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I've recently seen a particular user asking us to completely solve his problem for him, ie:

In the first case, the question can be converted into a good question/answer (ie: guidance on how to go about converting Access Queries to SQL Server views), however this user doesn't seem to be getting the large hints we're leaving him...

I think this is a byproduct of the site becoming more popular (you get 'bad' questions from inexperienced users), so don't want to kick them out, but maybe needs to be dealt with directly?

Questions

  1. Do others think this is a real issue?
  2. How should we approach/respond to users like this?

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  1. Do others think this is a real issue?

Absolutely, it's an issue. You're right we don't want to kick new users out, as long as they're willing to learn.

  1. How should we approach/respond to users like this?

For the first question, we can use the tools to downvote and provide comments on how to improve the question. Worst case is probably migrate to a more appropriate site.

But if they don't get the hint, all we can do is close the questions as off-topic.

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    I'll agree with this. Leave comments encouraging the users to improve their questions, and guide them to ask better questions. Don't forget the resources at dba.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask and the links from that page. If we can't get the responses we want from comment, we can downvote, close, or delete the questions. So far the community has done pretty well at that. This site should be about maintaining databases and applying set logic to hard problems, not about "please fix my access sql"
    – jcolebrand Mod
    Aug 10, 2011 at 14:49
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    and remember too there are handy shortcuts in the comments for linking to the faq and How to Ask and How to Answer -- see dba.stackexchange.com/editing-help#comment-formatting
    – Jeff Atwood
    Aug 12, 2011 at 2:39

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