Return to Revisions

#Guidelines for reviewing First Posts

##Basic workflow

1.

Keep in mind that the user is new to Stack Overflow, so they don't know all of the ins and outs of posting a question/answer.

##Common reasons to Edit

First make sure the question is worth saving by looking through it for reasons to close it such as being a duplicate or just being a rant, send me teh codes or the like. Then take care of:

1. Remove spurious greetings, declarations of urgency, assurances of having searched and tried stuff (especially if that stuff is nowhere to be seen in the question), promises to appreciate help, requests for links to tutorials for one who is just getting started and the like.
2. Not enough paragraph breaks or too many
3. Existence of an actual question such as How do I frob the Binzae? Ideally first or last in the question, if it must be in the middle highlight it somehow.
4. Code not formatted as code, whether inline or in blocks
5. Attempts at bulleted or numbered lists that don't use markdown
6. Raw links or "click here" or "this" links - the display text should be descriptive, like The MSDN Documentation or A Tutorial on Exceptions. Hover or follow the links to rule out spam
7. Pictures hosted offline - open them in a new tag and if they're appropriate, bring them into the question.
8. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation as well as spacing oddities like space before comma
9. Organization: many first timers have 3-4 paragraphs of talk, then all the code. Put like with like so it can be followed and understood.
10. A title which actually describes the question

After fixing all of that, if there is still more missing (for example what operating system is being used) then add a comment requesting the details be edited into the question. A comment to a new user that only asks a question will typically be answered in comments. Explain our norms to them.

##Common reasons to Flag / Close

###Questions

• Check for code, provided that it is a question that can have code
• Does the question seem like a question you have seen before?
• Check the comments; they sometimes post duplicates
• Go to the duplicate area in the flagging UI. See if there are any questions that are similar
• Does the question show any sort of research value?
• If they provide a link and no code, is the link broken?

###Answers

• Is the post a link only answer?
• Is the user being courteous? If not, consider editing the answer to a more appropriate format.
• Check for the instance of code if they provide a link.
• Is the person asking a new question?
• Is the poster answering the question?

Don't focus on the actual answer itself, focus on the formatting and the etiquette of the asker