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While reviewing low quality Q&A I often see questions that have been asked within the last hour, for example. The questions are poor but the users are new to Stackoverflow. How should such questions be be given a chance to improve their question. Should such questions simply be flagged for deletion, and if so for what reason? Should I write a comment guiding how to improve it, then what: skip or looks good?

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  • I'm not entirely sure what it is that they're asking, so...if they don't elect to edit the question soon, it'll be eligible for deletion on its own. – Makoto Jun 1 '14 at 7:49
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    It is a common pattern. Please don't select "looks good" and life is too short to try to get it fixed. He wants to know if anybody can help him. That's an opinion, whack it with "primarily opinion based". – Hans Passant Jun 1 '14 at 8:08
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How should such questions be be given a chance to improve their question.

By voting to close the question. This will cause it to be temporarily "put on hold", which gives the asker a chance to fix their question. The system is designed to facilitate exactly what you want.

Importantly, it also tells them exactly what is wrong with their question and how to fix it, based on the close reason you choose.

Should such questions simply be flagged for deletion, and if so for what reason?

No, unless the question is obviously spam (in which case it should be flagged as such) or has other unredeemable problems, you shouldn't flag it for deletion. Moderators don't want to, and shouldn't, delete questions outright except in rare cases.

This is just a normal, everyday low-quality question. It can be adequately handled by the community.

Should I write a comment guiding how to improve it

If you want; that's up to you. There are advantages to this, mainly that you (as an intelligent human being) can give specific, detailed advice on how to improve the question. This can often be more helpful than the generic advice generated by the closure reasons. It has a couple of important drawbacks, though:

  1. It consumes a large amount of time, which you may not have available and/or may not be willing to devote considering the vanishingly small odds of your advice actually being taken to heart. Especially when dealing with new users.
  2. It increases the chances that you will be retaliated against and/or that you'll get into an argument with the person who asked the question. This isn't productive and just wastes everyone's time.

It is also worth mentioning that there are plenty of cases where detailed advice isn't necessary. The questions are bad enough that the generic reasons say everything that needs to be said.

then what: skip or looks good?

Close!

The only time you might choose "looks good" on a question like this is if you took the time to edit it yourself to bring it up to our standards. This does sometimes happen, especially for questions asked by new users. There is a gem of a question somewhere in there that can be drawn out by editing. It takes time, but if you're willing to do it, as an experienced user, that's really the best of all possible worlds.

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    asker doesn't have 3K yet, meaning they can't vote to close yet. As far as I know LQ queue dialog shows them options looking like "recommend to close" – gnat Jun 1 '14 at 10:36
  • Well, whatever. It gets tiring on Meta to continually differentiate between "vote to close" and "flag to close". You use the tools you're given. – Cody Gray Jun 1 '14 at 10:37

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