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The problem I'm seeing in some questions is just not enough info.
One of the solutions would be to associate templates with tags, or some other kind of requirements.
Good example to this is regex:
Q: What platform/tool/programming language are you using?
Q: What are expected input(s)?
Q: What are expected output(s)?
Q: What is your best regex shot?
You could always gently prod the asker by commenting on their question and hopefully they will edit to include the information.
This will help them become a better asker when they get so fed up with the same comments asking them to provide more information.
But really, if they put all that information in in the first place, people wouldn't be bugging them about it would they?
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:
Describe what you want to do.
Paste what you have developed; type CTRL-k to format selected code.
Paste error messages here, or describe the errors.
How have you tried to fix the problem yourself?
What would you like to know?
tex.stackexchange.com is quite similar:
Describe what I am trying to do.
Describe the difficultly I encountered; show the code.
Post related links.
Ask how to resolve the problem, or different approaches.
Problem: My family cat died; Source code: I dunno lol; Errors: plz help!!!; Question: My family cat died, but the problem is that I am trying to write fizz buzz with AmazingLanguage and it doesn't work. If the user has successfully managed to ignore all the clues that already exist, another signpost isn't going to help much (after all, some users are incapable of reading anything which is not directed at them specifically).
Dec 16, 2010 at 16:33
I wouldn't make it too strict, this is a low-friction site. I agree that there is some info which is simply essential, but making a Q/A catalogue for every tag is error-prone and maintenance heavy, and also some question may simply not apply, for example when discussing performance of an already working regex, the expected outputs are not really neccessary as it's obvious from the already working regex.
Without some more information about what you are talking about it is difficult to give any type of logical response.
Two points:
I have no idea at all what this "template" you are talking about should mean. Are you implying that every tag should be made in a certain way, or that every question tagged a certain way should try and fill these required fields?
If it is the latter, what you just described as "examples" are probably something that every user thinks about putting in their question. Those aren't just regex examples.
I was almost about to post a very similar suggestion when I found this!
A very good example of where templating or tag based suggestions, prior to the question being asked, will be handy is when people request help with HTML/CSS Layouts and provide very little or no links to a prototype. The best resource here is an image that provides an expected layout.
I believe this can be achieved by a combination of tag sensing and text sniffing, heavily influenced by successful previous questions.
Actually, even suggestions that say something like "Hey, last time someone asked a successful question like yours, they provided us with blah blah blah!"
