Post History

Is it a bad idea to create a newcomer-only Q&A category? Not now, but after a few years.

... or not a category but you know the tabs like "Meta" and "Code Reviews?" However those are called. Call this one "Hello, World" or "Hello, Newbie" or "Howdy, Stranger." I'm kind of attached to the "Hello" idea. Anyway. The standards for what passes as a decent question on "Hello" are much lower than the standards enforced on "Q&A" : it's ok to ask questions that have been answered elsewhere, it's ok if you have a problem with command-line tools instead of compiled code, it's ok if you don't list all the websites you tried before coming here. Most of the questions will come from desperate freshmen in Comp Sci 101, and eager sophomores who asked their CS 101 questions on Codidact last year will be happy to give answers. I mean they've only been on Codidact for a year now; how are they supposed to know which questions have been asked before? If everything goes right, experienced moderators will never need to look at the questions on "Hello."

There might be problems. What if North Korea liberalizes and all the incredibly experienced North Korean software engineers get access to the global internet and start asking real, never-before-seen questions on Codidact's "Hello" page? They don't have the reputation yet to post to "Q&A." Who will sort the signal from the noise? This might work with eager CS seniors who have been helping out on "Hello" for a few years now and know how to spot a real question when they see one. They flag the question if in doubt, and an experienced moderator can determine whether or not the question should be promoted to "Q&A."

But is this the way that we want to raise our next generation of question-askers and moderators? Sure the eager CS sophomore knows how to answer questions, but does she know how to gently coax the desperate CS freshman into making his second question a bit better than his first? How did she learn how to coach her students anyway, since she was indoctrinated by other second-rate moderators on the "Hello" page? I don't have a good prediction on this one. Maybe just try it and watch for problems.

When I first learned how to code I referenced Stack Overflow every day, asked a few questions, occasionally browsed through the list of new questions to see if there were any that I could help with. Never happened: all the new questions were way over my head. It's probably still that way, since I mostly work with languages designed in the 1980's... same thing happened on [comp.lang.c](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/04/23/strange-and-maddening-rules/). I think that a lot of newcomers will want to help, and something like this would give them a space to vent their altruistic impulses.