We're rolling out a new "Quick Start" guide to help new users learn the basics

Question

Here's the first one, on Ask Different.

We've been working hard on ways to help improve the experience of new users, and one of the best ways to do that is to help teach them the basics about how our sites work before they run afoul of them.

This will improve their odds of having a good first experience, speed up how quickly they can become contributing members of community, and head off the frustrations they sometimes have as a result of crashing into one of the many things that make us... different.

So We've just rolled out the first version of our new "quick start" guide. It's designed to help teach new users the absolute minimum they need to know to get started and have a good experience. How we're different from discussion boards, the basics of rep, what you can do right off the bat, why some questions aren't allowed, etc.

We spent a LOT of time on trying to get to the absolute minimum length that will still cover the key things new users need to know to be successful, but if you have feedback, please share it.

Answer 1

Make this sucker interactive and let the user on the page see how the examples would react when you:

• Vote up and down (the vote count should change respectively)
• Click on the favorite (the favorite count should change)
• Accept an answer
• Tags on questions should be live links
• Edit and comment the post at the bottom

This gives the user a lot more of the experience up front in a non-invasive way and will probably help get the user a lot more interested as well as oriented (more than not just surmising as to what will happen) to the site off the bat.

Answer 2

Shortcuts and guestures you can't live without

is the example question. I am not a user of "Ask Different" but I think it is not a good example of a question with a definitive answer. It is a chit-chat question in my opinion.

Especially because little later it says

Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced ...
Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based

which is not at all the case for the example question.

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Official response: status-completed We're going to let moderators choose the question from a list of eligible ones. We also updated the automatic criteria to filter out CW posts.

Answer 3

Please disable all of the links in the example posts.

They can accidentally clicked on and can be quite confusing to a new user.

Answer 4

Since it seems the example question is persistent but generated by some process, the example questions I see so far are pretty bad on both SU and Apple. They're the sort of popular but not actually high-quality content that it's very easy to find but they're not really a good example of the core of the site.

IMO these questions should really probably be selected manually, maybe by Moderators a-la the first section of the FAQ. That way each community could decide "yeah that auto-selection is good enough" or alternately have a vote/just pick a better question as an example. It's the sort of thing that really needs a manual look-over, and it only needs to be done once per site. That's a lot of work if the devs do it, but if it's something the community/moderators can do it's a considerably easier task.

The reason I suggest moderators is there's less room for abuse and there's no need for a special voting/editing/etc mechanism. Moderators can just choose a question to feature, and we can use Meta/Chat to gather the community consensus for what question to pick.

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Official response: status-completed See https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/163257/146719

Answer 5

Is there any way you can work the fact that SE sites are largely community run and maintained into the page?

I don't see any reference to the fact we are a community-run site, largely moderated and run by the users of the site themselves. In fact, a search of the word "community" on the page returns no results at all.

I think that is one of the biggest features that differentiates SE from other Q&A sites or message boards. It's not a place that relies on some overlords moderating content, but is instead run and moderated by the community itself. By actively participating in the site, you can end up having a voice that matters in the governance of the site.

There are plenty of places you could work this in. The Voting, Reputation, and Editing sections are the first that come to mind.

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Official response: status-completed We're adding a sentence at the very topthat reads: "It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites."

Answer 6

I don't think that the Fanatic badge is one you should be concentrating on. I imagine that generally the gold badges might be slightly scary to newer users.

I like that you've used Famous Question as opposed to Great Question as it appears achievable and the fact that both a question and answer badge have been used but I would change Fanatic to a third bronze or a second silver.

My votes would be for one of the following as they emphasise site functionality that hasn't otherwise been explored in the badges.:

• Favorite Question
• Editor
• Booster

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Official response: status-completed We now show Editor and Civic Duty instead of Autobiographer and Fanatic

Answer 7

The example Reputation section could use some minor tweaks

• "Answer Accepted" is ambiguous and could easily be taken as "I get 15 reputation when I mark a question as answered". (That's actually what I first thought when I saw that, and I'm a regular SE user!) Consider changing it to "answer is accepted"

• The "+2 Edit Approved" seems out of place, as users should probably know what's going on before they start editing. In addition, at this stage you haven't even touched on the fact content can be edited by anyone. Perhaps change that to "+2 accept an answer"

• The quote on the left isn't accurate:

  Your reputation score goes up when others vote up your questions, answers and edits.

  Unless something has changed, I don't think you get rep from someone voting up your edit.

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Official response: status-completed partially. Changed "answer accepted" to "answer is accepted", but left in the edit stuff.

Answer 8

Overall I think this is great, really well done, kudos all around.

One caveat though, the call to action at the end is

Getting started is easy: just ask or answer a question, and start building your reputation today!

Which is ... not really what you want new users to be doing.

Ideally they should spend some time browsing the site, reading the list of questions and the sorts of answers that do well.

I realize that "hey, go browse around a while, then think about what questions or answers you can contribute which might fit well here" is not as strong a call to action as "Go ask right now!" or "Go answer right now!" -- but it's much more likely to result in a user who doesn't get a question closed or downvoted, or an answer ignored or downvoted.

(Immediately jumping from "hey cool site let me view the quick start" to asking a question is particularly inadvisable. If nothing else, reverse the order and suggest they try their hand at answering first to get a feel for what questions and answers work well.)

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Official response: status-completed We tweaked the wording to:

Interested? Take a look at some new questions and see if there's one you can answer, or ask your own!

Answer 9

(On Super User)

The "click on any tag" and the arrow next to it make me want to click...but nothing happens.

On the other hand, the badges and all work fine when mouseovered/clicked.

Could we add the mouseover/click actions to the tags? (At least in the section explaining what tags are for)

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Official response: status-completed

Answer 10

At the bottom is a hint

Getting started is easy: just ask a question, answer a question or, sign up and start building your reputation today.

The Link to answer a question links to Unanswered Questions (ordered by votes). I would say these are hard questions (since no answer exists at the moment). A new user might be frightened off by these questions thinking he/she can't answer any of them.

Why not link to the Newest Questions instead?

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Official response: status-completed Now links to newest unanswered questions

Answer 11

I'm not sure if pointing out the "edit" link with no explanation about what and when you should edit is a good idea (section "Improve posts by editing or commenting")

You'll likely get users editing an answer to post their own answer, particularly since you highlight "best answers" in the quote next to it

Our goal is to have the best answers to every question, so if you see questions or answers that can be improved, you can edit them.

I don't really have any good suggestions about what it should say instead, but I was thinking something generic that points out that any community member can edit a post to maintain the quality of the posts (meaning spelling, grammar, and formatting as that's probably all we'll want new users editing), and link to some meta guidelines that go more in depth about when and how to edit.

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Official response: status-completed Added some extra text about editing

Answer 12

The "Get answers to practical, detailed questions" is the second most important section for new users, and should be under "Ask questions, get answers, no distractions" in the document.

Also, the section on badges is extraneous in a bare-minimum how-to-start type of guide. Badges don't affect a user's ability to ask or answer questions, and they highly discoverable if the user is interested.

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Official response: status-declined See comments.

Answer 13

As I understand it, a lot of new users seem to think that closing a question means the question is flat-out rejected, whereas in reality it's just the first step in the close-edit-reopen cycle. Right now there's a mere half sentence (in small font, too) explaining that closed questions can and should be edited. I think that could stand to be emphasized more, especially considering that new users are more likely to ask questions that will be closed because they don't yet know the standards of the community.

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Official response: status-declined See comments

Answer 14

Since there are two answers and comments with quite a few upvotes criticising the animations, let me add a counter-point:

The animations are helpful, keep them.

The animations used here are exactly the kind that is useful, rather than gratuitous: they draw attention to the relevant example and visually link it to the explanation text. Well done! This is the kind of animation I’d like to see more often in presentations (rather than the irksome, over the top slide transitions).

Answer 15

Nitpick:

On beta sites (and sites which have had appointed mods like SO/etc), the link to the moderators page has an inaccurate link text:

(example about page on beta)

We're not elected on these sites. So maybe "community moderators" would be a better text for sites with a mix, and "appointed moderators" for betas?

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Official response: status-completed

Answer 16

Very nice and essential step, huge kudos!

Found couple of minor issues with the very last part of the guide.

First, it says:

Like this site? Stack Exchange is a network of 107 Q&A sites just like it. Check out the full list of sites.

Counting the sites that appear in the linked list, there are 96 sites and in the Stack Exchange home page it says "94 Q&A sites". So the 107 is wrong.

Update: Fixed now. Cheers!

Second issue is that the whole area below the last paragraph is a link to Stack Exchange home page while only the logo should be clickable, at least from my point of view as ordinary visitor.

Answer 17

Perhaps add a small section that links to Meta for further help/support about the site?

I still recall my first interaction with meta was clicking the link at the top of the page to see where it went, and judging the entire meta site and its purpose based on the top few questions on the main page.

A link to meta explaining that its purpose is to discuss the site itself, and that's where you should go if you have further questions about the site would be great.

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Official response: status-declined See comments

Answer 18

As you earn reputation, you'll unlock new privileges like the ability to vote, comment, and even edit other people's posts.

This seems to imply that you need reputation to suggest edits, which isn't true.

Answer 19

Suggestion:

I think it would be great if the section talking about what tags are for, mentioned that because we have tags to categorize questions, the categories do not belong in the title.

A nice animation would be to show the removal of a "C# - " from the title and placing it in the tags.

Answer 20

What is the main goal of Stack Overflow and the biggest problem we are facing here?

We want Stack Overflow not just being a help forum but being useful to future visitors!

Maybe that statement could be in any form part of the Quick Start Guide.

People should always keep in mind to ask in a way that makes the question useful to others starting from a meaningful and searchable title, to self-containing content, proper code sample, ...

Answer 21

The animation in the first example (the list of questions) which emulates an answer being accepted is very confusing and disorientating; I had no idea what'd changed the first time round and had to reload the page to see what I was missing (as it turned out, not a lot).

The rest of the animations are a nice (albeit useless) effect though.

Answer 22

Please don't trigger the animation on scroll into view

Its very confusing, particularily if you scroll through the page quickly, as it draws the users attention constantly to the right side and the left side containing the actual information you should be reading gets forgotten.

Perhaps instead trigger the animation on mouse hover or on scroll stop instead to draw their attention whatever it is you're highlighting

In addition, it would be nice if you could make the animation repeat without reloading the page, so if you missed what was being pointed out the first time the animation ran, you can trigger the animation to run again.

Answer 23

Not a major problem maybe (and maybe intentional?), but in the You earn reputation when people vote on your posts section you forgot the +2 given to the OP when an answer is accepted:

Great page though! I already love it! :) Great job!

Answer 24

I think there should just be a "Play Animation" button (and "Replay" once played) instead of auto-activating when scrolling down. This could cause some problems for people who:

• Scroll down all the way and suddenly "Wait, what just happened"
• Want to re-view an animation
• Accidentally continue when they didn't mean to
• Get confused as to when the animations go, and try to see all of them fast enough and scroll fast and miss everything
• etc.

Answer 25

Could something be added near the top mentioning that each site has a specific scope or focus that defines what kinds of questions are allowed, and linking to the exact site scope in the FAQ?

I was looking at the Programmers page and realized the site scope is very easy to miss for new users.

• I didn't see any mention of the fact each site has a scope, and that only questions which fall within that site's scope are allowed

• The actual site definition is listed in the section titled Get answers to practical, detailed questions, which is pretty far down the page. (Also, I don't think is titled appropriately.)

• The site's scope is displayed in the "image" area along the right side, which for the rest of the page contains example images, not actual paragraphs you should read. It's easy to skip reading the scope thinking its just some examples as well.

• The area right below the logo can be modified by moderators to include the site's scope, but I consider that to be the "header" area and not "content" area, and would have missed it completely if it wasn't for the fact I was looking for it.

It would be nice if it was pointed out early on that the site has a specific scope that defines what kind of questions are allowed, and that linked to the full site scope in the FAQ.

Or as a quick and easy alternative, just add the scope to the first paragraph in the first section:

Programmers is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.

to

Programmers is all about getting answers to questions about conceptual software development. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.

Answer 26

This has already been mentioned in several comments, but let me shout out.

The sliding animations suck. They need to go.

They do not carry any information.

They do not attract attention to anything important.

On the contrary, they divert attention. You see something move, but it's not clear what's changed — so you try waiting, moving around, clicking, but nothing else happens. So you reload the page, try to pay attention, try various rates of scrolling… only to be disappointed: they are just silders.

There is one animation that carries information, and that I think is worth keeping. The other animations make it very hard to notice, let alone figure out! That's the animation where the second answer becomes accepted and floats up. Unfortunately, depending on your window size, it either triggers when you scroll past that section (so your attention is now on the next section, and you may or may not notice something happen near the top of the screen) — or it may happen as soon as that part scrolls into view, so it's mixed up with the slider.

They look completely ridiculous if your page is wider than 1000 pixels: then the images aren't sliding out of the right margin, they're sliding out of nowhere.

The sliding animations look like a developer discovered how to do it and decided to show off their newfound trick regardless of whether it was a good idea or not. Très Geocities. Would you like <blink> with that?

Get rid of the sliding animations — in one go, you can make the page better at conveying information and nicer to look at.

Answer 27

Was there any thought on explaining voting for new users - how they should give feedback for the useful posts and once they get reputation, those votes will help others with reputation and the site with ordering the questions and answers found most to least useful.

Perhaps expanding the section on Improve posts by editing or commenting should be Improve posts by voting, editing or commenting since a new user (perhaps all users?) can and should probably vote and edit more than they comment.

Answer 28

The logo at the top of the about page always seem to load first, then disappear before fading in again (after the DOM is ready and the JavaScript starts executing). This makes the entire sequence a little weird and inelegant - why are you showing me the logo again if I've already seen it?

Since this animation is purely decorative, perhaps a better approach (other than to remove it altogether) would be to use CSS animations (Supported in IE10 as well as the latest stable versions of Firefox and Chrome). Something like this will do:

.about-page .new-about-content-page .site-icon {
    -webkit-animation: logo-fade-in .75s 0s both;
            animation: logo-fade-in .75s 0s both;
}

@-webkit-keyframes logo-fade-in {
    from { opacity: 0; }
    to   { opacity: 1; }
}

@keyframes logo-fade-in {
    from { opacity: 0; }
    to   { opacity: 1; }
}

Relatively simple, falls back gracefully on older browsers. Alternatives using JavaScript would probably also be possible, but then this is a relatively simple animation, and I think a perfectly good use-case for CSS animations.

Answer 29

Change the header from "Get answers to practical, detailed questions" to something more descriptive and informative about that section, such as "How to ask a Good Question"

The first sounds like an advertising slogan to get people to use the site, and is the sort of thing I easily pass by.

The information contained in that section is some of the most valuable for any new user to know, and if someone was going to ask their first question and was looking at this page to find out how to ask a question, they would probably skip over this section entirely with its current heading.

Answer 30

It's pretty, but I don't see much added value. It explores SO features without adding to the content of the FAQ.

To my mind the real problems we face daily are:

1. New users not reading the FAQ or caring about what SO is supposed to be;

2. Users misusing SO as a crowdsourced debugging platform, because the concept of "too localised" vs "specific" properties of questions are misrepresented or not optimally explained in the FAQ

   …whereas in actuality they are two distinct scales:

   There is the scale of "specific topic / broad range of topics", and there is the scale of "localised problem / problem that has wide likely interest".. and the two are orthogonal. A user may be having a really specific problem with an error message on line 26, column 1, where a semicolon was written out of place, but this is also far too localised as it's just some personal frak-up, rather than to do with a language itself. Conversely, "how do I open a bank account for my new pet guinea pig called Horatio" is too broad and too localised (and of course OT!)

3. Users not doing any research prior to writing their question, due to #2:

   It's the primary cause for question spam on SO. If only people still actually thought through problems instead of just loading up SO and using our free time as their first recourse to do achieve anything at all in the programming world.

4. Users mistagging questions, writing lame titles or not bothering to do any formatting;

5. Users upvoting rubbish fix-my-code-plz questions (which is wrong).

Does the new guide address these problems?

1. No, because if users don't take notice of the FAQ, they won't take notice of a quick start guide;
2. No;
3. No;
4. No, because if users don't take notice of the FAQ, they won't take notice of a quick start guide;
5. No.

So, ultimately, what are we looking to gain here?

By all means go for it, but I don't see firm added value other than the prettiness.