Re^2: RFC - shortform posting guidance for newcomers (leverage)

[tye]

if this list only did one thing I will support it wholeheartedly: It eliminates the small parade of replies to poorly written questions that include the obligatory list of "How do I/How not to/RTFM" links. If it does that, go ahead and post it anywhere you like. :-)

This is very much the wrong way to try to solve that problem.

I sometimes vote down such boilerplate noise. Such usually reveals to me that no shortage of people have voted it up. Of course you get more of that stuff if people are constantly voting it up! You don't have to vote it down. But if you don't like it, then you should consider voting it down or /msg'ing the author, especially when the author is a "serial offender".

My suggestion is for people to refrain from posting purely "you suck at posting questions" replies, especially with any speed. If you actually have something interesting and/or useful to say, then go ahead and reply with that and, if you want to, also provide some advice / links on how to post a better question. If not, then please give other people who it would seem are better at understanding questions that you find hard to make enough sense of sufficient time to show up, find the node, and provide a response that does not consist of 100% noise (to "the rest of us").

Heck, if you have something interesting and useful to add and some bozo has already posted a "purely RTFPostingHelp" response, you might want to respond to the noise with the interesting / useful information along with a sincere and thoughtful expression of how it would've been better had they waited for someone like you to come along and post a "combo" reply (I don't advocate responding to 100% noise by adding another 100%-noise response).

[Anonymous Monk]

I will mention the effectiveness tutorials at the end of my reply, if I'm answering the question in full and/or providing a solution.

I try to refrain from replies consisting entirely of links to the effectiveness tutorials until after the question receives ~6 replies, or at least one that answers the question completely.

Sometimes I'll omit mentioning the effectiveness tutorials if the OP is very new, and it appears it would be just another thing to overwhelm -- but usually by next week, if the OP wasn't scared annoyed away, another opportunity will present itself :)

I think that works.