A way for "new users" to ask about their post specifically

Question

We currently require that new users have 5+ reputation to participate in meta support discussions (bugs, feedback, governance, etc). This is primarily because the use case for meta is not intrinsically obvious, so we require a modicum of "experience" with the site before jumping into it.

But that blocks new users with legitimate questions about their own posts.

Setting aside any arguments about new-users-are-evil-and-suck-the-life-out-of-our-community, I would like to propose a very specific path for new users to ask about their own question provisionally.

Instead of blocking a new user with this message:

You must have at least 5 reputation on <site> to ask a question on meta.

We can change this to:

You must have at least 5 reputation on <site> to post on meta, but you may ask a question about your own post specifically.

Link to your post:                                                                                                     

ask about this post cancel

The system will check whether the linked question provided belongs to the author. It doesn't matter if the question is deleted or not.. The user can then proceed with the post provided they leave the template (below) intact:

Title                                                                                                                                                                                      

 

<!--Do not remove-->
<!--Note: Questions not about your post will be deleted-->

I have a question about the post: How do I get full administrative privileges in Windows 7?

<!-- Your question below: -->
 

Not only is this a great and gentle introduction to the proper use of meta, but it stands to help new users just when they need it most (learning to use the community).

Of course this doesn't 100% guarantee that someone won't get it wrong on occasion. But this is an awful lot of in-your-face guidance without simply telling people "read our FAQ" (which they never do). And if a user manages to step over all that guidance and still manages to misuse meta, I have no compunction about summarily removing a question they should never have posted.

But this just-in-time learning is a very effective way of learning a new site in a gentle and thoughtful way. If this is abused more often than not, it is easy to disable. But it's better than assuming clueless newbie every time.

Answer 1

This feature is now live on all meta sites except the international sites (waiting on translations) and Meta Stack Overflow (to ensure that this doesn't cause a lot of undue disruptions on other sites first).

Update: This is now enabled on all sites, including Meta Stack Overflow and international site metas.

Answer 2

First of all, it seems like a great idea - especially on smaller sites where there is likely to be less risk of a flood of Meta posts from low-quality-first-question askers that SO seems prone to scale-wise.

A couple of suggestions, if you go ahead with it and implement:

• Offer a wizard-like interface, with first asking a radio-button "what is your question about?"; and then offering a pre-built template of a good example question on the topic.

  "What" choices can be things like "closed question"? "downvotes"? ...

  This list can probably be easily distilled as first draft by browsing through 100 new user questions on MSO/MSE/M*)

• Strongly stress the need to ask about the content and be constructive. Nothing to sour everyone on every side like a user coming to MSO to complain about evil close-voters in terms more apropos to a bar fight, and getting an avalanche of votes and nasty comments in response.

  Conversely, while Kendra's concern may be valid, there's very few things that can pre-dispose a Meta regular to helping a new user in a good mood, than a polite "How can I improve this to better fit the site" approach.

  Ideally, this should be subject to the same text analysis filters as elsewhere on the site, e.g. the "your question may be subjective" one.

• Not sure if good idea, but perhaps also offer a checklist/wizard of what the user can do to self-help before asking. "Did you add examples of what you have tried to your post?". "Did you provide code examples?" (especially useful on Parenting.SE)

Answer 3

This is a step in the right direction, but I don't think it's sufficient.

First of all, let's look at the user experience (at least as it is depicted here - I don't have a no rep account at this point in time to test). A user makes a post. It gets closed, down voted, or deleted. They realize there's a place to go to ask. When they go there, they then realize they need a link to their post. Now they need to go back, find their post, grab a link to it (depending on how they navigate, a direct link to an answer may not be obvious to a new user), and paste it in the box. This is awkward. I agree with the earlier suggestion of a wizard - the user should choose their post from a list of their posts on the main site.

Second, this requires that a user make a post on the main site first. It doesn't let people be proactive and engage with the community to make sure their question is a good fit or to understand things discussed in the Help Center or previous Meta posts (if they have read those). On Software Engineering, a low quality post will get many down votes and close votes in very short order. Off-topic posts get deleted very quickly. We've decided that it's the best for the community in the long run to get rid of these questions and answers quickly, but it may also discourage people from participating if their post is the one down voted, closed, or deleted. They may not stick around to ask about their posts on Meta and may just give up on the community.

I still prefer my original solution - remove reputation limits from Meta (at least on a per-site basis). Allow communities to choose between this feature or a Meta that is open to all registered accounts. Let new users curious about a site be able to ask questions about that site and its community quickly, before they make low quality posts that are received in a way that drives them away from the community. I don't understand the reluctance to open Meta early rather than forcing people to make mistakes first.