New users and down-voting for lack of initial research

Question

As I see, it is not uncommon to down-vote a new user for asking a question which is too simple, too pop-sci or with no links/references.

In my personal opinion, if we don't want to scare off potential users, we should be more welcoming to them. That is, before any down-voting we should place a comment asking for elaboration a question. Or, for example, asking to provide any reference, e.g. wikipedia.

Down-voting without a comment is discouraged on SE. Posting "lack of initial research" is a phrase very familiar for established users, but may be too vague for new users. (Needless to say, we discussed What level of initial research is expected on questions?, and it may be hard to guess what we consider sufficient).

See also: How can we can encourage questions to show proof of initial research?

So, do you think that we should approach new users in a more gentle way? (And being more explicit what we want from a question?)

EDIT:

While for not-new users I think that one should downvote a bad question ASAP (still - providing a comment if there are none), for new ones I think that this chart works better: (from http://tex.blogoverflow.com/2012/04/voting-up-voting-down/, tl;dr: downvote only if one fails to fix the question, not - a few secs after posting it!)

Answer 1

General thoughts on questions and comments

I think we should strive to keep our questions per day count at a healthy level. One way to get more questions is to look for ways to be welcoming and inclusive.

In general, I like to edit questions from new users where they are otherwise likely to be closed. I find that often there is an interesting question that just needs to be refined a little bit so that it can be expressed in a scientifically answerable way.

I also like it when new users receive welcoming or at least encouraging comments. I like the thought that the site is a welcoming place.

Thoughts on prior research

I agree that good scientific questions will typically show prior research. However, I don't think that prior research per se should be a requirement for questions on this site. I'm much more concerned with issues like:

• Is the question answerable in a scientific way? (e.g., Is the scope of the question appropriate?)
• If such a question was answered, would it improve the Internet?

If the question is easy to answer, then someone will probably add an answer, and that will be the end of it.

I think it's much more important that answers are held up to standards of scientific rigour. For questions it's more important that they are answerable and interesting.

Importantly, I don't care whether the person asking the question is lazy or uninformed. Helping the person asking the question is of a distant second priority. I care about creating resources that will make the site and the Internet as a whole a better place.

A few concrete examples

Example 1: Is there a correlation between EQ (EI) and IQ? This question showed no initial research, but it was answerable. In fact it is a question that is of interest to the scientific literature. A Google search pulls up a range of resources including this uninformed Yahoo Answer, commercial products, and a variety of overviews of emotional intelligence. None answer the question. Thus, I also think it passed the "would it make the internet" a better place test.

Example 2: Why do people donate money to others engaging in activities for charity? Note that I did edit the question from its initial form. This question does not mention the research literature on gift giving at all. It shows no initial research other than a little self-reflection. It has a fairly broad scope, but I think that ultimately reasonable answers could be provided, and that there is a scientific literature on gift giving. I think that the question itself is interesting.

Example 3: Why do humans prefer symmetrical arrangement of objects? This question shows no prior research. The question is fairly interesting. The scope if possibly a bit broad, but there is a scientific literature on the topic that makes a reasonable answer possible. I think that it makes the Internet a better place.

Counter example 1: What's being challenged in our mind when playing games? [closed] The question has something to do with why people enjoy challenges in games. However, it combines specifics about chess with something about the size of working memory with discussion of angry birds. It asks for a very general reference to something to read to learn more about something that is ill-defined. Thus, I think it was reasonable to close because the question did not have a defined scope. It also didn't show any initial research, but I think the bigger issue was that the question was not easily answerable in the form provided. For example, if the same user asked a very specific question about Angry Birds or chess it might well be answerable.

Answer 2

I'm not sure I've ever seen a question, baring one that was total garbage, that got downvoted without a comment for any reasonable amount of time. This site has been great at telling users what part of their question needs improvement.

And honestly our standard for initial research isn't that high. It's basically "Have you tried anything at all to find this information out or can you at least sound like you know what you're talking about?" It's really not that hard to bypass, and it's a good deterrent to keep the site from downing in extremely basic questions.

I think the sticking point is that on the greater internet it's rarely expected that you do show any sort of research. People just throw questions out and see who answers. You can thus tell the experience level of the community by the questions they ask. Newbie questions are welcome here but they still need to be asked for experts. That tone and those focused questions are what we really want. Commenting, downvoting and closing are just tools to enforce that standard.

This situation is similar to Stack Overflow's "what have you tried" issue, except we really don't want those super basic problems anyway, while Stack Overflow does (sorta). Stack Overflow hasn't really done a great job of creating an atmosphere where you need to prove you've at least looked for help or know remotely what you're doing; I think we can do better.

See also How can we can encourage questions to show proof of initial research?

Answer 3

What I have been doing is leaving comments (like this comment or this one) along the lines of:

I had to close your question as it doesn't meet our initial research standards. Please don't be discouraged! Please do research this further and ask more detailed followup questions (or totally unrelated questions)

This sometimes works, but very often doesn't and we never see the user again. I think the message is friendly enough but don't personally feel it is informative enough. I often link to What level of initial research is expected on questions? which is a nice discussion of What level of initial research is expected on questions but not a great FAQ entry.

I think that if someone created a faq-proposed version of that question, it would be a good first step in improving the situation.