ideas: how to solve the low quality posts problem

Question

All of us that have been active on the site for some time know that we have a problem with a constant influx of low quality questions. Last weekend I was thinking about it and came up with an idea (although not sure if feasible at all):

Most of these basic questions / low effort / low research come from new users that create an account just to ask a question and disappear, oftentimes not even coming back to accept an answer. Sometimes users come back a few hours later and answer their own questions ("I just found the button that does that" or "I forgot to do X, now it works").

What if we added an extra step for asking questions?

For example, when a new user posts their first question that automatically goes into review before the it becomes visible on the site, until this user has X reputation or has visited the site for X many days.

Or: this question will be invisible until the user comes back and at least gets the informed badge, so we at least force them to take a look at this page...

Another idea is to keep the question invisible for 24h and the user has to come back to the site and activate it somehow, this way if the user asks it and disappears the question never shows up.

I know that these are not great from a UX point of view, but perhaps it's too easy to just create an account (or multiple) and post a crap question before even searching on google.

Answer 1

What if we added an extra step for asking questions?

For example, when a new user posts their first question that automatically goes into review before the it becomes visible on the site, until this user has X reputation or has visited the site for X many days.

I see where you're coming from, however, What your suggesting would have to become a global change, across all SE networks.

Perhaps it's too easy to just create an account (or multiple) and post a crap question

The whole point is that it's supposed to be very simple for new users - in hopes that they have a good experience and will return etc. It isn't too difficult to get rid of LQ questions. (annoying, but not hard).

---

Bottom line is, we can't make it too hard for new users questions to be seen/answered, because if we do, we can potentially lose many users.

Answer 2

I understand your feelings on this. Boy do I understand them. I do, however, think it's not a good idea to make asking questions harder in a community that doesn't really grow all that much.

Personally, I'd rather take care of all these low-quality questions and possibly encounter one user who ends up being the next 10k+ than scaring new users away.