Possible Duplicate:
How to review? Can we agree on a review 'policy'?
Agreed Duplicate
Can we agree on a review 'policy'?
This is a proposed reference question / help page / tutorial or mentoring advises for help vampires. (This remark will be redacted once it's done.)
Idea came up in here: It's OK to just downvote & flag help vampires
The topic is similar to: How do I write a good title?
If you know similar duplicates, please add. Search failed me.
There exists the "How to Ask" guide at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-ask - which all newcomers see once when they sign up. It doesn't address the issue at hand, because it's too unspecifc to serve as useful reminder link in comments, or as advise on how to improve questions.
Sample comments with help links
But the goal here is to have a more diverse pool of newcomer advises in a terse format. The gimmick is readymade Markdown text containing a self-referential link, so each answer teaser can be used as-is in comments or for generic answers. Simplifying linking here eases helping newcomers.
Some of the help texts might just be nicer explanations of the very crude closevoting reasons. Others should cover the typical failures to compose a coherent or understandable question. (We cannot solve these problems, but a bit of advising is appropriate.)
Possible topics
- Not a native English speaker, how can I write better questions?
- You need to give more details in your question.
- Why nobody answer my (...)
- Write a better title to get more help. (just link to existing HOWTO)
- ...
- Your question topic is too broad.
- The code formatting is wrong. (short advise and link)
- Help me with problem. Plzsendtehcodez.
- Why was my question marked off-topic? Does it belong elsewhere?
- ...
Note how the question title can reflect how the noob might write it, or be an more elaborate explanation of the typical closevote reasons.
Proposed format
For ultimate usefulness, the explaination should be terse, maybe in key points. It should be preceeded by a title, and a readily usable Markdown text (in citation or source code style).
> Your question is too bread. See \[here](meta.so/122774#129404)
> how to make it better.
Refining a broad question
=========================
You should break up your question parts:
- bli
- bla
- blu
Notes
- Moderator attention: this must be community wiki.
- Comments are allowed, but shall be purged regularily to keep everything in compact help form.
- Please prefer editing answers over commenting. (Except for now. Still composing anyway.)