Yes I am revisiting this, but please remember that I'm also asking about answers, not just questions.

There are a lot of frustrated users, including me, who want to write good questions, but just can't seem to get many positively received posts. Many people, mostly moderators, have said that the quality of SO questions and answers is going down. I agree, and I know that my own posts are included.

There may be a way to dramatically decrease the number of frustrated users who can't figure out why their posts are being received in a negative manner. The problem these people have is that they don't know exactly how to ask a good question, or post a good answer. For writing questions, the Help Center says to "Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague", to "Introduce the problem before you post any code", to "Help others reproduce the problem", etc. For writing answers, it says "Answer the question", "Provide context for links", and "Write to the best of your ability". Even with that, it is possible to goof, and the Help Center doesn't give any more detail than that.

My idea is that there must be a formula for writing a good post. I was once taught in school, that when writing a paragraph, I should answer these questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? This is a good formula for paragraphs and essays, and I have seen much evidence to support this, but I feel like that formula isn't exactly what should be used here.

I used that formula as an example to show exactly what I'm asking for: a method, or outline, of writing questions and answers that follow a specific, logical, thought process, a specific way to include research, problem background, screenshots if necessary, code, or what have you in the best way possible. By following a specific method, users can write quality posts, therefore driving the quality of the site up again, while leaving merciful room for those users who are trying to improve their conduct on Stack Overflow.


How do beginners (like me) actually ask good questions and not get our accounts terminated? This is nice for questions, but it's lacking in anything about answers.

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/327756/how-can-i-avoid-being-negatively-received-when-asking-questions Again, this post does not say anything about answers.


The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

What is the recommended way to improve question writing without being downvoted into oblivion?

Edit: The answer below (by Pierre) is exactly the kind of method I'm looking for, except that I want answers included as well.

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    Have you read this? stackoverflow.com/help/mcve – Alon Eitan Aug 12 '16 at 15:32
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    That is a nice essay and I have made it to the end. ... What is your question? What do you want to discuss? – rene Aug 12 '16 at 15:36
  • @rene a method of writing quality posts – user6054931 Aug 12 '16 at 15:38
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    You ask us to provide such method? Or do you want us to discuss the merits of your approach to write a quality post? – rene Aug 12 '16 at 15:42
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    It sounds like you're looking for a shortcut to writing good posts, but there isn't one. There are already many, many resources written around how to ask good questions and provide good answers, and literally millions of examples. – Bill the Lizard Aug 12 '16 at 15:46
  • I always point people to How to Answer, which has a good amount of information about answering questions... – Heretic Monkey Aug 12 '16 at 16:05
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the OP is asking us to rehash resources that are already widely available to users of this site. – Mad Physicist Aug 12 '16 at 16:31
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    My best advice for writing good posts is to LURK MOAR – user1228 Aug 12 '16 at 17:49
  • @MadPhysicist So... where are they. Like I said, I'm revisiting this topic. – user6054931 Aug 12 '16 at 23:18
  • @BilltheLizard I'm not looking for a shortcut. As the question clearly states, I want a way to write high-quality posts. – user6054931 Aug 12 '16 at 23:32
  • @MikeMcCaughan How to answer is a good place to get a general idea of how to answer, but it lacks any kind of detail. I was looking for something like what Pierre gave me. A good amount is often not enough. – user6054931 Aug 12 '16 at 23:33
  • @Will Just because I do hours of research before I post something, that doesn't mean I'm going to not get downvotes. In fact, the majority of the downvotes I have received were on posts that I did a bit of research for. So that doesn't really work. – user6054931 Aug 12 '16 at 23:36
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    I can find no evidence that you did any research before asking this question. If you did, then your research skills are very poor. You were obviously looking in the wrong place. This topic has been hashed and rehashed so many times, it makes me want to start smoking hash. – Cody Gray Aug 13 '16 at 12:56
  • @CodyGray I like the italicized word "very". It adds a nice touch. Thanks for the compliment. Also, what about the duplicate? – user6054931 Aug 13 '16 at 15:17
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    @dorukayhan That is not a duplicate. Why? for some reason, everyone seems to think that I'm just asking about questions. I'm not. I'm also asking about answers. That "duplicate" says nothing about answering. – user6054931 Aug 14 '16 at 0:13

A good formula is:

  1. This is what I have

  2. This is what I want

  3. This is the logic to get me there

  4. This is what I've tried

Here are a few examples of good questions on the r-tag following the above guidelines:

how to count heterogeneous double letters from a list of vectors in r

R delete last row in dataframe for each group

How to integrate set of vector in multiple data.frame into one without duplication?

  • That looks almost invincible when done correctly. However, it does not address how give an answer. Thanks for the formula. – user6054931 Aug 13 '16 at 0:56