Timeline for What else can I do to make my question well-received and improve my chances of getting answers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 1, 2021 at 1:26 | comment | added | Jeremy Boden | Make sure that it is a question, so that it is clear what a good (or even acceptable) answer would be. | |
| Dec 25, 2018 at 4:32 | history | edited | Jeff SchallerMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Missing word; slight rephrasing
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| Nov 25, 2018 at 16:52 | comment | added | user232326 | Probably nit-picking, but: The average English word (by word use) length seems to be 5.1 characters. So, a little bit less than 30 words are needed for a title of 150 characters. :-) | |
| Sep 28, 2018 at 10:22 | comment | added | sourcejedi | @JeffSchaller I can't discount the work you put in editing and so on. I was seeing if I could find shorter ways to write this, and capitalisation looked like a low priority. If it's worth keeping in, maybe it's worth a link to an approved English lesson on this? - and if that seems too intrusive, maybe it's because it is. | |
| Sep 28, 2018 at 9:54 | comment | added | Anthony Geoghegan | Fabulous work! I made a minor edit (mention Questions that may already have your answer and link to Accept help page) and hope you consider it to be useful. I personally find that when asking a question, I sometimes struggle with the very first step, coming up with a good descriptive title. It's not until I've typed the body of the question that the title becomes clear to me. That could well be a purely personal thing so I decided to omit that advice. Your advice of jotting down verbs and nouns makes more sense (the search engine often does show useful duplicates). | |
| Sep 28, 2018 at 9:50 | history | edited | Anthony Geoghegan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Mention *Questions that may already have your answer* and link to accept help page
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| Sep 28, 2018 at 9:47 | comment | added | sourcejedi | @JeffSchaller Yes, sorry, my thought was about the question title specifically. I don't know whether it calling it out in advance will help anything or not. It just struck me when I saw "The title: create a sentence from your nouns & verbs that indicate the pertinent software, operating environment". If it's just guidance then it's not as weird to think about, but I thought there was a check that comes up and stops you from posting. | |
| Sep 28, 2018 at 9:42 | comment | added | sourcejedi | @JeffSchaller wish I had something more constructive :). I'm not sure mentioning the badge is likely to help, so I'm a bit worried it's going to have an overall negative effect from sounding patronising. If it was rep, maybe :-). | |
| Sep 28, 2018 at 1:27 | history | edited | Jeff SchallerMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
incorporating feedback from the comments
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| Sep 28, 2018 at 1:15 | comment | added | Jeff Schaller Mod | Re: all the English idioms; another excellent point; "toe hold" is another I struggled with but let through. I'll revisit those to see if there's a clearer way to express them. Re: the proper noun capitalization, call it a pet peeve of mine; I've ranted about it before and felt it was appropriate to include here ("how can I make my question be better-received?"). | |
| Sep 28, 2018 at 1:12 | comment | added | Jeff Schaller Mod | Thank you for all your feedback, @sourcejedi! I'm pretty sure that reading the tour earns you a badge; are you saying that the statement should be deleted? I mention it as additional motivation to be exposed to the "on-topic" list. You have a good point about the reader knowing what they've read before I've listed it. I'll highlight those points so that's it's obvious by skimming what they're about. Re: the tags & the question, my best recollection is some guidance regarding unnaturally including tags in the title; I don't recall any about the body. | |
| Sep 27, 2018 at 22:42 | comment | added | sourcejedi | What is the importance of capitalizing proper nouns, with respect to the question title? I'm thinking the lack doesn't usually create ambiguity, so it's not hard to correct by those of us who like the full clarity :-). Is this something that creates a problem, which at the same time can be prevented by including a one-sentence reminder inside a long English answer? | |
| Sep 27, 2018 at 22:21 | comment | added | sourcejedi | <del>and it earns you a badge!</del>. "skip ahead if you’ve already covered these" - you kind of have to read them to know if you have though :). "nouns & verbs that indicate the pertinent software, operating environment" - maybe I'm mis-remembering, but don't you get nagged to not duplicate tags into the question? | |
| Sep 27, 2018 at 12:28 | history | edited | Jeff SchallerMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
first attempt at drawing the line between comments & edits
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| Sep 27, 2018 at 11:03 | comment | added | Stephen Kitt | Yes, I agree with you — and it’s the Stack Exchange priority too — this is about questions and answers, not about the people involved. I have some examples of conversational comments but we shouldn’t encourage them! | |
| Sep 27, 2018 at 10:44 | comment | added | Jeff Schaller Mod | Thank you, @StephenKitt! It'll sound odd after I wrote so much already, but for the purposes of this Q/A, I'm more concerned about getting the Question right than of notifying an inquisitive answerer of updates. It's certainly good/nice/smart to notify people who have already expressed interest, but I think there's also those who only want the question to be better. I think I need to tighten that section up just a little bit so that it's dealing with "how are the columns delimited?" comments and not conversational comments -- of which I'm failing to find a good example at hand. | |
| Sep 27, 2018 at 7:12 | comment | added | Stephen Kitt | Very good advice indeed. Regarding responding to comments requesting clarification, it might be useful to recommend both editing the question to clarify it (without adding “Edit” sections at the bottom...), and also responding to the comment with a comment, so that the user who requested the clarification gets notified. | |
| Sep 27, 2018 at 2:58 | history | edited | Jeff SchallerMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Missing link
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| Sep 27, 2018 at 2:54 | comment | added | jasonwryan | Great answer. Show the research that you’ve already done deserves highlighting. | |
| Sep 27, 2018 at 2:31 | history | answered | Jeff SchallerMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |