What should we do about low quality, nonspecific "questions"?

Question

Issue: More than half of the "question" titles listed on the homepage are non-specific descriptions rather than actual questions - can be verified with the following jQuery snippet:

Long form for use in browser Javascript console:

var questions=$('a.question-hyperlink');
var countPunctuated=0;
questions.each(function(){
    var str = $(this).html();
    if ( str.indexOf('?') > 0 )
        countPunctuated++;
});
alert(countPunctuated + ' / ' + questions.length);

Short form for user in browser address bar:

javascript:var questions=$('a.question-hyperlink');var countPunctuated=0;questions.each(function(){var str = $(this).html();if ( str.indexOf('?') > 0 ) countPunctuated++;});alert(countPunctuated + ' / ' + questions.length);

The fact that the question format is not being observed speaks to overall question quality, however, in some cases, there are actual questions lurking within the question description.

Proposed Solution:

To make it easier to spot pseudo-questions, you can use the following snippet to highlight suspect question titles:

Long form(doubles as a Greasemonkey userscript):

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Highlight StackExchange non-question titles
// @description    Highlight non-question subjects in listings
// @namespace      http://stackexchange.com/hnq
// @include        http://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @require        http://http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.2/jquery.min.js
// ==/UserScript==

var patternSubjective = /(good|bad|recommend)/ig;
$('a.question-hyperlink').each(function(){
    var str = $(this).html();
    if ( str.indexOf('?') <= 0 )
        $(this).css('background-color','#FFCC00');
    if ( patternSubjective.exec(str) )
        $(this).css('color','#880000');
});

Short form:

javascript:var patternSubjective = /(good|bad|recommend)/ig; $('a.question-hyperlink').each(function(){ var str = $(this).html(); if ( str.indexOf('?') <= 0 ) $(this).css('background-color','#FFCC00'); if ( patternSubjective.exec(str) ) $(this).css('color','#880000'); }); void(0);

I will be making an effort to triage highlighted questions I encounter: if an actual question exists in the description, I will edit the question title - otherwise I will vote the question down and comment to give the asker a chance to correct.

Alternative strategies to approach the issue of non-specific/low-quality questions welcome.

Answer 1

Don't forget your /review path:

https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/review/

I know this isn't exclusively a "new user problem," but it is incredibly important to vet and review contributions by new users. It provides an opportunity to educate them early on so they become productive members of the site. Please make it part of your routine to visit those review pages and provide thoughtful comments to help them post useful questions. These comments will also leave frequent "sign posts" for other users to learn from and follow. Before you know it, everyone is following in those guidelines.

Oh, and make a special effort to up-vote good content from new users. That will give them the initial boost they need and help them realize “Wow! This is the place for me!”

Answer 2

I just want to add to this discussion, counting the number of questions with a question mark is not a reliable metric of quality.

Not everything has to be in question format, as long as the problem is clear from the title. Furthermore there are plenty of great questions without question marks and plenty of bad questions with marks.

I tend to skim over all the questions, and bad titles tend to stand out, through their length or lack of capitalisation or certain words/punctuation.