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We appear to have two different "How to Ask" help pages:

  1. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-ask
  2. https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask

They both seem to contain help for how to ask a question, and they have some shared content. It seems to me they should be consolidated.

As a side note, both links are used on Stack Overflow. For example, the first link is used on the Ask Question page:

question ask link to how-to-ask

The second link is used in the question close dialog:

close dialog link to how-to-ask

Additionally, I see that one of the "How To Ask" pages links to the other one:

one links to the other

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    One of them is to guide new user, I presume (the one with search bar built-in). The other is just general FAQs article.
    – nhahtdh
    Commented Jan 10, 2014 at 22:50

1 Answer 1

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One of those pages is pretty much the same on every single site on the network. It's good, general-purpose advice for asking questions. And it has a live search box!

The other one is customized for Stack Overflow. It gives examples of questions that might appear on Stack Overflow, offers advice for posting code, etc. The moderators on Stack Overflow can edit it based on feedback to address the issues they see cropping up on Stack Overflow. It is linked to directly from a heavily-used close reason to encourage folks who're struggling to ask good questions to learn from it. It does not, however, have a live, working search box.

On most other sites, these two pages are exactly the same (except for the lack of a search box) - but they could be modified if need-be to fit the individual needs of each community.

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  • ah, I see "Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague" so proceed to waste an hour of their time with all your stream of consciousness nonsense?
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 10, 2014 at 23:45
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    Unfortunately, titles are limited to 150 characters - so there's a limit to how much time you can waste there.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jan 11, 2014 at 0:20
  • <strike>Unf</strike>Fortunately - there, fixed it for you. :-)
    – Ken White
    Commented Jan 11, 2014 at 1:22
  • Thanks for the answer. It still seems a bit strange to have it in two places, but now I understand the reasoning.
    – chue x
    Commented Jan 11, 2014 at 16:15

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