in reply to Methods For Better Questions

I'm against required reads and accept/decline-like click-throughs. Sign posts won't prevent any boor from swashbuckling into our living room and yelling "what's time?". Behaviour of an individual towards a community is a social issue, and you can't solve social problems with technology. I'd rather link How (Not) To Ask A Question fifty more times than giving anybody the impression they're required to read and accept our "terms of trade".

I'm in favour, though, of a prominent note e.g. on SoPW along the lines

To ask for wisdom is wise, but it is unwise to ask without knowing how to. You will be redirected to How (Not) To Ask A Question if you show evidence that you didn't ask: I want to ask a question of the Perl Monks. Where do I start? Knowing how to ask is required knowledge for Seekers Of Perl Wisdom.

and I think it's more important to update the various textarea surroundings, for instance the preview page reads, below the preview/submit button

and that's all as for advice. The Perlmonks FAQ shows up on the fourth screenful below the page top (on a 1024x768 display with a reasonable font size); that's too far away.

--shmem 

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

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Re^2: Methods For Better Questions
by blazar (Canon) on Dec 27, 2006 at 20:43 UTC
    Behaviour of an individual towards a community is a social issue, and you can't solve social problems with technology.

    Well, maybe not actually solve them. But when speaking of community and social behaviour it's obvious that communication plays an important role. And technology plays an important role there. For example, to quote an idea by xdg, a Super Search is only a few clicks away, but people are lazy, or just don't think of it. And a ready made link that is only one click away would probably help to overcome these inconveniences.

    I'd rather link How (Not) To Ask A Question fifty more times than giving anybody the impression they're required to read and accept our "terms of trade".

    I'm half hearted: I'm all against giving the impression that there are any "terms of trade", but to me a post that deserves being redirected to How (Not) To Ask A Question is nothing (or hardly anything) but noise, and two or three replies redirecting there end up being noise too. So I'm all for anything that could lower the noise/signal ratio. Then I don't know whether any of the proposed solutions would be effective in this sense...

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