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  • 13
    I really like these; I think they do a good job of filling in some of the gaps left by the Question Wizard, in its current form - they seem really good at guiding the user through the rest of the experience after writing a post.
    – HDE 226868
    Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 19:11
  • 208
    This. This times a thousand. This addresses the problem where it actually sits—educating new users on how to use the site should be handled by the site, not by experienced users. If this is properly done, the irritation about new users doing things wrong will vanish because they will simply know better.
    – Wildcard
    Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 22:28
  • 15
    I want to award a bounty to this answer; it's exemplary. Please remind me when the question is eligible.
    – Wildcard
    Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 22:29
  • 7
    BJ Myers, I recommend you add a "tl;dr" at the top, and use some tasteful bolding on the key sentences. This answer is a gem and I really hope Stack Exchange decides to go with this approach instead of the "noob" flags.
    – Wildcard
    Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 22:55
  • 7
    This also has the advantage (over canned comments) of not cluttering the comment section, which saves experienced users' time.
    – user202729
    Commented Aug 18, 2018 at 10:31
  • 104
    Now, I finally see a suggestion that looks like it might make a difference for the new users, have minimal impact on the veterans, and make no, or minimal, changes in the general UI. It's also likely too much work for SE to bother with.
    – user351780
    Commented Aug 18, 2018 at 14:37
  • 9
    Don't tell new users how to upvote until they have enough rep to upvote, and make sure they know that they can only comment on their own posts initially. Provide site-specific boiler-plate text and links so that, for example, new users can find out how to create an MWE or MWEB if a question on TeX SE gets comments containing any of the keywords 'MWE', 'MWEB', 'minimal working example', 'minimal document', 'what you've tried', 'code to reproduce' etc. Right now, it's a pain to link users to this info because you have to switch to Meta, remember the search term, find the question etc.
    – cfr
    Commented Aug 19, 2018 at 22:59
  • 3
    The site already does most of these things already. The issue is that people don't read the information shown to them, not that it isn't shown to them. Yes, there are a handful of things that the system doesn't do a good job of explaining, and they should have such information added, but it will make very little difference as most of the people who read such things aren't the users causing problems.
    – Servy
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 13:20
  • 35
    @Servy, "The site already does most of these things already." No, it doesn't. And my very simple feature request to implement one of these things has still not been implemented despite dozens of upvotes.
    – Wildcard
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 21:38
  • 2
    @Wildcard I said most, not all. I also said that there are a few things that the system doesn't explain, and it's fine to add an explanation for them. Pointing out one thing that you think should be explained in more detail doesn't invalidate any of that. Also keep in mind that the more banners and popups and messages you present to the user, the less they'll read, so information needs to be curated heavily, and everything considered as to whether or not it's really that essential. People accepting answers apparently didn't meet that burden. Personally I agree with that assessment.
    – Servy
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 21:42
  • 5
    "If they get a down vote, explain to them what that means and link to the help center article on voting." Is very, very important, because the most prominent way in which SE is unusual (IMO) is the high visibility of downvotes. But how would you suggest that this is implemented? Perhaps sending them a notification? Sending notifications for everything is also bad because they could just get confused with an information overload or even end up missing a couple of the links they're sent.
    – user392547
    Commented Aug 21, 2018 at 7:59
  • 12
    Agreed, great points. One of our current research/UX initiatives is to look at how the system can better train new folks to participate effectively.
    – Donna
    Commented Aug 21, 2018 at 16:45
  • 10
    There are some great suggestions here. It's a bit like that tutorial level in a console game where you get irritating prompts telling you how to do basic tasks, which you nonetheless need because otherwise you'd have no idea what you were doing, then once you get to the real levels all the prompting goes away
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 10:58
  • 41
    The "another user has edited your post" canned message probably ought to also include an explanation of why this is a normal and good thing. We get a lot of new users who act like any edit from someone else is a blasphemy against the purity of their post.
    – T.E.D.
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 14:05
  • 17
    I think this hits the nail on the head. SE does a terrible job of educating new users how to effectively participate in the community. They get a "here's a link over here you wont read" while we're constantly slapped in the face with banners saying "be nice". I was happy it was added to the comments, as that's where the negativity tends to show up; but branding the user, and slapping us again when we try to answer their question is annoying and frankly insulting. We're your user-base, not monsters.
    – Stephan
    Commented Aug 23, 2018 at 20:54