Are non power users questions welcome in Power Users?

The benefits of allowing "easy" questions

The Software site already had an analogous discussion and the consensus came out fairly strongly in favour of accepting and answering beginner-level questions. I'm a strong proponent of this idea in general, especially for technically-oriented sites; so I wrote my own answer after the fact, and want to summarize my argument here as well.

• A community that grows and thrives will attract the attention of "beginners", no matter what. Better to have their questions answered in advance. It really does cut down on them re-asking - drastically. It may not seem that way, but this is purely due to availability bias. You can't see the questions they didn't ask.

• Every field in which the concept of "expertise" is coherent, is dominated by novices. That's built in to the nature of learning, and the nature of humanity. The utility of information depends not only on the significance of the problem it can solve, but on the breadth of its audience. Practically speaking, a community ignores neophytes at its peril; to do so is to knowingly cast a side a huge fraction of the noble purpose it can serve.

Aside from the general argument, I feel that reading the term "power user" and inferring that some measure of elitism is necessary, is missing the point. In my mind, being a "power user" is more of a mindset: it reflects the intent to take control of one's computer, understand its workings properly, and treat it as a tool rather than an appliance. People who recognize that they scarcely know anything about how a computer works, but who seek to take charge in this way, should be lauded for that aspiration.

Difficulty is orthogonal to quality

On the flip side, allowing the "non power user" questions of "non power users" absolutely cannot be allowed to excuse low quality of questions. Unfortunately it is often difficult or impossible for beginners to ask the question they really need answered - uncovering this question requires the benefit of hindsight that they don't have. (There are several categories of problems here - not just the so-called "XY problem".) However, a functioning Q&A community must expect the people asking questions to try to meet quality minimums (and to work to fix minor issues with questions that don't require the OP's input).

When several failed attempts have been made by beginners at what appears to be the same question, an enlightened expert can, and should, step in to extract the essence of the question, phrase it properly, and present question and answer to those who need both. (See also this expression of interest for the Linux Systems community.)

A quality question is a prerequisite for quality answers, and is:

• Unique: it does not duplicate existing questions, but is part of a coherent set of questions that neatly cleave the problem space at its joints, so to speak.

• Topical: it is concerned with the primary subject matter of the community (this should go without saying).

• Clear: it describes an easily understood problem, in enough detail that a proposed solution can be thoroughly tested. As much as possible, those who test solutions should be able to be confident that they know exactly what should happen in every case, so that they can verify that it does happen.

• Properly scoped: it does not present a complex task that entails following a series of steps, except insofar as there is a useful question about figuring out what the steps are. Instead, it focuses on a single step - but without unnecessarily zeroing in on details that are ultimately irrelevant to solving the problem.

• Adequately detailed: where an error occurs, it should provide necessary and sufficient information to reproduce the exact problem, directly, with as little intervention or interpretation as possible. For how-to questions, the input and output to the process need to be specified precisely; if they cannot easily be shown and understood in plain text, there should be necessary and sufficient information to create input and validate output.

posted about 1 year ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

1y ago

Karl Knechtel‭

156 reputation 4 3 21 5

I think the way to interpret the site name is not "this site is for power users only", but rather "this site is for any aspiring power user".

It doesn't really matter if you're not an expert, and there isn't much of a bar for a question being too simple. If it's so simple, then it should take a minute to answer it, and that's that. I think the real common thread is people who value learning more about how to use computers, not how much they already know.

Really, it's a "computer questions that aren't coding" section, because coding is a very specific area, and non-coding distracts from it (same with Linux). It's called Power User, much like the SX one is Superuser, because a site called "computer user" sounds kind of boring, I suspect.

Are we allowing beginners questions from people that don't understand the core concepts of what is being asked?

I think we have to. The vast majority of computer questions come down to not understanding the core concepts. It's very hard to imagine a situation where you understand all the core concepts relating to a problem, and yet cannot immediately see the solution. That's because computers (hardware and software) are deliberately engineered so that an understanding of some set of core concepts will be all you need to operate them.

If we banned questions that don't fully grasp the core concepts, there really wouldn't be much to ask.

posted 10 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

9mo ago

matthewsnyder‭

1047 reputation 32 35 142 34

I think the knowledge requirement is roughly:

• The poster should have some experience working with the technology the question is about.
• The poster should have some experience working computers in general. Which is probably a prerequisite to finding/using Codidact in the first place.

If the poster doesn't even have the ability to grasp any answer posted, the site won't work out well for them. Answers can't be expected to explain the most fundamental things ("First turn on your computer. The power button is usually located-..."). Similarly, I'm hesitant to providing tutorials explaining how to the most basic stuff in detail. The occasional screen shot is probably helpful though.

Encourage posters to explain what they have already tried (if applicable, ie trouble-shooting, installation etc). This gives hints of their experience and helps to narrow down the question.

Encourage posters to provide information about their experience in the question. "I often work with X but have never used the related technology Y before" is useful information. This way we can also answer beginner questions at an appropriate level.

But again, if the poster is someone claiming to be a complete beginner at computers and then in the next sentence asks how to create partitions on their HD or how to tweak some BIOS settings, then they aren't being sensible and the question is likely bad even though it may be on-topic. And that's what down-voting is for.

posted about 1 year ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Lundin‭

453 reputation 3 13 45 9