Are we sufficiently supportive towards new users?

Question

I was prompted to ask this by a couple of recent posts by new users and the response they received. I also took a look at some of the available data on the site, and I suspect we might have a problem. This might be an uncomfortable question, but I think we need to have the debate.

But first the posts ...

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The first of these was this post about Nixon's visit to China.

Now, I happened to see the question as it was posted. To be honest, my first reaction was:

"Another request for trivia. Don't these people know how to use Google?"

Then two things gave me pause.

• Firstly, it asks about "past policies" (plural). As far as I know, the visit went against his own previous policy (as expressed during his 1964 visit to Asia). I wasn't aware of any other policy, and a brief Google search didn't find any either.
• The second point was that this was the first post by a new user.

So I added a comment asking the OP to add a link to the article. I figured that would clarify the question. I also hoped that asking the OP to include a link to their source would encourage them to do so in future as well.

Five minutes later (just 6 minutes after the question had been posted!) it got the first vote-to-close (surprisingly, perhaps, not because it's a request for trivia, but because of "Uncited source no evidence of research").

Well, this was 2am, so I just posted the best answer I could and called it a night.

The follwowing morning, the question had been closed (hardly a surprise, if I'm being honest), but the OP had added a link to the article. The article states:

The shorthand is “Nixon goes to China,” meaning a moment in which a leader reverses his past positions to do something that is shocking but beneficial.

which, presumably, explains the plural "past policies" in the question.

Hopefully, in this case the OP hasn't been put-off using History:SE by their experience, but a glance at the list of users suggests that others may have been. More on that later.

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The second post was yesterday. It asked what made a region an "upper" or a "lower" region. At the time of writing, the question has 3 down-votes as a "request for trivia". As originally posted, the question certainly showed that the OP had carried out some research:

"There doesn't seem to be a correlation with altitude, relative orientation, or size. Maybe up or down river?

I imagine it's reminiscent of the Roman empire, but I'm uncertain."

Now, personally, I would say that the question was trivial to answer, but then my father was a land surveyor, so I'm probably at an unfair advantage. On balance, I think I'd agree with T.E.D. and Tom's comments and say that it is a perfectly reasonable question.

In particular, Tom's comment about how to improve the question is an example of just the sort of thing that I think we should be doing more.

Again, this was a user who was new to History:SE. At the time of writing, they have made their opinions about the people who down-voted the question clear in the comments to the question. On the basis of that comment, I'd guess History:SE wouldn't be getting any 5-star reviews!

So should we be handling questions from new users better?

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According to the site stats, at the time of posting, we have 17,317 users. That sounds like an impressive number, but I'm a bit of a data nerd - I like to try and understand data trends. I took a look at the user lists.

On 20 September 2017 there were 443 pages of users (each page displaying 36 users).

Of these:

• 162 pages of users have a reputation of 1.
• 171 pages have a reputation of 101 (a majority of these are probably new users who have the site association bonus).

Which leaves just 110 pages, or 3960 users. That's not quite as impressive.

[Several pages of users have scores just below 100. I'd guess that a number of them joined the site with the association bonus and posted questions/answers that attracted down-votes. Without better data-analysis tools it would be too laborious to try to identify them, but it is worth remembering that the figure of 3960 is probably a slight over-estimate].

Now, I'm sure that many of the users with a reputation of 1 or 101 have joined the site out of interest, and just haven't had a particular question to ask, or answer to give. Others have probably just joined to answer a specific post that they came across as a HNQ or that came up in the results of a Google search. Nevertheless, these figures do make me wonder if we are intimidating new users away from the site.

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Now, don't misunderstand me. I think that poor-quality questions should either be improved or deleted.

Had the first question above been posted by a user with a rep of 501, or even 201, I'd have said that the comments, down-votes, and votes-to-close were entirely justified. But shouldn't new users be given a chance to learn what's expected of them before their question is deleted?

• If it looks like a request for trivia, post a comment and ask them if they've looked on Wikipedia or Google. Ask them what their research has found so far.
• If they haven't quoted their source, maybe we should just ask for it in a comment?
• Perhaps we should direct them to the Site Tour and the Help Centre? Especially if they look to be very new to SE.

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At the very least, shouldn't we give them something more than 6 minutes before we vote to close their questions?

Answer 1

I agree that if we want new users, we do need to be more polite to new users. I think we need to be like parents: Tell the new users clearly what we expect, and give a few clear examples.

At the very least, the first comment to a bad answer should have a link to How to Ask.

I thought it would be a good idea to give new users a set of templates - so I posted a meta question last year. I still think it would be a good idea to provide a link to this meta-question in the comments of these poor questions. However, that post only got one up vote and a response from Mark Wallace, so I gather that this idea did not resonate with anyone else. I was hoping that there would be a half dozen templates, and one that gets a buncha votes, so that a newbie would have somewhere to see what to do.

Alternatively, we could make a list of "ideal" questions that users could refer to - and link that in the comments.

I also am of the opinion that we should not hesitate to close the bad questions - just we need to provide plenty of information about how to save a bad question if the user is interested. And we should be polite about it too.

Answer 2

I totally agree that we should be more supportive to new users. Okay, I've seen 2 questions recently, Rep 1,which were fairly obviously "do my homework for me". Well, no, we're not here to do anyone's homework, but I think we could - and should - be a little less tetchy with very new - and often young - users. We all love history, or we wouldn't be here, and I would rather encourage a newbie to discover its joys - and pains - than in effect growl "Go away and read a book!"

From a more self-interested pov, if we want History:SE to grow, we need to encourage new users, teach them how to use the site, how to pose good questions, and where to do preliminary research. No, Wikipedia has no claim to infallibility, but it's a good starting point, and has a good deal of cross-references.

I try (I don't always succeed) to welcome new users and ask what they've learnt so far. If they just want a model answer provided, they won't respond, but I think we should at least make the attempt. We were all beginners at everything once!

Edit

I'm actually tempted to downvote my own answer! I have just seen 3 questions (sorry, I'm on my phone so can't reference them) - one confusing one about George Washington, two, from a new user, about the Battle of Bosworth, and Henry VII's reign. A lot of members have been very supportive of the latter, but I cannot escape the suspicion that the OP is doing a course on Tudor England, but has not yet found the college library! I'm afraid in this case I have done what I specifically said we shouldn't do, and recommended a book to read!

I do want to support new users, but am at a loss to know how we deal with questions which, frankly, look like sheer laziness!

Answer 3

There is no doubt we have a problem. It is very difficult to ask a question on H:SE. I think you've got a strong thesis - although I think you weaken it with your last line - Would the site be stronger if we left poor questions active longer?

That said, what can we do constructively?

• I fully support your suggestion to ask a question rather than level an accusation. "What did Wikipedia say?" is better than "Insufficient preliminary research". (or variations on each). I'm one of the culprits and I'm trying to shift my responses, but I get so very very tired of people asking me to look things up for them.

• I do my best to avoid hammering English as a Foreign Language speakers - if the grammar/spelling/phrasing indicates that the individual is not a native English speaker, I try to edit rather than downvote. I should probably begin doing this with new users too, but it is harder to see the 1/101 reputation than it is to see grammatical errors.

• Given that I'm a major culprit of the behavior you describe, I've been trying to split my actions to give more time - When I spot a fatally flawed question I insert a comment asking for a fix and then I move on. I'll vote to close if the question comes up in the review queue, but I try not to case the first VtC unless the question is egregiously bad. I hope this gives more time for potential fixes.

• We need the periodic reminder that the reason we close questions is to fix them. (or so I understand). I wonder if there is a way to search for recently closed questions and try to salvage them. (there probably is and I'm just not awake enough to spot it. ) I think that most of the questions are salvageable - if OP doesn't check google, there is no amount of editing that will make the question non-trivial.

• I have tried to offer the trivial answer to the trivial question - if the question can be answered through searching Wikipedia for the primary noun, then just offer a one sentence answer linking to the Wikipedia page. I avoid VtC on any question with an answer.

• I think the ultimate answer is to implement what has been discussed before; a convention that all questions must include a summary of the prior research. Much of the problem is that the questions are trivial and the system is working. Questions on programming languages or math or project management are inherently practical. OP asks a question to solve a problem. H:SE questions are not (usually) practical, they are founded in curiosity. There is a larger proportion of the questions that should be closed because they are:

  • per se trivial - answered by google or wikipedia

  • Beer & Pretzels questions - suitable for pub discussion, but not for serious historical research or thought

  • Book length (most questions that begin "Why..." or "why not..." - Causality is not simple. History doesn't consist of X because Y. Usually any historical event has dozens of interaction precursors, factors, causes, etc.

I fully support your fundamental thesis - that we (including me) need to be more welcoming to those pages of users. But the quality of questions is already pretty low. We need to simultaneously (1) discourage bad questions, and (2) encourage novice querents.

RE: Wikipedia is not infallible; I'm not going to argue this point, but a strategy of permitting questions on the basis that Wikipedia might be wrong will certainly transform this site into a cesspool of trivial mediocrity. If someone asks, "Wikipedia provides a birthdate for A. Hamilton that contradicts this source and that source, how do I determine which is correct?" that question is ipso facto not trivial. It demonstrates research and cannot be answered by Wikipedia.

[Help] says we don't want to replace Wikipedia. Neither are we the corrections bureau- Wikipedia has a process for quality control and I would vigorously oppose substituting H:SE for that process.

If people want to oppose Wikipedia, that is fine, but what is the solution? what is the definition of a trivial question? What is the solution to the trivial question problem?

Answer 4

In my opinion this site currently is too welcoming to poor questions and their authors. We enforce reasonably strict standards compared to other SE, but it's nothing unbearable and it keeps some of the sewage at bay. Whether this will keep enough of it away that this site won't ever turn into a cesspool is another question altogether.

Personally, I tend to draw a line at rep 50 on any site of the SE network:

• Until then my working assumption is they're new and learning how to use SE sites. I close vote when appropriate and sometimes throw in a comment but I rarely downvote.

• Once a user has enough rep to comment on any SE site, methinks they've been around for long enough that they should know what's acceptable and what isn't.

I'm also lenient about downvoting kids, because brutally downvoting them isn't the best way to promote their self-esteem. A glance at the Maths SE profile of your first question's author, for instance, suggests that they're in high-school.

That being said, I mercilessly downvote two types of questions:

1. Questions whose author a) hasn't bothered to do any obvious preliminary research such as googling it and b) is displaying signs that they expect this site's users to do it for them.

2. Politically charged questions that show signs of having been asked in an effort to troll or cherry pick answers that comfort its author's worldview.

Either way, I'm not seeing any reasons to slow down the process of close voting poor questions. Plus questions are technically put on hold, purportedly so their authors can improve them and get them re-opened, rather than closed altogether like they were in the past.

Answer 5

As a new user, I discovered something approaching hostility to my first answer on the History site on 1 May 2019. I answered a question by another new user, and give a bit of historical information about the time period in question, quoting from one book and stating what that book was, then putting together related information I had in Word documents of my own. Within an hour, my answer had been removed. The reason given was,

"Parts of this answer appear to be copied verbatim from elsewhere and posted without proper attribution." I could not respond as I cannot get in touch with the moderator, so I left a comment under the question, explaining,

"I gave a source for some of my quotes in my answer which you removed. I worked from the LIFE Nature Library book series, 'Evolution'. It is by Ruth Moore and The Editors of LIFE. It starts with a detailed history of Charles Darwin. I also added material I have previously posted on other web-sites, but all of it is my own work. If you remove an answer, you should be able to say where the answer is wrong, or misleading, not removing it just because you require detailed attribution. I compiled it from various documents I have written over several years plus that book."

I have received no response to this, and my answer remains obliterated. As a new user, I object. I should have a way of explaining to the moderators (plural) and getting a direct reply from them. It is quite shocking that if one moderator does not like an answer, they can remove it instantly without any means of appeal. And to do that to a brand new user indicates, well, what? You tell me.

If you do not like this answer (and I know you will not) I expect the same treatment of this as of my removed answer. If you think I am abusing the forum by posting my objection here, then tell me where I CAN object. Thank you.