I'm going to preface this by talking about one of the other sites I use.
Movies & TV
On M&TV, there are tons and tons of questions asked that are "Identify this ___" questions. These exist on lots of sites. Some sites allow them completely, some sites prohibit them and some sites try to stick in the middle by requiring a certain amount of detail else the question is closed. M&TV is this last type. They have a list of details that an ID question must have in order to remain open.
- Plot details of any scenes you remember
- Descriptions of any characters or locations
- Where you watched the movie or TV show
- When you watched the movie or TV show
- Any idea of how old it was
- Any idea of country of origin (if known)
- Whether it was animated or not
- Any other distinctive detail
Now, you might say - "How can someone possibly include all of that information!" - and that's fair. We actually, honestly don't. We have the guidelines as a strong recommendation in order to help the askers get better answers and to help the site restrict the questions that are left open. It's a balancing act. If someone has an excellent description of the plot and characters, we'll probably go a little easier on them when it comes to the other details. If there's no good detail, the users are pretty active about commenting to get that information lest the question be closed - and following through on actually closing questions that lack the necessary detail:
We have a minimum standard for ID questions. Please try to add anything that may help identification. When was it released? Was it in Color or Black & White? What time period was it showing? What country was it likely from or what language was it in? Are there any other plot details you remember? Descriptions of scenes or names of characters or actors you can give? Feel free to edit any additional details into the question. For help writing a good identification question, see: Identify-This-X Questions.
This is the comment that one of the users puts on many of the ID questions that are missing detail. They have a question for each bullet point on the list above and more... working to ferret out any additional info. But Paulie_D is careful to remove any points from the comment that are already in the question.
The comments are used well. I'm also guessing he's using the AutoReviewComments add-on from Stack Apps, which will automatically add "Welcome to {sitename}!" if the user has under a certain amount of reputation, which makes the comments slightly more... welcoming. I strongly recommend this app to anyone who wants to formalize comments this way.
This, I think, is a good use of canned/stock comments.
- Not blindly commenting on the question with a catch-all comment that may only be partially applicable to the question.
- Firmly written. It may be a bit stiff, to be honest, but these questions are a major problem, so it fits the use case well.
- Clear explanation of what is requested.
- An edit magic link - many new users have trouble figuring out how to edit posts, and will often try to add details in comments. A nudge in the right direction is invaluable. Typing [edit] in a comment will create a link that opens the edit window.
- Link/s to helpful article/s.
- Asks something that the community has agreed on is necessary for site quality. - This is probably the most important part.
So, what about IPS?
We are currently actually working up our own sort of "laundry list" of things that are either necessary or nice to have in questions here. I think having a list similar to what M&TV has of things we can remind questions to include would help make the site's expectations more cohesive.
Like M&TV, we don't need to be draconian about requiring each and every box to be ticked when the question is asked and before it can be answered. Some of the questions may not require the entire list - it may be overwhelming, particularly for a user who is new to this site and the policies to be hit with four comments, one asking for location, one for details, one for shoe size... each possibly asked by a different person.
Having a single comment that lays out all of the things we'd like them to include in the question and worded in a way that is welcoming and friendly would be beneficial. I'm not saying that we require everyone to use them - that's just silly - but having them as a resource where they're accessible to those users who want to help improve question quality, that's great. This should be available with the note that emphasizes:
DO NOT BLINDLY POST THIS EVERYWHERE - Edit this comment as necessary to tailor it to the question/answer you're posting it on.
Note, I include answer here because we most definitely should also make one for answers, since we have as many guidelines for quality answers as we do for questions.
I'm clearly not the right person to write this... but I'm sure we have someone with a modicum of tact who could.
Why are these default comments useful?
One of the hardest parts of moderating a site - and I mean the stuff that doesn't require a diamond - is writing helpful comments that actually get people to act - edit (or remove) their posts. If one person is really great at that, that's amazing! Unfortunately, that's just one person. We are not all great at it.
As such, having a comment that everyone can use, written by that very smart person (or a group of less smart people) who knows how to write comments that ride the line between nice and firm, means that we can all do the work together without worrying that we're not saying it effectively or that we're burning out the person who can.
We're two months in. We want to make moderating this site as easy as we can for everyone here because this is not an easy site to moderate. By writing these comments, we've empowered anyone with 50+ reputation to be more effective moderators. Whether they choose to use them or not is, of course, up to them but having them is the first step.
Cleanup
As part of this, we need to be conscientious about removing these notes when the user has complied. Flag to have them deleted and a mod will do so or, if the person who posted it is in chat, ping them there and let them know that the comment is no longer needed. We don't want to leave gobs of these all over the site on questions that look good. It will be confusing to people.
Other considerations
As NVZ says, we should be careful to note that, if one of these comments exists on an unedited post, it may be additionally necessary to either down vote or vote to close the post. These comments do not replace closing questions. If a question is lacking in valuable details, it needs to be put on hold until improved. When we fail to close un-detailed questions, we give less-informed users the opportunity to answer.
Once a question is answered, the OP has less incentive to edit their question, even if doing so leads to better, more useful answers. This requires that users with sufficient reputation remain cognizant and cast those votes as appropriate and be ready to retract them after the post is edited.
Welcome messages
I'm ambivalent. I delete a lot of them. Linking to the help center right now doesn't do much because it's still set at the default information. Even the tour page doesn't have any custom text. Personally I'd prefer to limit greeting messages to saying something other than "welcome, read our tour and help pages". You won't find me posting these. That being said, I'll generally wait to delete them until a couple of days have passed (they get flagged - I don't seek them out).
