Would it be beneficial to include a predefined set of headers in the question text area that prompt new users (under 100 rep) of the basic information required to solve most programming problems?
Many questions on SO, asked by new users, are essentially:
Help! My family cat died, but the problem is that I am trying to write fizz buzz
with AmazingLanguage and it doesn't work. Please help me! KThxBye.
Everyone knows that this question is impossible to answer. And so SO users reply with:
Show me the code.
I propose the following as a template for new users:
Problem
Describe what you want to do.
Source Code
Paste what you have developed; type CTRL-k to format selected code.
Errors
Paste error messages here, or describe the errors.
Resolution
How have you tried to fix the problem yourself?
Question
What would you like to know?
The format I use on
tex.stackexchange.com
is quite similar:
Background
Describe what I am trying to do.
Problem
Describe the difficultly I encountered; show the code.
Related
Post related links.
Question
Ask how to resolve the problem, or different approaches.