51

2024/09: It's been more than 8 years since this post, and more than 10 years since this post.

The latter has been tagged as . According to Slate, something has been done to alleviate the issue. However the issue that prompted these posts is, IME, still very much present.

To be honest, I personally haven't noticed any improvement, and yes, I had to, just some 20 minutes ago, once again, instruct a new user to add information they posted as a comment to their question in the question itself.

I mainly partecipate in technical sites, so perhaps this isn't an issue to other communities as it is to my main communities (Ask Ubuntu / Unix & Linux). But the issue there is noticeable. Especially because often times a command output, which is often times unparseable if not formatted with the right spacing / syntax highlighting in the question, is crucial to solving OP's issue.

At this point, telling users this specific thing over and over is feeling like a chore. And I'm gonna be 100% honest, it's sometimes taking away my willingness to help new users. If, for the third time in a day, I see someone posting an unformatted mess (which should be a command output) as a comment to their question, there's now a high change I'll just look away, go back to the active tab and move on to something else, and leave it to someone else to do the explaining.

I would like for this issue to get more attention.

Especially on technical sites, as even sporadic users will have noticed, new users very often don't include important information into the question they're posting.

This usually leads the first user passing by to leave a comment asking for clarifications, which punctually get posted in the comments section.

Many times there's not even the need for a user to ask OP to do so, OP just does that because they forgot something or because they want to improve their question by adding more details.

In any case this leads to:

  • Important information posted into the comments section, where they shouldn't stay;
  • Question not bumping up in the active questions tab, which doesn't help fixing point #1;
  • Unless OP pings one of the users that left a comment in doing so, none of the user who commented will get to know that the requested clarifications were posted, which doesn't help fixing point #1 either.

I think it would be convenient to prompt new users with a popup similar to the popup prompting to leave an explanation upon downvote when a new user leaves a comment under the following conditions:

  • OP hasn't been prompted before (i.e. do this only upon OP's first attempt to comment);
  • OP is commenting on their own question;
  • OP didn't benefit from the association bonus.

The message could go something like this (feel free to rephrase):

Comments shouldn't be used to add important information to the question; if you're adding information useful for your question to be answered, please edit your question instead.

Mock-up:

mock-up1

This could also be a great opportunity to teach new users how to reply to comments:

Comments shouldn't be used to add important information to the question; if you're adding information useful for your question to be answered, please edit your question instead. If you're replying to a comment of another user, you can use @username, where username is the username of the user you're replying to without spaces, to notify the user of your reply.

Mock-up:

mock-up2

Improve this question
10
  • 6
    +1 for the idea. It probably needs some polishing, but it is a sensible thing to do for sure.
    – yo'
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 17:00
  • @NathanTuggy Thanks for the edit, I've been really careless here. Really appreciated. However I restored the links, the idea was to roughly showcase the effect the popup would have on the user, in particular the fact that they could easily get to edit their question just by clicking the link on the popup.
    – kos
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 4:43
  • "OP didn't benefit from the association bonus" - this is a bit problematic for me. I see this problem on Drupal Answers even if people got their association bonus. It's rarer, but happens often enough. And reminder one in a while wouldn't hurt.
    – Mołot
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 9:00
  • 1
    Maybe remind until they reach 300 rep the first time?
    – hellyale
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 23:30
  • 3
    @hellyale Much like Molot's proposal, what I think is it'd be kind of annoying to be constantly warned about that... One thing is being warned once, another thing is being warned repetitevely regardless of reputation. Personally, though I might be wrong, I think the probelm is about "not educated" users, and I 'd propose to warn the user only once. Anything after that really should be up to the specific user.
    – kos
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 5:33
  • Highly related: "Inform new users about the option to edit their own post when adding a comment"
    – starball
    Commented Nov 3, 2022 at 23:09
  • 2
    This is also a frequent problem on the science & math sites. We get a lot of "homework dump" questions on those sites. Sometimes the OP responds to comments, but instead of editing the requesting contextual info into their question they bury it in the comments.
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Sep 28 at 8:14
  • @PM2Ring And I guess formatting would be pretty important there, too. Yeah I feel that. Hopefully something more decisive will be done this time around
    – kos
    Commented Sep 28 at 8:29
  • @kos Yes. Also, we prefer equations to be formatted using MathJax, but we understand that new members may not know MathJax, or need assistance with it. But we also get a lot of questions with images of equations. Some are neat screenshots of nicely typeset mathematics, but some are bad photos of barely legible scrawls... But that's a topic for another question. ;)
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Sep 28 at 8:50
  • 1
    @PM2Ring I'd hope the "add important information to the question" bit would tip them off about doing so for images as well. I don't think it'd help with the bad quality unfortunately :)
    – kos
    Commented Sep 28 at 9:10

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

When you see this happening you should

  1. Edit the information into the question yourself. If you do it as a suggested edit, make sure your "Edit comment" makes it clear that you are incorporating information from the comments
  2. Leave a comment telling the user that you've done this, and next time instead of commenting they should consider editing. You can also suggest they remove their obsolete comments.

Why is this better than the system reacting to their comment with a suggestion to edit?

  • it happens more quickly. The next person to read the question will read a complete question
  • the user should feel helped rather than reprimanded. It's more welcoming.
  • it will have far less false positives

Try it, you'll like it.

I believe an automated system would be unable to distinguish between a true comment and a should-be edit. Compare:

How do I X? I tried changing y but it didn't work?

  • here's a related question that might have something to do with your situation
  • thanks that is interesting even though it doesn't actually answer my question

and

How do I X? I tried changing y but it didn't work?

  • what version of A are you using?
  • 3.2.1

The first should not trigger this "you should edit" warning, but the second should. I don't think it's possible to design software that could tell them apart.

Improve this answer
5
  • 13
    How does this answer the question though? The point of is to avoid to make other users waste their time editing the question for OP and teach them how to ask questions over and over. Moreover you're only notified of OP's comments if you have been the only user commenting on the post, see this very common case in which no one is notified: askubuntu.com/questions/723630/….
    – kos
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 17:32
  • 12
    The reprimanded point I theoretically agree with, however it must be noted that this isn't really bashing OP, it's just teaching them how to use the site, since experience tells that this is a common mistake. I don't think there's something reprimanding in gently warning the user, as they're not really expected to know the best practices. On a side note: this happens already for tag warnings, downvotes etc.
    – kos
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 17:53
  • @kos your point about notifications is irrelevant.
    – Kate Gregory
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 19:17
  • 5
    Reading your edit I understand there's a basic missunderstanding, please re-read my question again: I'm not proposing to warn the user based on an automated system; I'm proposing to warn the user regardelss, only once and upon the first time they try to comment on a question of theirs, wheteher they're writing "I love french fries" or "I'm running kernel 4.X".
    – kos
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 5:08
  • 1
    +1 for the answer, but I see benefit to new users being notified as well, maybe until 300 rep?
    – hellyale
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 23:32

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .