Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for
I am pretty new here, so I might be completely off, but I think that's the main problem. When I first found the site, I read the FAQ, it was pretty easy to find and quite informative (but very long!). I'm not an expert on what is on topic for Programmers, but I still haven't stumbled upon a closed question that would have been asked if the OP had read the FAQ in the first place. I don't know if this is possible but one statistic I would be very interested to see would be the exactly that, how many people actually visited the FAQ before they asked their questions, and how many of the questions asked by people not visiting the FAQ were closed.
My experience with the site is very limited, and so is my data set, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to familiarize themselves with the guidelines before asking. I haven't asked a question here yet, and do not know if I will soon (most of my questions are already asked and answered) but when I do I will give the FAQ another look to see if my question is ok. I think it's the sensible thing to do, it will only cost me a few seconds and it will help me get better answers, as from what I've seen so far the questions that are disallowed are those that don't generate useful answers.
This site, Meta, is also very useful, there are several past discussions that are applicable to this one and I'm surprised no one mentioned them:
- Can the migration path from SO be reconsidered?
- How can we help people who ask “What language should I learn next” ask a better question?
- How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?
- What can be done about bad questions on Programmers?
- Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them.
It also seems to me that people keep answering obviously off topic questions, although that has already been identified as something that we shouldn't do:
- Should we seek for alternatives to propose to OP when closing their off-topic question?
- Please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions!
That is not really helpful, although I understand that most people will think to answer first and clean up later, it's very misguiding to the person asking especially when answers are from senior members. It's like saying your question is off topic, but no problem, you got your answers. I've already lost 25 reputation points from answering a very bad question by this guy, and I'm really glad the community and the moderators re-acted and other people didn't waste their time answering his questions.
I'm getting a bit off topic, so I will stop here, with this amazing find:
Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like this onethis one should be the norm not the exception.
