Good questions and incomplete questions

This is a sketch of why one might call a question incomplete, and what the OP could do to turn it into a better question. This would be an alternative to labeling a question "homework" and giving special rules for those:

Good questions have the four characteristics listed below. If your question lacks one or more of these, it is incomplete and likely to be closed:

1. All the information needed is on the page, i.e.

   -not a link or a photo

   -no need to ask for more information via comments

2. You give some context, e.g.

   -where did you come across the problem?

   -if it is an exercise (from a course, textbook etc), is a numerical answer known?

   -how much experience do you have with this stuff?

3. You show your effort, e.g.

   -what are your assumptions/models/strategies?

   -what did you try and what were your results?

   -which possible paths to a solution did you reject?

4. You ask your own question

   -what are you trying to figure out?

   -what is missing to solve your problem?

   -at what level would the answer be useful to you?

Questions that are likely to be closed (and what you can do to improve them, increasing the chance of them being opened again):

• asking for verification of a calculation without asking anything else (say which part you are not confident in)

• asking for an answer to an exercise without showing some effort (search for similar questions on the site and tell us what you found or did not find, search online for relevant data and report whether you found something, try to answer the question yourself and tell us how far you got)

• not asking your own question (even if your starting point is a exercise from some other source, don't just ask the question in the exercise, ask your own question about it)

• asking a question that is a duplicate (study the answers to the older question and if it does not answer your question, link to it in your own question, and say how it is different)

Good questions and incomplete questions

This is a sketch of why one might call a question incomplete, and what the OP could do to turn it into a better question. This would be an alternative to labeling a question "homework" and giving special rules for those:

Good questions have the four characteristics listed below. If your question lacks one or more of these, it is incomplete and likely to be closed:

1. All the information needed is on the page, i.e.

   -not a link or a photo

   -no need to ask for more information via comments

2. You give some context, e.g.

   -where did you come across the problem?

   -if it is an exercise (from a course, textbook etc), is a numerical answer known?

   -how much experience do you have with this stuff?

3. You show your effort, e.g.

   -what are your assumptions/models/strategies?

   -what did you try and what were your results?

   -which possible paths to a solution did you reject?

4. You ask your own question

   -what are you trying to figure out?

   -what is missing to solve your problem?

   -at what level would the answer be useful to you?

   -if you posted the complete answer to the exercise as part of the question, what part of your answer are you unsure of?

Examples of incomplete questions (and what you can do to improve them):

• asking for an answer to an exercise without showing some effort (search for similar questions on the site and tell us what you found or did not find, search online for relevant data and report whether you found something, try to answer the question yourself and tell us how far you got)

• not asking your own question (even if your starting point is a exercise from some other source, don't just ask the question in the exercise, ask your own question about it)

• asking for verification of a calculation without asking anything else (say which part you are not confident in)