO]

, but sometimes people have to include private data and then it's better to use PMs.

So you think that sending your private data to a complete stranger in a PM on a web forum is OK ?

PeterO

[gkreidl]

, but sometimes people have to include private data and then it's better to use PMs.

So you think that sending your private data to a complete stranger in a PM on a web forum is OK ?

PeterO

If people send me code or data from a private project asking for help it's their choice.
Or they send me a link to a private website which should not appear in the forum for google to access it.
There are lots of reasons for using PMs.

[PeterO]

, but sometimes people have to include private data and then it's better to use PMs.

So you think that sending your private data to a complete stranger in a PM on a web forum is OK ?

PeterO

If people send me code or data from a private project asking for help it's their choice.
Or they send me a link to a private website which should not appear in the forum for google to access it.
There are lots of reasons for using PMs.

Sorry, but there are never any good reasons for sending anything you want kept private to a complete stranger !

PeterO

[DougieLawson]

Right, Dougie, but sometimes people have to include private data and then it's better to use PMs.

That's usually the exceptional case and I'll post a specific request when a thread needs a private message. I don't like getting unsolicited private messages. I'll usually only use them if I want to share something on a private URL again in exceptional circumstances. If my stuff is for public consumption it'll either go in a

Code: Select all

 box on here or on https://github.com

[BMS Doug]

Sorry, but there are never any good reasons for sending anything you want kept private to a complete stranger !

PeterO

Different scales of private, if i want to exchange postal addresses with another forumite for some reason (hardware test perhaps) then PM is ideal.
I'd prefer not to have my postal or e-mail address published on the open forum but there may be a reason to share it with selected individuals.

Additionally after a few years of reading the posts of some regular forumites I don't view them as complete strangers (strange perhaps but not strangers).

I agree with Dougie that receiving unsolicited PMs with technical requests can be annoying, if the question is worth asking then its worth sharing.

[CarlRJ]

Starting to feel like maybe something to rate limit the number of new posts a new user can start in their first few weeks here would be a good idea, so they have more of an opportunity to read and learn, rather than spending all their time making foolish suggestions requesting thinner Pi Zeros and such. Might at least be useful for months in the proximity of September each year. Also, you kids get off my lawn.

[jamesh]

Starting to feel like maybe something to rate limit the number of new posts a new user can start in their first few weeks here would be a good idea, so they have more of an opportunity to read and learn, rather than spending all their time making foolish suggestions requesting thinner Pi Zeros and such. Might at least be useful for months in the proximity of September each year. Also, you kids get off my lawn.

That is likely to put people off. I'd prefer lots of less optimal posts that need to be moderated, than no posts at all and someone getting stuck and cheesed off

[kusti8]

Sorry, but there are never any good reasons for sending anything you want kept private to a complete stranger !

PeterO

Different scales of private, if i want to exchange postal addresses with another forumite for some reason (hardware test perhaps) then PM is ideal.
I'd prefer not to have my postal or e-mail address published on the open forum but there may be a reason to share it with selected individuals.

Additionally after a few years of reading the posts of some regular forumites I don't view them as complete strangers (strange perhaps but not strangers).

I agree with Dougie that receiving unsolicited PMs with technical requests can be annoying, if the question is worth asking then its worth sharing.

I agree that it can be annoying, but I guess you could look at it from the user's point of view. Haven't gotten a reply and try to get some attention.

But what really gets me is how little some people write when trying to ask a question. 10 words is not going to correctly describe a often complex problem that could have multiple reasons. I love people who write out a length reply separated nicely into paragraphs. Sure it might be long, but it's shorter than some back and forth talk just to get some information out.

But it seems that it's not too many users whose post here approved that have bad questions. Most I find are good discussions. But some people just will never understand and I feel nothing online will ever teach them, whether it be a language barrier, laziness, or cluelessness on the powers of Google. They need a face to face.

We'll just have to be polite and deal with it.