Cutting down on off topic posts

Question

We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again. So we clearly need to be doing a better job up front of educating first time posters.

In the 'How to Ask' box that's just to the right of the area where questions are answered, I think it would be a good idea to add a short section that says something along the lines of 'Questions about career guidance, education, and tool recommendations are off topic. Please see -link- for a list of what is and is not allowed here'. Another option might be to use such text as a place-holder in the textarea entry.

The point here is to put something directly on the posting page.

The way we have it now, you have to click 'visit the help center' and then 'what topics can I ask' to see this type of information. If I was visiting for the first time, 'visit the help center' would not be where I'd first look because I wouldn't be looking for 'help'.

A notice like that won't stop all such posts. Some people are so lazy that they won't take 30 seconds to read posting rules, and others may not be fluent enough in English for it to matter. But something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.

Answer 1

FAQs and such rarely if ever work. People just don't read them.
So making the FAQ clearer isn't going to do much if anything.
What does help is ensuring that previous questions closed as off-topic aren't found by Google. As is, people do a search, find a hundred links to questions with their topic on here, all of them closed and unanswered, and they just post the same thing again, hoping that this time somebody will answer it. Most likely they also post it verbatim on several other sites coming up in that Google result.

So a good thing to do would be to delete, not just close, such questions, and do so quickly, hopefully blocking them from being picked up by search crawlers/spiders.

Making new members (say first 10 questions and answers) get a popup nagging them to make sure they read the FAQ, and containing a summary of the biggest problems such people cause, might help a bit as well.

Answer 2

Per my observations, a lot of such posts come here because of misleading comments at Stack Overflow.

For an example, here are just few recent cases at SO that directly led to users posting very low quality, outright off-topic questions because of comments directing them at Programmers: here, here, here, here.

Notice like you suggest will definitely be helpful in stopping at least most reasonable misguided newbies. However, I believe that we need stronger measures in cutting down the issue at its source.

As an example, in first case I listed, recommendation to post at Programmers was given by a user with 15K SO reputation. If a newcomer gets such a personal advice from such an authoritative user, would this "override" any automatic notice they will see on their way? you bet.

The right way to go would be to find and delete as much as possible misleading comments at Stack Overflow. "Finding" part is technically easy, all it needs is tweaking one of Doorknob's queries and studying its results. We did something like that this Spring when cleaning up "+1 great post" comments at Programmers. Searching for "programmers + belongs" will likely show us the worst offenders, although "programmers + career" and "programmers + recommendations" will likely work well too.

• For example, this SEDE query can help to find more misguiding comments (hat tip to MichaelT).

Deletion part is tricky and requires help from SE developers. A while ago, I "tested" it - I flagged several comments using "Other" flag with verbose messages explaining why these should be deleted. All of my flags went through successfully, however I learned along the way that this way is terribly inefficient. Involving diamond moderators and writing verbose explanatory messages for hundreds, possibly thousands garbage comments like "ask careers at Programmers"? give me a break.

• What is needed instead is to add "programmers" to the list of "sensitive" words that trigger comment deletion with a single flag. That way would let us cleanup harmful garbage with a single "too chatty" or "not constructive" flag. (Optionally, it would be good to exclude from sensitive heuristics comments that refer famous toilet bowl guidance but I don't insist on that.)

Another issue where help of SE dev team would be much appreciated is "other" close reason messages. You know, I am active close reviewer at SO. I focus strongly only on most terrible questions and totally skip the rest (except for infrequent "known good" audits, to keep more system faith in me). But even in these - I stress - totally, absolutely awful - questions I sometimes see "try your garbage at Programmers". I don't even dare to think what happens in less awful (but still totally inappropriate) questions at SO.

• The way to stop this would be to block close messages containing word "programmers" - SO close voters willing to "help" askers like that should totally drop that and try jQuery their luck flagging for migration. Hopefully mod declines will teach them something at last.

Answer 3

Isn't stackexchange defined by the users - so what users need/want defines how stackexchange is working at any moment in time? From this you get a dynamic community where what is on & offtopic changes all the time.

As such I think that when you notice a lot of things are off-topic maybe what is considered on/offtopic on this site should be discussed again. Apparently there is a large demand for it, and apparently "programmers.stackexchange.com" leads to people thinking this is the right place to ask.

Why swim against the flow?