Optional writing scanner for lazy writing

Question

In keeping with the community's encouragement of carefully worded questions, I wonder if Stack Overflow could pop up a advisory box with writing tips when certain phrases are detected? My purpose in suggesting it is that a useful, highly indexable Q&A will be improved if it is written with reasonably clear and professional English; it might reduce a proportion of the edit workload too.

To start with, I propose that it would do so for any text-speak phrases that don't give rise to many false positives, such as:

• Kinda ~ 17K instances
• Wanna ~ 16K instances
• Gonna ~ 10K instances
• Thx ~ 15K instances
• Pls help ~ 2.6K instances
• Coz ~ 2.3K instances
• Bcoz ~ 500 instances

Also, I'd include the scanning of non-code sentences entirely in lower-case, plus various cases of query overuse (12K) and exclamation overuse (6K).

Some phrases cannot easily be detected reliably, so we'd have to leave out "pls", "wat" and "nt" used as abbreviations (thankfully I don't see those as often). The misspelled phrase " im " throws far too many false positives, though it can certainly be paired reliably, such as Im trying (16K instances), im doing (3K) and im new (2.5K).

This has been suggested before, specifically for the phrase "it doesn't work". I agree that this phrase can be unhelpful; however, its misuse is hard to detect, since its appearance in a question does not also mean that further details have been omitted.

Personally, I'd leave out "AFAIK", "AFAICT", "FWIW" and so forth, since I think these are useful and not automatically a sign of a poor post. I appreciate that the distinction might, nevertheless, be seen as rather arbitrary - comments on those welcome. (Edit: some users consider these poor as well).

I'd be inclined to make this feature advisory rather than mandatory, so as to guide users rather than to harangue them. In fact, as long as the rest of a post is well written, an occasional abbreviated phrase can add some colour - at least it seems popular here. (Agreed, the rules for Meta are rather different, but still).

I've tried educating serial offenders about writing style in the past, with rather mixed results, so I wonder whether the 'neutral' voice of a computer might do a better job?

I've found that some txt-spk phrases form part of the low-quality post filter; however, a request to auto-replace them didn't attract much support (and, for what it's worth, I think an optional notice is a better solution).

Post script: I'd love to include cant (62K instances) and wont (33K) too, but that might be taking the principle too far :). Yes, they're real words in their own right, but both are rather archaic, and quite unlikely to be used here. And some more apostrophe sins purely for edification: whats at 26K and couldnt way down at 4K.

Post post script: it'd be great to discourage urgent as well, though there are several legitimate uses of that, so it'd be harder to implement.

Answer 1

Please don't do this.

We have pretty high expectations regarding the content of good questions: they should clearly state the question, provide evidence of what the OP has tried so far, include just the right amount of code, have a single objectively correct answer (except for sometimes), not be hypothetical, and so on. New and even not-so-new users often find their questions closed or downvoted because they miss the mark on one or more of those criteria.

Let's avoid imposing additional restrictions on what or how people can ask a question.

It's great that you're looking for ways to improve the content on Stack Overflow, but I don't think requiring The King's English is the right way to go about it. We should instead lead by example. Treat Stack Overflow like the Q&A site for professionals that it strives to be, treat people with respect, and try to create an environment where people will choose to write the very best questions and answers that they can.

If you start telling people what words they may or may not use, you're gonna find words that are a lot worse than txt-speak coming your way. It'll make the list of Things Not Allowed On Stack Overflow even more intimidating without really improving the quality of questions and answers. I'd rather have a thousand good questions with questionable grammar, spelling, and usage than a thousand perfectly composed bad questions.

I know a neighborhood where the local home owners association has a long list of rules: you can't let your grass get too long, can't park a pickup truck in the driveway, must get the color approved if you want to paint your house, can't change the exterior profile of your house, no dogs allowed in the front yard, and so on. It's depressingly boring. Not far away is a village where they have fewer rules and a little more chaos. The residents are proud of their homes. They mow their lawns because they want their houses to look nice, not because someone came around with a ruler and left a note on the door telling them that they have to mow. They might park a pickup in the driveway once in a while, but they're considerate of their neighbors. Which area would you rather live in?

Answer 2

People who learnt (or are learning!) English as a second language may not realize that "gonna" and the like is not appropriate for written English. I see it depressingly often with Japanese people practicing their English on lang-8.com .

In fact, there was a question on English Language Learners about whether "gonna" is appropriate.

A filter for words like "gonna", if misused, may indirectly discriminate on the basis of nationality, which would be a bad thing.