What can we do for new users who want to ask a question that's already been asked, but hasn't yet got an acceptable answer? [duplicate]

Question

I've mentioned this several times, but only in answers to other questions or comments.

What can we do to help new users who come to the site with a problem but find a question already exists, but it doesn't have any answers that solve the problem.

This SU "answer" (deleted, so only available to diamonds and 10K SU users) is a good example.

The way the site is set up at the moment the following things may happen.

1. They get comments, some polite, others less so telling them not to post questions as answers.
2. They get down-votes (which don't actually affect their reputation score, but it's not nice.
3. They delete their "question-as-answer".

Now they have another problem. Do they just wait (having bookmarked the question perhaps) in the hope that it gets answered soon or do they post their own question?

If they do the latter then the following will happen:

1. Comments about not asking duplicate questions will get posted.
2. They will get downvotes.
3. Their question will get closed and eventually deleted.

Not very welcoming at all.

Now all the above will get the problem some attention - either the original question is bumped or at least re-read by those voting to close, so someone new might see it and post an answer, but is this really the way we want to treat newcomers?

So repeating myself from my previous answer:

... do we need a "I'm having the same problem" button on a question and if it's clicked enough times within a certain period the question gets bumped? There would have to be limits on the number of times a user can click it and perhaps it should only be available to registered users to reduce people bumping their own questions

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For reference this is the original SO answer I linked to - as you can see it's been edited to include the information from the comments and so is now a useful answer. Perhaps this is one way we can encourage people - explain that an answer needs to include new information.

Answer 1

I don't feel that merely bumping that question is going to necessarily help. If the question has already been answered, especially one with an accepted answer, then the larger percentage of people who are looking at it aren't doing it to answer questions. They're doing it to look at answers. So it is likely that the people who might be able to answer the new user's question may not actually be looking at that question. Combined with the fact that the new user can only properly bring up their plight in comments, there isn't going to be a lot of light shed in their name.

You can think of the original author maybe editing the original question to point out the new user's problem, but then this changes the original question. How is the new user going to accept the answer to her problem?

The problem isn't in the original question, I think the problem we have lies with the treatment of the new question. If a question isn't solved by the answers given in the original question, then I can't really agree that it would be a duplicate. The other question didn't attract the same answers, and if it already has an accepted answer then it's not very likely to get the new answers that the new user will need. Likewise, the new question shouldn't be attracting clone answers of the original because they won't help.

What would help is better identification of these facts. The question asker needs to clearly identify the original question, and identify that those given answers didn't work. It's the same as identifying what technologies cannot be used (such as by executive or business restriction). The new question should be then addressed on those terms.

If people are uncomfortable with having questions that are so similar be kept alive, then when all is said and done, the questions can be merged with the new system.

Of course... if the original one doesn't have an accepted answer and the original question asker is still looking for a better answer... it falls on that person's responsibility to notify people of the unsatisfactory results. If the question is abandoned, then I think there is better worth in someone else basically taking ownership of the question. But that's a separate kind of suggestion altogether.

Answer 2

I am not sure if I see the point of @Jeff's answer. The question is more like: How do we avoid that new users are going to post noise in unanswered questions? The real answer is: there is no way. @Jeff's answer suggests that they should have posted it as an answer. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree this, but how would you explain them that? There is no way. Even if you put a big red blinking banner above the Post Your Answer button which is visible to low-rep users only, there are users who are blind to this and will post it as an answer anyway.

The community can at most flag them and/or post a (subtle!) comment or to split the answer out into a new question. I personally however have a slight disagreement in flagging as spam. It's like beating the user with a ruler. There must be another flag option. A Noise flag for example which would push the answer to bottom with a "deleted" background color and messages the user about the what, why and how. Or a This is a Question flag which would split the answer out into a new question (which is actually piece of cake in the DB), if necessary with a link to the original question.

See also:

• How should I report answers which are pure noise?
• Function to convert an Answer to a new Question

Answer 3

This bugged me too, when I wanted to comment on a question someone asked. With 1 rep, I was out trying to help out because SO is a fun project and probably the coolest resource for programmers out there. The whole reputation, badge stuff really encourages me to work hard to help others, and in doing that, I learn what type of questions to ask, how to ask them, etc. in order to get a good response from people.

So when I tried to comment on someone's question to get more information from them, I couldn't. I had to either answer with a "Is this the problem? If so, you can do this. Is that the problem, if so you can do this other thing." answer, to sort of cover the flanks I couldn't verify through comments.

Personally I think up until the comment threshold, posting a comment should require approval from either the person who posted the question (or answer, if the comment is on an answer), or it should require the approval of someone with say 200+ reputation. If the comment threshold is there to stop people from posting "buy vi@gra, my friend" then perhaps cap the limit on # of comments to 1-2 a day, and disallow links, make it so that you can only post once an hour, etc. And obviously include the nastiest captcha you have for all comments below the threshold. There is one that appears occasionally for me, so I know one exists in the system already.

Answer 4

In my opinion, the user in question should attempt to find some new bit of information related to the problem and provide it as a partial answer.

For example in the question you cited:
How do I fix an "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required." error in Visual C# 2010 Express?

A good new partial answer would be:

I have this problem too. I tried the following things:

• uninstalling VS2010 Express, and reinstalling it.
• formatting my hard drive and reinstalling Windows.
• bought a new Mac and tried to install it there.
• took a bus to Redmond, WA and asked one of the VS2010 team members in person.

None of this worked!

Basically, I don't have a problem with answers that at least try to document the ways the tried to solve the problem.

Those kinds of answers help move us toward a solution by documenting what didn't work.