Timeline for If I enter the Stack Overflow site as a new person and I search for "How do I ask a question" that yields no real help in doing so
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2, 2018 at 15:44 | vote | accept | Mark Schultheiss | ||
| Oct 2, 2018 at 15:44 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | Thanks, looks like I need to research what "The Auto Review Comments script can be useful as it lets you create your own comment text and save it." is. Thanks for pointing that possible knowledge gap I have out. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 14:37 | comment | added | Catija Staff |
@MarkSchultheiss I'm not sure if this specific suggestion is one that we would implement but we can definitely look at it. In the interim, I recommend you find some alternate solutions to your problem - they may help more than anything we could implement. The Auto Review Comments script can be useful as it lets you create your own comment text and save it. It's much more flexible since you can tailor the links to best help the users. That /how-to-ask page isn't always the most useful depending on the situation and linking to a page that doesn't help can just confuse and annoy users.
|
|
| Oct 2, 2018 at 14:28 | comment | added | Catija Staff |
OK, so this answer addresses the new person part and explains that we're already working on solutions for helping new users better than we currently are. You might consider asking another question (and I'd recommend MSO rather than MSE if you're interested in SO specifically) that focuses on helping you, an experienced user, help others better. Lots of users have their own solutions to this problem already, whether that's memorizing the url to the how to ask page (/how-to-ask) or having a userscript with pre-written comments.
|
|
| Oct 2, 2018 at 14:19 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | I am greedy, I want both really, help me help new users, help new/existing users with an always existing way to get to that knowledge point. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 14:18 | comment | added | Catija Staff | OK. That makes more sense. But your title specifically says "as a new person" and that's how I answered this question. What you're actually looking for @MarkSchultheiss Is an easy way "as an experienced user" to help a new user find the right page to get help with improving their question. That's a completely different thing. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 14:18 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | Help me do B. above as easy as possible since you are right, I no longer see what you posted, and frankly I don't know how to get the user to see it either - so I am of little use in the site instruction department here. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 14:16 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | My point is 2 part. 1. User posts a bad question. 2. Other user (me?) goes to help/answer I have two choices A. Down vote bad question, vote to close bad question (helps no one). B. Try to help, point out link to "How to ask" that should always be there, add additional comment with suggestions of what to do to improve. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 12:21 | comment | added | Catija Staff | @MarkSchultheiss I'm not quite sure how clicking Ask Question to find help about asking a question is bad UX, particularly when one of these pages requires two clicks to move past the page to actually get to the Ask page. I'm including images because users on SO with some reputation won't see the first page any more. We need to interrupt their progress of asking to feed them the info rather than hoping they'll click a "help asking" button instead of the "ask" button. If we don't, even fewer people will see it, regardless of how obvious we make a link. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 12:06 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | "The reality is, few users look for it, so we're better off making it more obvious." Yep, so add a simple link right there on the left side - the fact that your answer has to have images in it to "explain" actually gets right to the issue of "How do I ask?" not being right on the page at all times...at least as a link. I added a comment to my question regarding this. I would not buy a car where I had to push a button to get the steering wheel to appear. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 11:53 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | I would also point out that I, as a somewhat longer term user recently observed several "not the best question" from a new set of users. I wanted to help them, considered the best course of action. I then wanted to point them to a "how to ask (better) questions" page which really sort of lead to this question - since I don't click the "?" icon, I did a mouse-over on the icons, even clicked the "?" but did not see a "How to Ask" on that either. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 5:53 | history | answered | CatijaStaff | CC BY-SA 4.0 |