Please make the canned feedback options in the new first questions/answers queues configurable per site

bug

We got a canned comment asking for working code on RPG.

Here is the comment. The answer was reviewed in the First Answers queue here.

Staff Kristinalustig stated in this comment:

The code-specific options shouldn't be showing on any non-code-related site. If you're seeing that anywhere, please let us know!

First I want to confirm that Math.SE also gets a canned response referring to "working code and documentation citations" in the first answers queue, which is often inappropriate. The latest update from SE staff says that they will address this problem by "revisiting the text of some of the feedback strings to try to make it as general as possible." However, I agree with one of the answers in that thread that rephrasing the comments to be more general makes them less useful. I believe there are very specific use cases of this functionality on various SE sites that warrant customizable responses. Allow me to demonstrate the need for this feature using Math.SE as an example.

First of all, Math.SE already has quite a few canned responses gathered and used by the community. I see this revamp of the review system the perfect opportunity to incorporate some of them. This meta post was created 9 years ago to collect comment templates, and is still actively contributed to. A few of the templates are frequently used by users during review that address problems specific to Math.SE. Let me give two examples.

Math Stack Exchange has long faced the problem of people (often new users) flooding the site with homework-like questions that are stated as a bare problem statement or with a plea along the lines of "I have no clue how to solve it, please help". Skimming the thread referenced above and the linked meta questions will show you that active users on the site have generally agreed that such questions should be discouraged. While there is no blanket ban on homework-like questions like on Physics.SE, the policy has been that such questions need to be edited to provide context. To encourage new users to add context, reviewers often use this comment template, for example here, here, here, and here. (Since the questions that attract these comments tend to be of low quality, they may be deleted after a few days if the OP hasn't made improvements, so apologies if the links die.) Since the concern over problem-statement-only question is both specific to Math.SE and quite pressing, having a custom canned response in review that addresses it would be very welcome.

Another problem is that when new users first post on the site, they are often unfamiliar with MathJax, which is a markup system that allows us to typeset math expressions beautifully. Without using MathJax, these posts can be hard to read. To address this problem, there is a comment template for users that are not familiar with MathJax, which would be a good fit for a response in review after editing a post to improve the typesetting. Again this is a problem quite specific to the technical sites, so it would make more sense to allow the sites to customize the response, instead of leaving it out or adding it across the whole network in a broader phrasing.

The updated plan on improving the review queue system promises that reviewers will be able to add custom comments under their own user name through the "share feedback" interface. While this is a move in the right direction, I still believe that the ability to customize canned responses per site is important. A custom canned response posted through the Community♦ user conveys community consensus, while a comment template or a custom response, however frequently it is used, does not. Being able to tell a new user "welcome and here are the rules and conventions of this community" should be one of the goals of the review system. Thus having such messages carry the authority of the Community♦ user would be optimal. At the very least, it would prevent frustrated new users from responding "if you're not willing to help, just move on" because they perceive such comments as an individual grouchy gatekeeper harassing them. I believe this is the reasoning behind introducing canned response in the first place, but since different SE sites are more or less distinct communities, it would be much more productive if each community is equipped to apply their own standards.

Code Review

Code Review is a code related site. However Code Review is for asking "how can I improve my code" not "what is the answer to X" style questions, unlike much of SE. As such the following comment from Community is not just irrelevant/nonsense (like asking for code on non-code sites) but outright harmful advice. By leading users down a path to guaranteed failure.

Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer. – Community♦ 2021-08-28 14:48:48Z, License: CC BY-SA 4.0

If a normal user was posting such comments, I'd mod message and go on to suspend the user for creating a toxic environment.

English Language Learners

On ELL the canned comments aren't helping. Initially they contained references to "showing the code". However that may be fixed.

But more fundamentally, the comments aren't useful because they aren't specific enough. And they cannot be made specific enough.

Reviewers are clicking the box to leave feedback, and because it is easy lots of new questions get a comment about "adding details".

The impact is being negged by an anonymous mod. A new user won't know that "Community" is not a real person, only that someone is telling them to add details. But New Users don't know what sort of details to add. The feedback is anonymous, so the new user doesn't have a contact to ask. There is no engagement with the new user.

A useful comment could be written by a reviewer to explain what sort of details, though it differs in each case.

The automatic comments have no welcoming tone. They are usually not helpful. And they cannot be flagged.

This feature is not appropriate to ELL and should be turned off completely.