I am a beginner and I feel stack exchange has been unfriendly to me. Why? Even a polite "you did something wrong" seems insulting. Frankly, I, and I suspect most new contributors, are not used to making mistakes. I think it would be easier for beginners if experts frequently remind themselves that this community is more strict and has more rules than most. Most discussion sites are free wheeling. Beginners don't know that at first. It will be an adjustment. The statement (I forget where) that says something like "this is a question and answer site, not a discussion forum" helps.
That said, after being here a while, the rules are there for a reason--and that's to encourage a growing wealth of high quality answers to an incredibly vast array of technical questions. In that, the rules are GOOD and WORKING and creating something that is REALLY VALUABLE.
On that note, and this counts against me as a beginner, but the only way to create high quality answers is to cater to experts, not beginners. The site must encourage experts to answer questions and discourage beginners from discussion, speculation, etc.
The key is, how to accomplish that goal while being friendly and inviting to beginners. Or better said, create a easy path for beginners to become experts.
And now I think we have to clarify that there are two types of beginners.
- People who are new to StackExchange. They might be extreme experts in their field. These people should be downright courted, no?
- People who are new to a topic, like fixing problems on their computer (Super User), programming (StackOverflow), or system administration (ServerFault). We'd like it easy for these people to participate and learn and grow.
Here's 2 examples that frustrate me.
I was just looking today at Can't turn on Microsoft update in Windows 7 x86 on Super User. Now, first, this illustrates the value of Super User (and all StackExchange) because I searched hours on Microsoft.com answers and community sites and the quality is poor. Many MVPs simply say "read the FAQ on windows update" which is completely irrelevant to the problem. The ANSWER was on Super User.
Now, the top upvoted comment is a more restrictive answer than the next one, and they probably should be reversed. I wanted to add (repeat) a comment to that effect, but I don't have enough reputation points.
Also, the situation with this particular problem is that Microsoft's own IE 11, must be run in 'compatibility mode' to properly render Microsoft's own web page. That's a result that's so unexpected (or is it ;) that it bears repeating. I wanted to repeat that comment, too. But I was not able to.
I was able to upvote the question and the answer so I was happy about that.
Another example: this thread. @allquixotic's answer states in part
You have to basically fill in all the knowledge gaps and assumptions and industry knowledge that they lack, and then answer their question.
Well another site I frequent, sevenforums.com, has a style where they answer the question with COPIOUS links to supporting information (example How to Clean Reinstall Windows 7). This to me is an excellent compromise between long and short answers, as someone who needs NONE of the supporting content can just skip those links and someone who needs ALL of them can take hours to read and digest them all. StackExchange has the ability to use this style because we have so many canonical answers to so many questions. But maybe we're missing more tutorial-like answers to basic questions?
But, I don't have 50 reputation points, so I can't comment :'(
So this is frustrating for me as a beginner.
I personally don't have the drive to build my reputation. I don't want to go searching for questions I can answer. But when working on a problem I will contribute along the way. SE is hard for me to use.
2 suggestions
The idea that you ask a question, and that people question you and make suggestions and you edit the question as time goes on--that was not obvious to me and I suspect will not be to most beginners. I suggest it should explain this style right when you go to ask a question. It should come right out and say "Enter the first version of your question. Through interaction with people on the site you will edit your question later to be more specific and precise as time goes on." That would have helped me. It was also helpful to me when experienced users specifically asked me to edit the question to add more info.
Maybe a link/button on every page that says "[sitename] is different from most other sites. How?" which is a link to not pages of rules, but a 1 page overview emphasizing those things that are the most frequent to trip up beginners. Something like the focus on answers not discussion, something about having to earn reputation points, and the best way to earn them, the bit about expecting to edit your own question, and links to the rest of the good intro stuff here. Anything else?