Come Take a Look at our New Contributor Indicator!

Question

This feature is now live across the network.

We've been doing quite a bit of research into ways that we could help new users have better experiences that ultimately lead them to becoming increasingly valuable, long-term contributors to our sites. While this is still ongoing, it's starting to blossom in the form of small but hopefully very effective changes we can make to improve how well we retain great people.

We're very enthusiastic about a new change that's small in scope, but big in potential to help new contributors find their footing. Coming very soon: our shiny (new) new contributor indicator!

tl;dr;: Folks will see an indicator when they go to interact with new contributors (visible for a week following their first post) letting them know that the person is new. A handy link to our Code of Conduct will be in the notification for reference.

What are our goals with this?

• Help develop and reinforce empathy for new contributors

• Help new contributors overcome anxiety surrounding asking or answering their first question on our sites

Here's a little more background:

We actively discourage folks from providing information that isn't really relevant to their posts; we would rather folks just get down to business. That's fine, but it doesn't really solve for how apprehensive people feel when contributing to a new community (especially one that's notorious for having lots of rules).

We tend to edit out ways that people try to anticipate and address criticism in advance (stop me if you've heard this one!):

I'm really new at this, so please forgive me if I'm doing this incorrectly ...

Sometimes, people say this because they're new at two skills: whatever they're trying to accomplish and (in many cases) asking questions on our sites. Sometimes, they're experienced in endeavor, they're just new to our engine. The need for a little empathy is the same however, and equally applicable in either case. We agree that this sort of stuff doesn't belong in posts, but we feel like the system should embrace it.

This indicator can speak for new contributors in a friendly way that the system itself reinforces; we hope it will allow folks to feel less apprehensive about jumping in.

If you're thinking something along the lines of 'Student Driver', the analogy generally fits: black-and-yellow striped tape and everything.

What is it going to look like?

Well, it's not going to be black-and-yellow striped tape, even though that would be pretty neat. It's easier to just show you, so I brought some screenshots! While these are still being finalized and tweaked, here's what the indicator will look like when you:

Comment on any of their initial posts, or view their initial questions:

Note: the new indicator doesn't actually attach to the user card throughout the site; it only appears where the user card is displayed on posts. This is what happens if you mouse over the indicator:

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Or, write an answer to their initial questions:

.. and the indicator under the user card on answers behaves just like it does in the question view example.

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These are the most common pain points when it comes to engaging with new contributors.

The new indicator doesn't alter functionality.

It's a reminder that how you interact with the person could be extra meaningful (any time we help strangers just out of the love for what we do, it's meaningful). But it's not a magic shield of any kind, it doesn't work like spawn protection (where players can't take damage for the first few seconds after entering) in video games.

The new indicator works by the age of a user's first visible post.

This could be a question or answer, and the association bonus won't influence the behavior. While you might not be new to our engine, everyone is new when they first join a new community, so the indicator is shown.

What behavior do we hope to encourage from more experienced users?

We hope folks will try to explain the why in addition to the what or how when you show new folks the ropes of using our system, and try to make them feel like it's within their immediate capability to be successful here. Experienced contributors don't need to know that their formatting looks good when you mention that they forgot to include a version number, but new contributors really appreciate that encouragement.

Other things you can do:

• Flag comments that are unfriendly or simply unhelpful. New users can do this now on posts that they own, but let's show people that we're serious about investing as much in them as they do in us. Snark sets a bad impression, but snark vanishing quickly sets a much better one.
• Don't add to 'pile on' scenarios of any kind; let moderators know if something needs immediate attention.
• Help new users by editing their posts, and leaving them a comment explaining how your edit improved things.
• Don't forget to upvote posts that you feel have value. It's strange when a question gets three plus answers, yet not a single vote. There's no obligation, of course, but the indicator is a helpful reminder.

Why are we doing this?

Our sites work in a way where it's nearly impossible to guide new users through complete onboarding in a way where we can ensure that they avoid all major pitfalls. There are just too many nuances to how the system works that can't be sufficiently expressed in UX / system dialog; we need a safety net.

We like to take the least invasive approach that's likely to get the job done when it comes to guiding behavior, so we don't want to make changes to tools when a simple sign that says "Hey, those things are sharp, be careful!" would suffice.

Questions? Suggestions? Feedback? Let us know.

Answer 1

I'm on board with the idea of reminding people to be considerate to those who are new to the site, but I think there's a piece missing. The new UI element encourages established users to help the new user understand site norms, but I don't see where the system tries to help the new users understand it.

Yes, there's the Help Center, but we already know that way too many users don't read it - and a lot of the information there is not needed before somebody posts a question! I don't need instructions on what to do when somebody answers until after somebody answers. The Help Center simply pushes too much information on the user all at once.

HDE's suggestions for canned comments are great, but several of those could be automatically generated by the system as a new user needs to see them. The system itself needs to encourage established users to provide good feedback to new users, but also needs to encourage the new users to look for, understand, and act on that feedback.

The first time a new user's post is edited, they need to get a notification that says something like:

Another user has edited your post. You can view the edit summary to see what they changed and read the comments on why they did so. You can also add a comment to your post using @[username] to request more information on why they modified your post.

Make the words "edit summary" link directly to the edit history for their post. Fill in the username of the editor so it is easy for them to copy/paste a response if they think something is wrong.

Then give editors a complementary prompt when editing a new user's post:

Dan is a new contributor. Please be sure that your edit summary includes specific feedback on the changes you made so that Dan can understand how to write better posts in the future.

For bonus points, add a couple of checkboxes that the editor can select for common changes (formatted code, changed tags, removal of salutations and "thanks in advance," etc.) and produce canned feedback that expands on those themes. An edit summary that says "remove fluff" gives little feedback to the user, and writing a longer edit summary is a pain for the editor. Make it so that the editor only has to check a box and the new user gets an extra paragraph in the edit summary explaining the "no fluff" policy, with links to the relevant help center page.

The same kind of logic applies to other actions that are typical for new users to experience.

• If they get a down vote, explain to them what that means and link to the help center article on voting. Review the info on how to write a good post.
• As comments start coming in, encourage them to read the comments to see if there is feedback on how they can improve their post. Make sure they understand how/why to flag comments.
• Make sure they see a notification about close votes that explains what close votes have been cast and how they should modify their post to alleviate the issues.
• If their question is closed, provide a long-form explanation of the close vote reason and suggest next actions. If it's a duplicate, make sure they understand that's okay. If their question is "too broad," provide a help center link that shows examples of how broad questions can be reworked into clear, answerable ones.
• When somebody answers, provide a tip about how to upvote or accept answers, and include guidance on how long to wait before accepting an answer.

tl;dr Build the new user experience so that it explains how to use the site instead of relying on users to "be nice" by explaining it to them.

Disclaimer: I haven't done the "new user" experience in a while. Apologies if any of these have already been implemented.

Answer 2

This really isn't adding new information. Mostly because showing rep provides this information already. When you see someone with very little rep, the odds of them being within a few days old are very high. People checking their profile or user card already know if the user is fairly new or fairly experienced. The exceptions are...rare, and I don't see this being useful just for the rare exceptional cases.

There's also the fact that a new account doesn't mean it's a new user. Lots of people make new accounts. Lots of people make new accounts often. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for not so good reasons. In fact I'm fairly confident that there are more experienced users that would have this banner showing up under their posts then there are inexperienced users with more than, say, 100 rep.

There's really only two reasons to include this information, and in so many places no less. Either you're trying to get people to treat new users differently in ways you know they're not supposed to (i.e. voting on the user and not the content), or you're showing people a bunch of information that you expect them to just ignore, and thus are intentionally wasting their time.

Showing this information in the answer box is also particularly egregious. People shouldn't be changing how the answer based on how new the question author is, so there's no reason at all to be including this information there. The only examples you've given of times where people should act differently for a new user are potentially explaining their actions more in comments, so that at least explains why you're showing it in the comment box, but showing it in the answer box doesn't even make sense.

What are our goals with this?

Help develop and reinforce empathy for new contributors

Why just new users, and not all users?

Help new contributors overcome anxiety surrounding asking or answering their first question on our sites

Given that the new user is...new, they're not going to know that you're doing this, so I don't see how there going to be any less nervous around asking. Also, I would expect for lots of users having several big giant flashing neon signs saying, "new user" is likely to make them more nervous, and removes any chance of them appearing to be an experienced user (or for readers to not even consider how new they are) by simply asking a good question that doesn't make it clear that they don't know what they're doing. How would this possibly make people less nervous?

Answer 3

Noob alert! Remember to put on your kid gloves! Seriously?

I don't like this at all. Yes, some people are new to the site. Yes, we should know that they may not understand all the rules. But no, we should not stick a big noob warning on their profile tag for everyone to see. Not only does it feel slightly passive aggressive, it automatically puts people into the mindset that the "new contributor" will not understand how the site works, or even the concepts behind the questions they are asking.

As an anecdote, I've had maybe 10 accounts here over the years, some anonymous or unregistered. This one is the one I've kept for longest. I still occasionally post anonymously for various reasons. I have noticed a troubling trend. Whenever I ask from a new account, the answers I get are often dumbed down or explain things I already know. This happens even if I am showing a clear understanding of the concepts I am discussing. If I ask the question on my main account, I notice that the answers are far more technical and helpful. The only possible reason for this is that people are looking at my rep and assuming I am naïve. This would be made much worse if people were given a big notice that I am a delicate new user...

We should not judge how new someone is by their time on the site, but only by the quality of their contributions. If someone is using the wrong tag, that is when you gently correct them. If someone is asking a question in the wrong place, that is when you point them to where they should go. Unless someone is showing that they misunderstand the site, we should treat them as equals who are equally competent (and who very well may be, as many people who are writing their first question have been reading Stack Exchange sites for years). The idea that we are putting a big noob alert on people's profiles is disgusting.

Answer 4

Ouch. Whatever made you think this is a good idea?

Well, ok, I can see how it would be appealing. But have you considered the potential downsides from labeling new users with a target marked “NOOB”?

There's a small but vocal minority of Stack Overflow users (I think it's mostly SO, or maybe it's just that 0.00001% of any other site is approximately 0) who are actively hostile to new users — refusing to answer, not making the slightest effort to help. Painting bigger targets will only make that problem worse.

And then there's a bunch of well-meaning people who go out stalking for new users to hit them on the head with tell them to go read this FAQ, and that FAQ, and that IAQ for good measure, and all of meta. Guys, I know you mean well, but:

1. It's creepy. Sure, some of the recipients feel welcomed. But others feel overwhelmed, or worse, stalked. You probably don't hear about the third category because they generally won't come back.
2. It's rarely helpful because it's almost always some canned comment which has absolutely no bearing on whatever problem the user may be facing.

It happened to me on TeX.SE the first time I posted a question there, and I was rather creeped out. I was a veteran Stack Exchange user at the time, so I just shrugged it off — I mean, as a moderator, I'd probably seen worse comments that day — but if that had been my first contact with Stack Exchange, I would have hesitated before coming back.

Stack Exchange should not encourage any generic treatment of new users. People who help new users should do it because the user needs guidance, and provide the guidance that the user needs.

Instead of labeling users as “NEW!”, provide indicators that guide helpful veterans towards users in need of help. The first post review is a good one, though a user doesn't become a veteran after their first post. Automatic flags is another, but that only handles extreme cases where a sizable proportion of the needed help is helping the user off the site.

The system itself could do a much better job at providing guidance. Guidance given by an automatic system is better than posted by humans: it doesn't give the feeling that everybody's eyes are following you, and it's easier to excuse it if it's off the mark. Humans should be the second level of recourse, and should always, always give relevant guidance. To first posters and non-first-posters alike.

Answer 5

Okay - why does it matter if the user is a new contributor or new to a technology when they're asking a question?

I feel like this particular aspect is being ignored; it should not matter in the slightest if a person is new to a technology or new to a community. This feels like it's moving the lion's share of the onus of participation etiquette from the new participant to the veterans.

I get it - some veterans can be jerks. We don't deal with them any differently here since we're not changing how we flag; we simply add another chiding warning to the veterans who engage with these users.

I want a satisfactory answer as to why it matters that a user gets labeled as such. Once that's answered, then this marker could be justified.

Right now I'm not seeing it.

This feature may wind up having a more chilling effect with engagement as opposed to just-in-time guidance for a new user to help them understand what's going on with the interaction of their question.

Answer 6

Will new users also see this mini-banner on their own posts?

I could imagine someone being slightly perturbed by seeing a "welcome to the site" type comment when they've been around for 6 days or so. They might think "how do they know I'm new? have they been stalking my profile to check the dates of all my posts?!" (This was one of the reasons cited on at least one SE site for banning "welcome to the site" comments unless they have some other useful content - it could be seen as stalkerish.)

I would suggest replacing the "be nice" with a reminder that this user may not know community norms.

As other people here have pointed out, we're meant to be nice to everyone, not just new users. It seems redundant, and worse than that, it could give the impression that the CoC is more lax when talking to more experienced users. How about something like:

Dan is a new contributor. Remember that they may not be aware of Stack Exchange policies and norms, so please be patient when explaining to them.

Presumably the main aim here is to replace comments like "we use this tag for questions about X, not that one - you should know this, because it's all clearly explained in this meta post" with comments more like "hey, just to let you know, on this site we use this tag instead of that one for questions about X - if you want to read more about why, here's a link to the explanation on our 'meta' discussion site". Not really to replace rude comments with CoC-compliant ones, because that's a more general effort and not specific to new users.

Answer 7

Good UI design does not overwhelm users with redundant information.

Repeating that new user status three times on a single page is a tad redundant.
None of the regular contributors are completely illiterate, once is probably enough.

Good UI design does not overwhelm users with redundant information.

You have a nice and shiny new code of conduct, you don't have to link there twice on a single page.

Good UI design does not overwhelm users with redundant information.

Did I mention yet that repeating yourself multiple times is annoying?

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Just to illustrate what shows when I want to make a comment:

Answer 8

This feature is rude and unwelcoming.

You're not singling out behaviors that need to change. You're dropping a blanket accusation of poor behavior on everyone. The very idea that everyone needs this warning is implicitly accusatory.

Even worse, this change violates one of SO's core tenets: that it's the content that matters, not who writes it. The newness of the user is completely irrelevant. Either the user made a quality post and followed our rules and norms or they didn't. The result should be the same either way: downvote, closure, deletion if bad, upvote if good, or no action if not good enough to warrant an upvote. Possibly a comment explaining the problems or requesting improvements. This feature sends the message to all users that "new" users should be treated differently, and they should not. They should be held to the same standard. Period.

Because of this, it also means you're attaching a new stigma to new users that SO has fairly successfully avoided since its founding. You're implying that new users are incapable of writing good posts. This only undermines your own efforts to be welcoming. I have never subscribed to the notion that our problem questions are primarily due to users being new or unfamiliar with the site; the primary cause behind bad posts is a lack of effort. Bad posts come from an unwillingness to spend the time required to obtain some level of understanding about the nature of the problem they're facing or to clearly present that understanding. This is completely unrelated to the newness of the user. This new feature instead wrongly implies a causation of newness, rather than the mere possible correlation. Our moderation efforts tend to drive users unwilling to spend that effort away, at least somewhat, so it's not surprising that we'd see a correlation without a causation.

Answer 9

Just curious what the veteran contributor indicator is going to look like and how SE will word the warning to be nice and respectful to them for taking their time to help you learn how to use the site and provide answers for free by actually following the instructions/advice left in the comments instead of complaining about it and calling people names and posting @downvoter explain!

Let me suggest some copy:

Maybe reinforce it with Always remember they are trying to help you! somewhere in all bold flashing rainbow colors or something. :-)

Answer 10

I think that some of these, particularly the notification in the answer box, is too intrusive. The tag on the user's infobox is livable. The tag on the comment box is odd, but maybe acceptable. But the tag on the answer box is too much.

While one could argue that the tone of comments may need to vary from user to user, the tone of answers does not. When posting the answer, you aren't posting it for "a new user". You're not talking to the user; you're talking about the user's question. So there's no reason to have a giant box that says "NEW USER!!!" sitting there.

There is also some danger that experienced users may use this as a reason to ignore such questions and simply not provide answers to any user with this tag in the answer box.

Answer 11

I understand your reasoning for doing this, but do not like the implementation. I also wonder if you have considered the side effects. After some time to reflect, I do not think this is a good idea in the present state.

First off, the warning banner is kind of insulting.

User278094 is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.

With that, you are automatically assuming that us "more experienced users" will not be nice to new users, and need a reminder to do so. In my opinion, that little bit and the link to the CoC is completely unnecessary. If we do not already know to be nice to everyone and follow the CoC, a banner is not going to help.

Something like this would convey your intended message without coming across as condescending or belittling to us "more experienced users".

User278094 is a new contributor. Take a bit of extra time to show them the ropes.

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You are creating a class of users. Yes, we need to treat new users with a little more grace, help them along, and all the other little things that need to be learned to succeed on SE. But sticking a "New" label on them does not necessarily help anything.
I'm going to venture a guess and say that it will hurt their chances of getting their question answered. New users can't UV. New users are much more unlikely to accept your answer.
You take those two points and then stick a warning on every new post reminding people of that and it does not help the answer rate.

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No matter how "nice" and "welcoming" everyone on SE is to new users, we still do have the same problem with new users. They do not know how our sites work, and in many cases they do not care. They just want their question answered.
This new banner may help some but it is coming at the problem from the wrong end.

It's like a "dangerous intersection" sign. It is reminding the drivers that something is ahead, but really the intersection should just be fixed.

Sure, we can try everything to make all the existing and established SE users be extra specially nice to new users, but we still need to fix the low-quality posts from the new users.

Answer 12

Nobody reads the mumbo-jumbo when signing up for a community. Nobody reads the pinned FAQ topics on top of a forum. Nobody reads the tour. Nobody previews their question before posting it. Nobody lurks for a while to get the mores of a community before posting something by themselves. And nobody seems to remember that Stack Overflow was meant to build a library of canonical questions that help many programmers.

Face it; 90% of questions are about debugging someone's code, and 90% of those questions either don't contain enough code to properly reproduce the issue or don't contain enough explanation to properly answer the question, making it irrelevant for later visitors and uninteresting for existing answerers. Please don't call people who dump their partial non-compiling code "contributors".

Question askers just want their damn code fixed, and right now at that, and answerers of such questions just want to get a lot of reputation so they can show off their profile to their potential employers.

I'm not saying I want to be able to say "Hey asshole, your question sucks, learn to debug!" under a question, or "Dude, can you at least type some comments in this code dump of an answer?". I'm saying that this indicator feels like a giant slap in the face as if all of us do this so frequently, and that this makes me feel even more like Stack Overflow just wants to retain more users on their platform and doesn't care anymore about what those users do there, as long as they generate pageviews, all under a thin veil of "please be nice to each other".

Answer 13

For those that don't want to see this notification / banner, add the following rule to your adblocker:

##.new-contributor-indicator

Or using a userstyles plugin:

.new-contributor-indicator{
    display:none;
}

Or a userscript:

$('<style type="text/css">.new-contributor-indicator {display: none;}</style>')
    .appendTo($('head'));

This should block the indicator from showing up on the answer field, and on the user information under the question.

Answer 14

I have a question regarding this: What will the new user see when they are posting for the first time?

If new users don't get any additional guidance from what they've already been getting, then looks like we've fixed only one side of the problem. There are two great suggestions here, which would help a bit:

• New users need better awareness of what is expected of them when they ask their first question
• New users need better awareness of what is expected of them when they answer their first question

I get it that we should tackle problems one at a time. Given that we've now fixed one side, can we fix the other side too?

Answer 15

Three Two suggested improvements:

For the experienced users: change "be sure to check out our Code of Conduct" to "remember to follow our Code of Conduct" or similar. "Check out" sounds like "hey, we have this thing you might not have seen and you should take a look", but we expect experienced users to have already done that. A reminder is gentler and still gets the point across.

For editors: you've covered comments and answers; it would be nice to add some edit guidance too, specifically for the edit reason. (Fill it in! Tell people why you made a change and not just what you changed.)

For moderators: when anything on the page is flagged (the question, answers, comments), it'd be helpful to us to know what the person being flagged saw, i.e. that this user's new-user status was visible. While we take rudeness seriously wherever we see it, I expect that rudeness to new users would prompt a stronger reaction, like contacting the user sooner. -- Comments convinced me that this shouldn't be a factor.

Answer 16

This doesn't seem very helpful to me. I am glad that we have the first posts review queue, but I don't feel convinced that a new contributor indicator shown to all users will help with on-boarding new users.

New users, like any other users, come here to get answers to their questions, or to answer other people's questions. Having a different attitude towards their posts can only improve their experience to a limited extent.

For example, a user who posts an off-topic or overly broad question is likely to have a frustrating experience. The only way I can see of really avoiding that would be to get rid of the site mechanisms for shutting down or altering these kinds of questions—and doing that is obviously impractical. As long as these mechanisms exist, they will be obstacles to getting an answer. Being told that your question is "on hold" instead of "closed" might feel a bit less like a slap in the face, but it's still not a positive experience. I think the same goes for comments: even though it might be more upsetting to get a snarky comment than to get a sincere, earnest suggestion about how to improve your question, I don't think either really feels great. Nor does being ignored.

Helping new users to make better posts from the start seems like a more promising avenue of improvement to me: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That's why I've been looking forward to the new ask wizard (of course, it remains to be seen how effective that can be).

As Robert Harvey said in the top-voted answer to the 2016 "Let's Plan the Second Iteration of the Stack Exchange Quality Project!" question:

New users need better awareness of what is expected of them when they ask their first question. [...] The best off-topic question is the one that is never asked. Allowing sites to run off the rails by providing the lowest possible friction to ask off-topic questions and then saddling the community with cleaning up those questions... well, that's not what most of us signed up for, nor is it the best use of our time. It is probably the least-friendly way to welcome new users.

Most of the professionals who are here come here to contribute and to help others, not to spend all of their time sweeping the floor.

A "new contributor" indicator doesn't seem to do anything to alleviate that problem.

Responses to specific things

We hope folks will try to explain the why in addition to the what or how when you show new folks the ropes of using our system, and try to make them feel like it's within their immediate capability to be successful here. Experienced contributors don't need to know that their formatting looks good when you mention that they forgot to include a version number, but new contributors really appreciate that encouragement.

I don't think everybody responds well to praise, and it's somewhat difficult to use well. The "sandwich method" of criticism and similar strategies can come across as condescending. So I'm skeptical of the idea that we ought to encourage people to give more praise to new users than to experienced contributors (or that we should praise new users' ability to use site functions, even if that ability would be unremarkable for an established user).

Flag comments that are unfriendly or simply unhelpful. New users can do this now on posts that they own, but let's show people that we're serious about investing as much in them as they do in us. Snark sets a bad impression, but snark vanishing quickly sets a much better one.

This is something that people should do for any post. I'm confused by the implication that users who would otherwise neglect to flag unfriendly or unhelpful comments will be motivated to do so by a new user indicator. I don't feel like this matches my own experience of using the flag system.

Don't add to 'pile on' scenarios of any kind; let moderators know if something needs immediate attention.

As with the previous, pile-ons are bad on any kind of post. They may be more a problem with new users' posts because new users are more likely to post questions or answers that have obvious problems, which I think is one of the things that causes people to pile on with critical comments or downvotes. Moderators can delete long comment chains, I guess, but I feel like they're usually not quick enough to prevent the original poster from noticing the hostile atmosphere, so I don't see this as a full solution to the problem.

Help new users by editing their posts, and leaving them a comment explaining how your edit improved things.

Editing a new user's post is always a bit dangerous, since inevitably some people (including people who write useful, thoughful questions) will be upset, or at the worse case, blow up, about someone else "putting words into their mouths". (And sometimes these kinds of complaints are clearly justified: I've certainly seen some edits that have changed the meaning of questions.) It's hard for users to make sure that their edit will be received well, even if they leave a comment trying to explain the reasons for the edit.

Furthermore, many posts have problems that cannot/should not be fixed by another user's edits.

I agree with BJ Myers' suggestion of having the system show a special message to new users the first time their post is edited: this would ensure that they receive some information about the Stack Exchange philosophy of editing at an appropriate time.

Don't forget to up-vote stuff that you feel has value. It's strange when a question gets three plus answers, yet not a single vote. There's no obligation, of course, but the indicator is a helpful reminder.

Different people might experience the site differently, but for me, getting three answers and no upvotes feels way better than getting three upvotes and no answer to my question. Upvotes on questions are a nice extra, I guess, but the main thing people are looking for when they post a question here is answers, not fake internet points.

It doesn't seem that strange to me that a question might get answers but no upvotes. Most users don't upvote every on-topic question on the site, and the value of upvotes as indicators of the most useful questions would be lost if people used them this way. But every on-topic question certainly ought to be answered, and it's a good thing if people do post answers even to mediocre or somewhat boring questions (much better than the alternative scenarios of these questions being ignored or closed).

For answers, the idea that people need to be "reminded" to vote doesn't really make sense to me. Voting on answers is very intuitive, and I don't think people should apply different standards to answers by veterans vs. newbies.

Answer 17

Aren't you forgetting the big ideals of providing help, regardless of who posted the question?

You always declined feature requests for the possibility to ignore specific users, with blabla about building a database of knowledge regardless of who asked the question, and now you are branding a whole group of users?

If you are allowed to mark users, also give users the possibility to mark users they want to recognize.

Answer 18

So, whom this has been added for? I mean, people can clearly see new members reputation. And this information is enough.

This update just added a lot of garbage on the screen, that only distracts attention from the question itself.

Answer 19

Being flagged as a "New contributor" on one site when they are already an experienced contributor on other sites in the SE network seems a bit silly. I might treat a brand new user to the SE network a bit differently as they may not know their way around, but if a user already has 30K rep on another site then I really don't want to be wearing my kid gloves and start explaining the basics (which could also come across as rather condescending).

But I also don't see what this provides that the existing rep score doesn't (as others have already mentioned)?

Answer 20

This is just another small step into the general wrong direction.

If the purported objectives of Stack Overflow (and other Stack Exchange sites) were taken seriously, such an indicator wouldn't exist. If you really want to build a useful library of knowledge in a Q&A format, there's only one thing you should care about: Quality of the content.

Rude behavior like targeting someone personally, ridiculing someone, etc. shouldn't be accepted and isn't accepted by the communities. Telling people what they did wrong, that their content doesn't meet quality requirements, or perhaps that refusing to admit errors or improve content is stupid, should by all means be accepted and encouraged.

Of course, we see more and more that it isn't. I've already had my (high rep) Stack Overflow account deleted for reasons along these lines. From time to time, you read about high rep users requesting deletion or just leaving silently and my guess is more and more will follow. As far as I'm concerned, it's (especially in the case of Stack Overflow) because I don't believe in the goal of building this useful library any more. It much more feels like the goal is to get clicks over clicks - both from new users and from users that somehow get addicted to reputation score, no matter how bad the content quality gets.

Please rethink this whole strategy. Regarding this "new contributor" indicator, the problem isn't that experienced users don't pamper the newcomers enough. The problem is that many newcomers don't take the time to learn what's expected. In some cases, the problem might be mitigated by finding better ways to present the expectations to the new users. In most cases, nothing will work because they just don't care. Well, one thing will still work: Tell them what's bad about their posts (not rudely, but clearly and directly), downvote if appropriate, and vote to close if appropriate. Someone feeling unwelcome after these reactions is very unlikely to ever make good contributions - so, why care?

Answer 21

I appreciate that you try to be very welcoming to new users, but almost all of what we are supposed to do, we should do anyway, shouldn't we?

• Be nice
• Behave according to the CoC
• Flag useless comments
• Alert moderators if necessary

The only things new are:

1. Edit their posts and better explain why. That's a good reminder, although that should be done already (via edit comment). But an extra comment welcoming them and explaining it a bit more is fine.
2. Voting. If it has value - yes. But why especially with new members - we should vote on the content, not the person. So I'm not sure this is really necessary. Maybe rather write a comment explaining the voting - but what if it's a DV? Even in this case?

Answer 22

I simply think: it is too much.

I actually like the notification for in the "user xyz asked" place. I find it a helpful reminder.

Why? Because that reminder is visually close to the comment section. And that is where most of the "harm" happens.

But at least for me on SO, I almost never saw an answer being rude, or even overly aggressive/snappy.

I therefore think: that second reminder in the answer section is absolutely pointless. Even when there are already multiple answers, people answering the question started reading from the top. They saw that this is a new user already.

If you think you have to repeatedly push this information into our faces, well, I disagree: the (assumed) 1% of nasty answers does not justify that second indicator in my eyes.

Other answers with many upvotes already suggest that people aren't too happy about the indicator at all. That part is subjective, and open for debate. If it helps to drive down nasty/snappy comments: fine with me.

But as explained: answers aren't comments, and repeating the indication is a waste of screen spaces, furthermore sending a "we do not trust you" message between the lines to your experienced users.

And honestly: when people write answers, they hope for upvotes and accepts. That alone is a much better motivation to be overly kind anyway.

Edit: regarding the indicator shown when writing comments, well. I can see it being helpful, because, as said, nasty/snappy comments are the most prominent problem. Yet, they appear pretty close to the other, "static" indication. So: I could live with keeping it, but then I wouldn't mind the "dynamic" indicator(s) to be dropped altogether.

Answer 23

I'm not going to comment about the idea itself, just about the icon

To me the icon showing the flat palm looks like a stop symbol, as if I am doing something wrong when trying to help a new user by posting a comment or answer.

But you don't want to stop me from helping, do you? I think you rather want me to pay attention, so I suggest to replace this sign by something that says "Attention", for example an exclamation mark:

Or an "information" icon (as suggested by @SonictheInclusiveHedgehog):

Answer 24

This New contributor indicator seems entirely superfluous since the Code of Conduct applies while interacting with everyone and doesn't distinguish new users from the not-so-new users. Regardless, since the indicator is apparently helpful in making the site more welcoming and there's no specific reason why the site should not be more welcoming to the not-so-new users, I suggest using the corresponding Contributor indicator for the latter, like so:

It is not clear to me why the company would spend development effort to support the attitude of "I would have been nicer if I had known that the user was new". There's a much easier solution to that problem: be nice to everybody.

Analogy time: I wouldn't have driven over the speed limit if I had known there was a speed camera here. Hence, there should be a road sign saying "speed camera ahead" so that I can take care to avoid crossing the speed limit there.

Of course, if you drive below the speed limit at all times, you wouldn't have to worry about the speed camera at all. Moreover, placing such road signs increases cognitive load on all citizens, including those who follow the speed limit at all times.

Answer 25

I think this has the potential to brutally and horribly backfire.

It has been my experience that in some subcommunities of SO, and in some other sites in general, your only hope of getting accepted as a new user is to not act like it. You're expected to know your stuff, you're expected to "separate yourself from the chaff".

I think there'll be a small but critically large enough contingent of people who have been waiting for this for a long time. We've had calls to implement options to automatically ignore questions from new users for a while, what do you think these people will do with this new information?

Maybe I'm too pessimistic about this, but I have a feeling that the occurrence of "first post, instantly downvoted and closed, and completely shut out" is going to increase with this rather than decrease, at least in some subgroups of Stack Exchange.

Answer 26

My two cents; this is obsolete. As mentioned elsewhere, isn't the amount of reputation a good indicator of the SO-experience of the account? And more importantly, shouldn't we always be nice, and shouldn't the code of conduct always apply? Or...

Answer 27

feature-request

Change the text to "New contributor on Meta" if the user is only new to the meta site.

I'm okay if the "New contributor" applies to meta sites separately from main sites, because meta has a very different culture from main sites (see this meta.so discussion). However, it's jarring to see a user with a large amount of reputation marked as a "New contributor", which seemingly implies that the user is new to the pair of sites in general.

Answer 28

Stereotype

In social psychology, a stereotype is an over-generalized belief about a particular category of people. Stereotypes are generalized because one assumes that the stereotype is true for each individual person in the category.

Wikipedia

Your application of stereotypes to new users and others adds to the toxicity of Stack Exchange.

Answer 29

Seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do.

If I could offer a suggestion, it may be worthwhile to bump the notice after long periods of inactivity. Say a user posts a question, then disappears for 6+ months before their next post. They may have technically been a user for 6+ months, but in reality they've only interacted with the site on 2 days, 6+ months apart. Or perhaps it would be beneficial to show the notice for the first X posts?

Not a deal breaker, just my 2¢

Answer 30

To a discussion in the comments about leaving the shoes outside, I'd like to contribute the idea of access to the room only if shoes are deposited. This will frustrate maybe those who'd wish to leave their footwear in the car or something like that but in the most part, you won't have anyone wearing shoes where they're not supposed to.

I call this concept, the door is the shoe rack. No access without a shoe deposit. You may have noticed all sites on SE encourage you to login before you partcipate, it's the same concept.

Also, I am very much sympathetic to Iain's genuinely stated remark:

When are you going to put some effort into making the experience better for the people who answer questions but have to wade through a river of [bleep] to find anything interesting ?

He's genuinely pointing out to us that there currently exists way too much clutter in finding interesting content... and I'm very sure he isn't talking about things which are subjectively interesting. We all face the issue and many are simply too numb to bring it up and talk about it actively these days.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, "You have to be the change you wish to see in the world" A particularly drudging or boring part of any SE site can be livened up by your Q&A! Ask questions that interest others to not only read and upvote but genuinely answer with the best of their capability. And when you are in the process of writing such an answer, keep in mind that you are not only adressing the OP but also the entirety of the Stack Exchange community from diverse backgrounds, varying interests and absolutely different experience levels.

Statistics regarding users, questions, tags and such are very much often dealt with at Dawg's Waffle Haus, a room a I hope everyone at some point considers visiting. @ashleedawg would like visitors, I suppose.

sth echoes my idea that regular users need similar benifits or nice-ities to them.

How about instead doing some research how to give your long term contributors a good experience? That might be a good idea if you want more long term contributors.

As a decade old user of SE (I was here since SO started in 2008), I still feel brand new. Perhaps, it's the new accounts I'm forced to make once I forget old passwords beyond retrieval. But I think it more has to do with the parts of the site whose culture and growth I was not able to be part of. No one is omnicient enough to have been part of every conversation but truly, every conversation here stands as a mighty reminder of how much every SE community has grown and grown well.

And this one from Andras Deakis quite a remarkable read:

I find this new feature in its current form insulting. It implies that the experienced users can't be trusted to act like decent human beings, and that they have to be extra decent with new users. It all doesn't make sense. The blog post, the intrusive comment flag icons, the "thanks for flagging, we're sorry you're offended" popup, and now this...I can't help but feel criminalized. Is this worth it all?

To you, Andras, I can only say...No, it's not worth it. Everything made is made with only bestest of intentions and it is not difficult to see that once the new Code of Conduct was established, it became essential that new users feel a fresher and more vibrant air, lighter and friendlier than the rest of us in the community got a chance to experience. A better UX through a better community.

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I wish to slightly digress and talk a a bit about the new app called Brainly.

While the idea is nice and implementation beyond satisfactory, the community is absolute trash. Yes, they give the right answers most of time but they also don't in a lot of cases. If the user base of SE and Brainly were to switch places, Brainly would become heaven-like as a Q&A system...and SE would burn to the ground as it was being piloted by the equivalents to actual monkeys that [bleep] on typewriters until they make ca-chinky noise. The answering of questions is hard work anywhere but the effort should not be taken if nothing of quality is able to be said.

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In a future update of SE, I'd like the ability 
to embed room invite boxes and comments into my answers. 
Also, it would nice if I could answer a question 
using embedded ppt slides. 

Have a ton more requests but please
get started on these for now, please.

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