Is copying someone else's comment template for new users considered as mean/bad practice?

Question

Recently I've started reviewing the First Posts queue and very often there's the same thing to say to a new user which is asking to take a tour, read how to ask a question etc.

So one time I saw a really good comment (I don't remember who it did belong to):

Welcome to SFSE! Please take the tour and read How to Ask. This site works best when you can show us the code/markup/etc... that you've tried to build so far. Our goal here isn't to be a free coding service, but rather one that helps people become better programmers/admins by helping them overcome specific problems. You should edit your question to show us what you've done so far, and point to a specific part of the implementation of your requirement that you're stuck on.

I thinks it's a really good way to welcome new users who struggle with asking good questions. It's a copy of someone else's work however and I'm just wondering if there's any etiquette saying I should come up with something more creative and not to use a comment template made up by other user?

Answer 1

Perfectly acceptable and even encouraged to reuse comment templates that you find to best represent the spirit of the exchange.

Answer 2

Note that if you take some time to look around our meta, you'll find questions like this and this, where we share comments that anyone can use. We're happy to share some template comments that others can use if one just asks for them.

Also, technically, all content on here is covered under a version of Creative Commons license, which basically means anything can be reused for almost any purpose, including using such content yourself on other posts.

That said, if you feel that you want to get actual permission, that's a perfectly fine moral ground to stand on, and you can usually just ask the person by whatever social media/emails they have on their profile, as a chat request (once you have access to it), or as a last resort, a comment with their @username at the beginning (include the @ so the comment will leave them an inbox notification).

Finally, there's an app for template comments. I haven't used it on my new computer, but I did have a number of comments set up previously. It lets you specify comments that you may want to use, import and export, merge fields, and so on.