Would a grace period or a sandbox mode help introduce new users?

Question

Inspired by casperOne's interpretation in the comments of this recent question, I'm wondering if a small grace period or a sandbox mode for newer users will help their introduction to the system.

Grace period

• Very limited, perhaps a couple of hours,
• Should only apply to first time questions, from brand new users (excluding users transfering from other sites),
• No rep loss on down votes, and possibly not even showing down votes,
• Standard notification to everyone that the post is in the grace period (similar to mod notifications)
• Possibly an expanded down vote tooltip, something along the lines of "OP is brand new, play nice"

Another, possibly highly controversial idea, would be that posts are only visible to higher rep users / moderators during the grace period.

But, it's possible that a grace period will be perceived as differentiating noobs from elites, as dreamlax commented, and I really don't like that.

Sandbox mode

• Optional, at the discretion of the OP
• Suspends the question for a limited time, question is only visible via the review page and / or moderator tools
• Could be offered to all users

Higher rep users / moderators could review the question and leave helpful comments. After sandbox mode expires, question goes live and it's business as usual.

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These are of course quite vague, I'm just throwing ideas out there.

We recently had a highly emotional discussion on Programmers Meta, and although the consensus seems to be that the system works as intended, it's hard to ignore the fact that several new users feel alienated.

And I recently had an offline chat with a 3K user (PSE again) and I was amazed of how many aspects of the system he was unaware of (simple stuff, really), something that tells me that as the system is rapidly evolving information is becoming extremely fragmented, especially from the point of view of a new user in one of the less popular sites.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Down votes?

Answer 1

We recently had a highly emotional discussion on Programmers Meta, and although the consensus seems to be that the system works as intended, it's hard to ignore the fact that several new users feel alienated.

Bear in mind that the two sites in question are specifically not for beginners.

Let's read the site descriptions:

• English: Q&A for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts

• Programmers: Q&A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development

If you want to walk into a college Calculus class, you need knowledge of Algebra, Pre-Algebra, Geometry, and Pre-Calculus. If you don't, you should be gently directed to other places where you can learn the necessary prerequisites first.

The problem is not that we need to figure out some way to stop the Calculus class to teach these users Algebra -- the problem is that these users are in the wrong place! It is totally correct to gently, civilly direct them somewhere else, somewhere more at their level.

Even on Stack Overflow, which never really had "professional" in its mandate, there is generally an expectation that someone posting a question will understand the rudimentary mechanics of, y'know, being a programmer. Otherwise they're committing the greatest sin of all -- they are wasting everyone's time.

Nobody expects every student to have what it takes to attend Harvard or Yale, right? Heck, we're more akin to the local community college, and even we have standards. You can't expect to show up on the campus of your local community college and go to class completely unprepared. Nobody is going to educate you K-12 just to teach you a college level topic; asking that of your peers is completely unreasonable.

Thus, if you want to come on our "campus" and learn with your fellow students, we expect users to be armed with the basics and fundamentals of the field. Users who fail to meet the absolute minimum standards of a practicing professional, whatever field that happens to be (think FizzBuzz for programmers), should be helpfully directed to other resources where they can learn these things before coming back.

If you don't enforce some basic standards for participants, you soon won't have the benefit of any experts at all. And God help everyone on your Q&A site then.

Answer 2

Overview: At first this answer was going to be something like "oh no, the system is just fine as is". However, seeing as how English Language and Usage has had similar debate recently, I think there should be at least SE-neighborhood-wide discussion. Recently, on EL&U this question was asked by a new user. The question was pretty far off-topic for the site (very subjective), and was closed. However, after a little back and forth in discussion, the user commented:

i am not a scholar of English language.I am a student who has some problem so i came here to improve these problem. And if i can then to help other to improve.You vote down it except someone is already closed it.If were scholar of English who know everything about English, i do not come here

Now, this comment is a bit emotionally charged but the system clearly frustrated the user. He didn't know how to improve, and he was angry at the down votes. I think that changes definitely need to be made to the system. This was just one user, but who's to say that there won't be some trickle-down effect that discourages further users at all?

Suggestions and thoughts: I think that there should be some further type of help offered for new users. To address the OP's ideas:

• no rep loss on first time questions: On the one hand, implementing this would mean that new users would see the down votes and not see an equivalent negative reputation change. However, this would only (as I understand rep) affect users who transfer from one site to another and have the initial +100 reputation boost. A new user would still see the down votes, and possibly have a negative reaction again. The users who transfer from one site to the other and have a reputation boost ostensibly have had significant reputation on another site, and should be able to come in needing less coaching. So, I don't think idea would be overall the most useful.

• down vote tooltip include a warning that the user is brand new: I think this would be useful--the "please consider leaving a comment" could be rejiggered so that for new-user questions it is always triggered. However, some veteran users would need to adopt the attitude that helping this user will help the site--and some users (including myself, at times) get frustrated with the poor quality questions flooding the site. This option would definitely need to be in conjunction with something else.

• An automated comment on downvoted questions with references to the faq and how to ask pages: Again, I think this would be really helpful. However, pointing to a site's FAQ and how to ask pages might discourage new users--"here's a wall of text; read it". While this is not a social network site, this by itself seems incredibly impersonal.

Having considered the above, I would also suggest the following:

• similar to the pending edits and flags, consider creating a notification system for new answers and questions. While we now have a review system, unless one checks continuously a new question could be posted, and severely downvoted before the new user got help. Maybe this could be a feature for 10k+ users--some sort of "mentor" privilege.

• create a way for new users to contact existing ones. Sometimes, a new user posts a question. It is bad. It is downvoted into oblivion. If nobody has commented, the user doesn't know where to go and has nobody to ask questions or reply to. How many of them know that Meta exists? How do they know what flags do? Yes, these users should be encouraged to read the FAQ. But there should be some way for them to contact someone--probably a moderator--so that they don't feel like the site has turned on them.

Conclusion: Even if these ideas are thrown out, I think that SE should consider becoming a community that encourages people to ask better questions by being slightly more community-like. No, we don't need private messages. No, we don't need to be able to comment on profiles. But without some sort of positive and encouraging policing, many users who could have become good users are discouraged and never return.

Answer 3

I might be mistaken but it seems like there are two problems at play here as communities want to ensure that high quality users (i.e. field experts) stay around and don't leave due to one or two initial bad reactions to the site where as users who still need to reach the site standards to contribute in a positive fashion need to be gently turned away so they don't have a negative impression of the network as a whole.

The first thing that comes to mind for this, which is somewhat like a sandbox mode and I think is already somewhat in place with the review process, is to require the first couple questions and answers that a user posts to be "peer reviewed" by higher reputation users who would be required to give some of feedback if they down vote a question. This would have the two-fold affect of limiting the number of low quality posts that get made by new users and also providing a private venue where they are given feedback that could be quite negative.

Remember, people generally react negatively to negative feedback so it is better to do that in private than out in the general public venue.

This might require that some changes be made to how question deletions are handled so that the new user can get a chance to review the feedback in the event that a moderator wants to delete a question though, perhaps put it a 72 hour timer before it is officially deleted?

I am inclined to agree that new users need to have some sort of "hand-holding" to get them through any initial rough spots and also as a way to take users who still need some education off to the side to let them know where they can ensure they can save face.