Add a 'No Caps Lock' message/hint/check on the website

Question

I've seen a lot of questions that are originally in CAPS LOCK and with no formatting at all. Most recently, was this and this question with caps lock body, this question with caps lock title, and this answer with caps lock body (although the answer is very bad in terms of detail).

Now, I know that someone else, or the OP can edit these questions to remove caps lock and add formatting, but can we add a hint or something somewhere on the site to let them know the disadvantages of posting in caps lock?

Some examples:

• When a user clicks 'Post Question' or 'Post Answer' and all the 'checks' happen to make sure there are enough characters, (tags), etc..., we can add another check to make sure that a percentage (10%?) of the text is lowercase, or similar. If the check fails, the entire message body may be converted to sentence case / lowercase.

Note: there may be some questions that cannot help being in caps-lock ('MY SHIFT KEY IS STUCK' ;), in which case, we can do something like adding a tag 'caps-lock-check' or similar. If the user uses this tag, the caps-lock check will be skipped.

• On the How do I ask a good question page, we could add a section saying something like:

Don't write everything in CAPS LOCK

Our community sometimes downvotes questions with only caps lock in it. Downvoting = Less views. Less views = less likely for a good quality answer. If you want a good answer, please take the time to properly format your question, with lowercase where needed.

• Or, here:

when asking a question, on the right, another reminder to not use caps lock.

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Of course, it's up to the OP whether they want to ignore the reminders. There a lot of questions by new users every day, and some can be long, caps-locked questions that can take long to edit.

Some of the questions are not bad questions, but a low amount of views due to caps-lock means that they may not be answered.

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Does anybody else think this should happen??

Please add answers saying what you think should happen, for example:

• I think we should add another check when posting something. The check should look at the amount of uppercase characters in the question, if there are more than 5%, give them a message, or convert everything to Sentence case.

• I think we should add another section on the How do I ask a good question page, saying ADD TEXT HERE.

• I think on the blue reminder, add a reminder.

Of course, if the thing you think should happen is already posted as an answer, upvote it! :)

Answer 1

There are actually checks in place to block these. However, some still get through. Amazingly, folks who write ALL IN CAPS can be quite resistant to subtle hints that what they're writing is cripplingly bad and they should stop.

We're working on systems to beef up some of these checks, and should start rolling them out in the next few weeks, but in any case just flag these when you see them. Start with VLQ and work up to Offensive.

Answer 2

I have to agree with Oliver there. Generally, those kinds of users who post egregriously low quality stuff are also the ones who skip past the guides you put in their way. The How to Ask page is not mandatory, so you'd have to actively click and read through it.

Posts in all caps lock are very rarely found. And I would assume that any reasonable person doesn't write everything in caps lock anyway. Those people that do, well, I'm sure there are other issues with their questions—unless the question is about their Shift key being stuck.

This means that an extra paragraph on an otherwise very condensed—and helpful—page would just take up space, and add text that might lead users (who would have otherwise read through the points) to skip reading altogether. We should really focus on explaining the most important points about asking a good question. The points that only the OP themselves can fix. Improper spelling and grammar can be corrected by others if need be. (And if the question is unsalvageable, we'll close and delete it.)

The only reasonable suggestion would be to extend the quality check for questions to include an all-caps detector. It would prevent the question from being posted altogether though, like it would with questions that are too short or otherwise low quality.

Answer 3

While we're at it, here's a list of other things to add to the "How to Ask" page and reminder text:

• Don't type your question with alternating caps, like

  mY cOmPuTeR iS rUiNiNg My LiFe! HaLp!
  

• Don't use 0s for os, 1s for is, 3s for es, and 7s for ts, like

  1 h4ve l1nux 7r0ubl3 guyz, 4 r34l
  

• Avoid using more than one exclamation point or question mark at the end of sentences, like

  I spilled coffee on my keyboard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 What do I do???!?!?????????
  

• Don't sign your posts with your social security number and mother's maiden name, like

  Just press F5 to refresh the page. That should solve your problem.  
  HTH
  Bob Smith
  SSN: 123-45-6789
  MMN: Jones
  

• Don't pepper your posts with racial slurs.

• Don't include pornographic images in any screen captures you include in your posts.

Et cetera, et cetera....

My point is that some expectations are common sense and (nearly) universal, and it's a fool's errand to start including these sorts of "pointers" on the help page.

Sure, maybe an automatic check for all caps could be useful, but my feeling is that this is a relatively rare problem that is already effectively addressed by the site's community review processes. It's probably not worth the effort to implement. Sorry.