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The current button follows the menu of Questions | Tags | Users | Badges | Unanswered | Ask Question It looks okay but I feel like these are more navigation links than a button as important as asking a question:

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To me I love what you guys did with the buttons like this one:

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So the Ask Question would look similar:

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To me this now becomes an action rather than some navigation link, it stands out more, and it distinguishes itself from going to existing questions. It's a signal to the user and I personally believe it will help.

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    So, this is to solve our problem of not getting enough questions?
    – Oded
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:47
  • Absolutely not....I think its more of a design change, this doesn't necessairly mean you would get more questions...and it really shouldn't. I believe the way the links are setup from a UX perspective don't follow a norm. Asking a question is some sort of action by the user to perform writing out a post. Whereas the current links are more navigation type purposes...for instance I want to see the top users, I want to see existing questions, I want to see badgest, etc. Then all of a sudden I want to add an answer.
    – JonH
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:49
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    @Oded, I hear ya, but we presumably wouldn't really argue that making it slightly harder to find the "ask" button is an effective filter that's keeping out questions we don't want. We should assume we want users that have questions to be able to find where to ask them, and make it as intuitive as possible.
    – Jaydles
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:50
  • To back this up oded, I am not new to stackoverflow, but do you believe what just happened to me. I went to stackoverflow and spent two to three minutes trying to find how to ask a question. Please understand that this is only because I don't ask too many questions. The minute I wanted to ask one I completely forgot where was that button. I know sounds completely stupid but if this stood out more as it should I wouldn't be posting this.
    – JonH
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:50
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    I entirely understand. And certainly - the navigation is sub-optimal. We are looking at the site navigation as a whole (from a use cases perspective) - this is still in early days, figuring things out. Hopefully that will solve this problem as well.
    – Oded
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:51
  • @Jaydles - precisely...believe it or not I don't ask too many questions and as I stated I really had a brain fart and could not find how to ask a question. Its only when I stopped and scanned the screen pixel by pixel did it hit me. I know I'm not the smartest person in the world but the beautiful blue buttons you guys have would of helped me.
    – JonH
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:52
  • @Jaydles - sure, but we shouldn't change things for the sake of change. There should be an actual need to solve...
    – Oded
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:52
  • Look at the navigation here, on MSE - the "Ask Question" has a bit more space between it and the other main navigation elements than they do between each other, in order to make it stand out a bit more. Not sure what happened on Stack Overflow - I am sure it used to be that way (it was more visually distinct).
    – Oded
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:54
  • @Oded yes I completely agree but from a ux perspective it makes sense that an action is quite different than some sort of navigation. I feel these new buttons have a purpose, and if you noticed (which I'm sure you have) adding a comment and posting an answer are already using these buttons, why is it that "Asking a Question" isn't ?
    – JonH
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:54
  • Well, if nothing else - clicking on a button causes an action to occur (posting a comment or answer). Clicking a "Post Your Question" or "Ask Question" button wouldn't do that - it would take you to a page where you can post a question. Bad UX ;)
    – Oded
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:56
  • Again - not saying that making the link stand out is a bad thing. I don't believe that making it a button is the right way to do it. We will certainly be looking at this as part of the restructuring I spoke of.
    – Oded
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:57
  • Well I guess this is just a request, ultimately it can be accepted or declined and I am fine with that, I am just giving you my perspective on what just happened to me. When a user here at my work gives me a thorough explanation and even if I don't agree at first. If I have others who mention the same thing (take voting as an example now) than I know something musn't be right. Ultimately we write software for users not for ourselves. And this change I believe would look really nice...thank you for your thoughts I know you guys work really hard on this and I can see it.
    – JonH
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 18:58
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    Related: Why do some "Ask Question" buttons on some sites not stand out and be attracting?
    – jscs
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 19:54
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    It just happened to me, too. It's been quite some time I asked a question. I spent about a minute looking for the "Ask Question" button. It has the same styling as the menu items, which for me, should not be so.
    – afaolek
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 12:20
  • @Oded - These are real people talking - users in fact. Proof that this has nothing to do with "...solve our problem of not getting enough questions".
    – JonH
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 13:02

2 Answers 2

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I have the feeling that quite some new users who use answers to ask new questions do so, because they failed to see where to ask a question at a quick glance and thus appended their question as an answer to an existing, related question – because that works in some forums. Admittedly, this is only a feeling and I cannot produce any example where a user actually confirmed that they did not find the button.

An appropriately prominent Ask Question button could improve this situation and thus I second this request.

Arqade’s animated button

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  • It's pretty rare to see questions posted as answers, and when it happens, it tends to be users who are question banned.
    – Servy
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 21:49
  • This has definitely happened but the site gets "cleaned up" pretty quickly to remove these posts...I know I've seen this. +1
    – JonH
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 22:31
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This has been implemented meanwhile, as part of the new responsive design:

enter image description here

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