I've noticed that some questions of late are being voted closed before they've been edited to reveal other content that was hidden. This happens when improperly formatted code causes the meat of the post to never be displayed. I've seen this more than just a couple of times. I saw an example of it again this morning which prompted me to pose this question for discussion. This isn't to point a finger at any one in particular as this post still had problems, but it included 24 lines of code with only 3 lines partially appearing at the time it was closed. I thought it especially unfortunate that a new member had at least made some effort to comply with our requirements (his post still needed further help), yet was dismissed without having that effort being noticed or acknowledged by any of the 5 people who voted to close.
Here's another one from this morning where half the code was obstructed. It too needed more help, but showed more effort than perhaps it was given credit for. Further, it had been downvoted twice with no comments left. :(
I believe this was one where we deleted the poster's reply that was a follow-up to another question, telling them to post a new question of their own. Its clear, the new member doesn't understand how our site works nor how to use it. I feel as though we've failed this new member by not making this easier for them. We've especially failed them by not editing their question to discover the code they posted and then asking for clarification of their question about the code, then waiting to give them an opportunity to clarify before closing it.
So, perhaps part of my question is, are we being too quick to "pull the trigger" and close new questions before a member can edit their question to meet our requirements? How quickly do we want to close questions that don't meet our posting criteria? Do we want to close right away and then reopen after editing or do we want to allow some reasonable amount of time before closing? What guidelines would we like to set or do we have for this?
I'm asking this in part, because I've never seen so many questions put on hold as I have over the last couple of months. I'm wondering how helpful this is to us in creating community; i.e. are we "turning away" potentially valuable new members by causing them to feel as though this is a hostile environment instead of being friendly by helping them become accustomed to our model? I think that's a question we've been asking ourselves in a variety of ways over the past couple of months that merits further discussion in this context.
EDIT
This is primarily in response to comments by @JesseAltman. "The StackExchange provides a Tour that makes it very obvious what the community expects." and "They didn't look up how to do code formatting."
The above two areas are where I think our Tour does an inadequate job of providing what new members need to know "at a glance" when joining SF.SE. Its very clear that we expect members to post their code along with an explanation of where they're having problems with it when they post a question. I don't think we make that at all clear or provide appropriate emphasis in the Tour.
As for posting code, IMO, our editor is not at all intuitive. It would seem entirely appropriate to me that we include a tip on how to do that as part of our Tour. In most editors I've worked with, "pre-formatted anything" would be pasted into a selection after pressing the {} pre-formatted text button. I'd have never expected to do the paste, select the code, then press that button! Nor would it have ever been at all intuitive that I type in 4 spaces on each line to get it to appear as code. Speaking for myself, it took me a while to catch on to these nuances. The errors I made at the time weren't out of disrespect, they were from learning to use a new tool I wasn't accustomed to that worked entirely different than what I'd ever used before.
Part of what I'm saying here is that in the examples I cited above, while perhaps not the best, at least those members had made an effort to post their code using an interface that to me, is still rather foreign and counter-intuitive to use. I'm sure we all know of good software that died because of poorly designed interfaces. Do we say that the users who didn't understand and make adjustments to use the interface failed to do their part, or is it more common to say to the developers "You guys could have done a better job in making your product user friendly"? I've observed the latter as typically what happens, yet we're saying to new members you're being disrespectful to us for not understanding how to use our oddball interface?
Sorry, but I just can't quite buy that. When the effort that's been made by a new member is hidden from those who read their post when voting to close it, I think StackExchange has failed to make it easy for a member to post on SF.SE or understand what's necessary to easily format their post such that it can be read.
