Filtering out questions from unregistered users

Question

I am getting (slightly) fed up with all the questions of (mostly) unregistered users, which go like: 'I want this or that, please implement my code' or 'Here is my code, what is wrong?'. I agree that banning unregistered users from asking questions is bad.

So I was thinking: Is it possible to add a filter to the Questions page and only show the unregistered users if a (registered) user wants to?

Now, I understand that this might give problems for unregistered users not to get their questions answered (which is the same as banning them), but this is/can be prevented by:

• As each registered user can choose to filter out or not, there are probably enough users left who are willing to write or debug these problems.
• Showing a warning when an unregistered user submits a new question, telling that not all registered users get to see the question. And, that it might be a good idea to register before asking the question. (might result in less unregistered users...?)
• Building a filter which passes only X% of the unregistered users questions.

I understand the 'sensitivity' of this subject. But having registered users losing their interest in answering questions would be worse than this feature request I think.

Answer 1

I disagree with this suggestion. One of the defining features of StackOverflow and the other StackExchange websites is that unregistered users are real users, just like everyone else.

The only way to filter questions is by the question itself (tag, popularity, "hotness") not by the user who posted it. This is a good thing. We aren't in the business of providing assistance only to members of the club of registered users.

Answer 2

In addition to what lonesomeday has already posted, namely that it is important to remember that "unregistered users are real users, just like everyone else" and "we aren't in the business of providing assistance only to members of the club of registered users", I'd also point out that we have mechanisms in place already that attempt to solve this problem.

First, there are heuristics that attempt to detect what are considered extremely low-quality submissions, and force the user to improve their question before the system will accept it. They receive the following message:

Oops! Your question couldn't be submitted because:

• Sorry, we can't accept this question.

(It's possible that we've improved the error message since then to spell out exactly what went wrong. I can't find a link confirming or denying that at the moment.) This does help to catch the worst of the worst: the questions with long, unformatted code blocks, the questions shorter than a single paragraph, the questions with really bad titles, etc.

If you're seeing patterns of exceptionally low-quality questions that are not being excluded by this mechanism, please open a new feature request so that the team can improve their filter.

Second, the number of questions that a user can ask is rate-limited. One can only ask 50 questions over a 30-day period, 6 questions over a 24-hour period, and 1 question over a 30-second period.

Third, users who are guilty of consistently posting low-quality questions are eventually automatically and permanently banned from posting any more questions whatsoever. Instead, they see the following message when they try:

Oops! Your question couldn't be submitted because:

• Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account

I know that this feature is working quite well because I see a new question here on Meta at least once a day from someone asking what they're supposed to do now. It warms the cockles of my heart each time.