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Comment by akirk | Hacker News Reader

I believe that there should be a higher burden for beginners to ask their question, before it can go live.

New users need to prove that they have done research, this can be done with a few questions like "name the three google search terms that you have used to find a solution", "how much time did you spend on researching?" (easily faked, but maybe it gives people a hint to step back and try harder).

There could also be a new-user queue where higher reputation users would review a question (but are unable to answer it) before it can go live, with the possibility to go back and forth before the question goes online.

In my blog post I have detailed what I'd propose: http://alexander.kirk.at/2014/04/26/stack-overflow-ways-out-...

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I don't know... I'm not bothered at all by new users or dumb questions. What bothers me are experienced users questioning my intentions, being patronizing and thinking I am dumb. I have to include a disclaimer with almost every second question: "Yes, I know what I am doing. No, I am not suffering from the XY problem. No, I will not treat you answer as legal advice. Yes, I have tried to solve the problem on my own. Here is a bunch of useless code to prove I am worthy of getting an answer." If I don't do that, I'll get - within seconds - comments like "show what you have done" or "don't do that! what are you actually trying to achive!"

The other thing is that, increasingly, the kind of questions that would a) help me and b) I could answer with expertise are the kind of questions that are banned on the various SE sites. SE has ceased being useful to me a while ago.

I think the being patronized is an effect of the flood of the huge amount low quality. It is assumed that you did little to no research because this is the case most of the times.

What kind of question are you referring to that are banned?

On stackoverflow, it is not so clear-cut and I can't tell you one single kind of question. But on physics.stackexchange.com, my problem is that apparantly medium-level questions are frowned upon. We have some very high-level (research-level) questions, and many very low-level (popular science or below high-school level) questions. People rightfully complained about the low ratio of high to low level questions, but one thing they did against it was to ban "homework" and "homework-like" questions. This does not just include actual homework, but basically anything where you say "I'd like to calculate x, how do I do it?", and anything where you have to go through a few steps to find an answer.

The problem is, after ~10 years at the university, studying and teaching, I'm basically an expert in "homework". I can answer most university-level questions. I prefer answering (and asking) questions where the answer is "do this, then this, and then you get that", maybe with a few formulas, to a few paragraphs of prose. After all, I personally think that fits better with the SE model and with physics. But actually, what's welcome at the moment are mostly "conceptional" questions where an answer explains an abstract concept with prose. The community has narrowed down the allowed scope a lot out of fear of 1) low-level questions, and 2) accidentally helping somebody with their homework (god forbid!). But instead of getting more expert-level questions, they get less mid-level questions. I've found that I can currently neither ask nor answer anything there.

wow. you pretty much summarized that feeling - that last sentence.

I fully agree with the first paragraph.

This issue is compounded by the flood of naive questions: patronizing users will thus spend less time reading decently written questions/answers/comments, and their reading comprehension will suffer from that. End result: even if you posted something that was actually helpful, you can easily get downvoted.

I sometimes indulge in accepting/rejecting proposed edits to questions. What amazes me is the suggested edits where woeful English goes ignored and yet some code gets formatted. Naturally I then feel obliged to make an edit of my own. Typically I put some paragraphs in, sprinkle in some punctuation, remove the 'plz hlp' from the end and so on. Then I click whatever the 'save' button is to find out that the suggested edits have already been accepted. So low-quality English is obviously fine then!!!

I am also surprised at how many suggested edits are anti-pattern. Quite often there will be a question where the original starts with 'I am...' and someone has suggested changing that to 'I'm...'. Er.. No!!! It would truly annoy me if my own questions (written 'BBC Style Guide') were reduced to pigeon English in such soul destroying ways.

Added to your proposal, and wherever you are able to get with it, something simple can be done with the questions at time of entry. Much like the BBC has a Style Guide for their journalists to live by, so should Stack Overflow. There should also be some basic checks against it when someone asks a question. If the question contains 'plz' as a word and it is not in a code block then that should trigger some 'read the style guide before you ask questions' response.

I do understand that the site is for everyone regardless of ability with written English, however, a little note saying "in formal English we use 'I am...' instead of 'I'm...'" would actually be useful to know for anyone that does not have English as their first language.

Let's take a real world example:

Hello I started making an aplication on adroid, it's a simble BMI Calculator. The aplication has 2 activities (Main with a menu, and BMICalculator with the widgets).

That opening 'Hello' and the spellinz of adenoids and thimble should just make this question an instant reject. Plain and simple.

Next real world example:

my if query doesn't work. I'm always getting the invalid class. No matter if the file is an jpeg, png or txt.

Suggested edit has added extra code to provide some context.:

my if query doesn't work. I'm always getting the invalid class. No matter if the file is an jpeg, png or txt.

$('#some-input-file').change(function(e) {

This is a useful contribution, but the start of the question should be 'My' and not 'my'. This is basic primary school English that has been ignored.

So, to conclude, a lot of SO problems are garbage in, garbage out. A little bit of English language grammar and spelling - as has existed in basic versions of Word since the Windows 2.0 days - would help out enormously.

This sounds like exactly the type of pedantry that is dragging down Stack Overflow.

I am all for plain speaking English which in my mind is different to the English that people use for txts and is different to the convoluted English people use to show off (e.g. using big words and long sentences when something to the point will suffice).

However, Stack Overflow is a reference work, and, for questions to have value to a wider audience, they do have to be to a certain standard. It is the same with Wikipedia, you don't get lazy lols plz txt spk in articles found there. People need to appreciate this when asking questions. Basic secondary school level English is all that is asked for, not anything more.

I have problems with how the 'edits' is game-ified in such a way that crimes of the English language pass the process. I also think that something could be done when questions are submitted to raise the bar.

I appreciate that people need an answer quick, so fwr kstrks and tipos mightnt mater to them but I don't see how the 'agreed on' forms of English, as taught at school, counts as pedantry. You should try being a moderator one day...

An elegant example of why SO fucking sucks for many users.

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