Should a How-To Ask a Question video be created?

Question

I have been relistening to a few old podcasts and there was and continues to be a lot of discussion about how the site can be made more welcoming to new users, while still getting them to understand the rules that we have to ensure quality Q&A.

Rather than trying to force people to read an FAQ or an About page etc, which lets face it is pretty difficult to make everyone read, perhaps someone could create a StackOverflow new user introduction Video.

I'm not a video production person, but I've seen plenty of pretty simple videos online using animation and clever graphics to get across lots of concepts.

In about 2 minutes you could explain writing a decent question, getting good answers & comments because of it, upvoting and editing and even earning a badge or two. Its not the sort of video I could produce, but since Stackoverflow has access to pretty much all the computing talent on the planet there must be someone in the community that could put this together!

If it was kept short enough and a helpful reminder was shown to new users, perhaps it would reduce the friction with new users a bit.

As requested some example I can find very quickly

Intro to GoogleTV

Intro to GoogleDocs

Answer 1

First off, doing more to help users learn how to ask good questions in an accessible, engaging format is right in line with our current goals.

As to format, we considered video when we designed the new quickstart (about) page.

You're right that it's increasingly easy to produce short, animated videos using tools such as powtoon. Due in part to that lower bar to entry, they're becoming a little generic-feeling, as more sites use them (and the same character and art sets), plus a lot of them have a similar vibe of:

You know how you really need to do [THING PROSPECTS NEED TO DO]?

But you know how you can't, because of [PROBLEM THAT PREVENTS YOU FROM DOING THAT THING].

So, you've probably tried [UNSUBTLE MOCKERY OF COMPETITOR'S PRODUCT NAME].

But it just didn't have [ASPECT YOU THINK DIFFERENTIATES YOU FROM THEM]?

Fear not! Try [PRODUCT LOGO!].

Now, we could have made ours different, etc. But our main reason was this:

Video requires a different setting for some people than the one where they would use our sites, and it dictates the time it consumes.

• Some people can't watch it at work
• Some can't watch it at home (reading while watching TV is fine, but sound annoys my wife)
• I do a lot of internet reading on a treadmill while I listen to music; I don't want to plug my headphones into something new
• You can't skim a video, so it feels like a commitment (yes, a 60-second one, but still)

At the end of the day, we wanted to make it engaging (sort of like a video), but without the potential barriers above.

Don't get me wrong - some messages work much better in a clever video - Dropbox probably couldn't have grown so quickly without it.

But especially for a target audience that needs to like to read and write in decent length online, we felt it wasn't quite the right fit. Additionally, it's a lot more work to edit the videos when things change, and to customize them to each site, and generic language "what's special about this Stack Exchange site..." sounds kind of weak.

Down the line, as we look to expand our "quick start" type guides to things like "how to ask a great question", etc., I think we'll probably stick with light animation in a written-word format, but we're keeping an open mind.