Should we really just close questions, especially for n00bs?

Question

Along a similar vein to this question. I have noticed a lot of questions closed for n00bs on this site (they have low reputation). Now maybe because StackOverflow is bigger I don't see this as much. But it worries me because I wonder if we come across as rude and we shut out individuals that may otherwise have become helpful members. Could we rather gently instruct/shape their question BEFORE we just close it? I would like to see this more. There are times where I think an individual made a valid question, it may just show ambiguity in the question, or lack of thought, or even lack of research. I unfortunately don't have enough reputation to try to vote to re-open a closed question.

I remember being at that point out of college where I didn't know how to search for answers or find them and I did need some "hand holding" to get me along. I have come a long way since then, and I think we should do something for the "less informed" rather than just slapping their hands by closing their question. That seems to me like saying "I don't want to deal with it" rather than "I'll teach you how to better ask questions" or even "I'll give you an answer (or even THE answer), but give you additional thoughts to lead you to how to think".

Thoughts on this? Especially from our moderators?

Answer 1

If the question is a good fit for SE and not for DBA, we tend to migrate it to the right SE. If the question is marginal we often encourage users to give more details.

When a question has been posted and the user stuck around for exactly one day (the mod logs tell us these things) then we have no reason to expect that those questions are anything but broken windows (for questions older than six months).

Usually the people actively looking to get an answer are going to ask good questions and they're going to participate and want to make the site better. And we're not adverse to assisting the users, but as JackD said, we're in the business of having a highly-focused site here, and we don't have the volume of SO, which isn't a bad thing, it just means we have more examples of things getting closed.

But, and here's the kicker, we're all on this site together. If you see a mod closing something that just needed some TLC, tell us. Make it public. We won't get upset, I assure you. We like to have discussions, and to make the community better, and having many active mods means that we're able to step in and out, you can address another one of us if you think the first one is doing wrong. There won't be hard feelings, if you're aiming to make the site a better place, I assure you.

Answer 2

There are two issues here as I see it:

1. Keeping the site focus
2. Encouraging new questioners

My instinct is to be 'nice' to people, especially new users, and this is important–however keeping the site focus is much more important for the following reasons:

1. It our 'distinctive', the thing that brings people here rather than SO for example
2. It is very hard to get it back if it is lost
3. The really important userbase we want to grow is the one that produces great answers - these are the pearls. We do them no favours by allowing poor questions to proliferate on the site, or by closing questions after they have gone to the trouble of answering them.

In my view therefore, the best policy is to immediately close poor questions–and ideally this would be community-led with lots of high-rep users exercising their vote-to-close powers rather than a small number of mods playing whack-a-mole (I think this is working pretty well, but as we get users able to vote it should get even better).

Just because we concentrate on the most important aspect doesn't mean we shouldn't care about being polite and welcoming–although new users don't like their beloved questions being closed they love being engaged in conversation. Ideally most close-votes would be accompanied by a polite comment suggesting how to improve the question.