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Again in the past I have asked about how new users always seem to ask about Anime Recommendations and this has proven to be true. Sometimes I flag/vote to close at least 3 or 4 questions almost every second day that ask about anime recommendations.

I know we have set precautionary measures such as saying in the Tour not to ask questions like this ect...

But the problem is new users don't check the tour. I can tell because they don't have a badge. Based on what new users seem to ask on this site immediately, it means the name Anime and Manga is obviously misinterpreted to what this site is suppose to be about. Should we setup some type of banner or captive portal like setup where when a new user signsup they get some sort of short popup message to quickly summarize what shouldn't be asked.

My question is generally aimed at the community in general:

If you are a new user, what do you immediately think this site is about and what type of question would you ask?

I would like you to just have a think about what I mean for a moment or two and think about the scenario.

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As someone who always looks before I leap, I can say honestly that I wouldn't ask for anime recommendations here. Even on Stack Overflow, my first Stack Exchange site, I made well sure to check the rules more than once over and ensure that I was within bounds.

But that's not what many people do... and probably not what you want to hear. Nor is the rest of the post, probably, but I think it needs to be said anyway.

We need to not worry about people asking for anime recommendations. The close reasons exist for just this; people will skip the tour, will ignore the warnings, no matter how in-your-face they are.

Here's a couple examples of this. First, on all SE sites, to the right of the question box, it says:

We prefer questions that can be answered, not just discussed. Provide details. Share your research.

And yet, people post questions like this one, or this one on Stack Overflow.

Another example is on a subreddit I frequent, where posting links to videos is strictly banned. When you hover over the "share a link" button, it says in a BIG RED BOX, "do not use this to submit videos". There's also a big red box for submission guidelines, and more red boxes on the actual submission page saying not to do it. What do people do? Ignore them all.

It happens, and it always will happen. Many people ignore what they're not looking for. When you see a recommendation question, just hit it with a close vote, leave a comment, and move on. That's how we have to deal with this; there is no way to stop people from asking off-topic or bad questions. If there were such a thing, Stack Overflow would not have 100k+ questions with active close votes.

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  • I know it always happens, it cant be stopped and its quite true what you said but im not really actually looking to stop it (that's a bit too optimistic), I was just wondering if you were a new user to this site what would be the first question you would ask?
    – Izumi-reiLuLu
    Commented Apr 20, 2014 at 14:50
  • I want to know this due to the fact that many new users seem to ask similar or the same questions. Perhaps its the sites name that they misinterpret. (Not asking to change it though)
    – Izumi-reiLuLu
    Commented Apr 20, 2014 at 14:51
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    @MiharuDante Since I never considered myself an expert on anime or manga, I came here to ask questions. So, if the question I asked first hadn't yet been asked, it'd be that one. I'm not sure I'm a typical user, though; I'd say the questions that most meta-goers would post are vastly different than a typical user's.
    – Cattua
    Commented Apr 20, 2014 at 14:52
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    The tour is kinda like with the Terms and Conditions in setup/installation programs, even if you try and force a person to read it before they can continue they'll just scroll to the bottom and hit next.
    – Memor-X
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 22:41
  • Adding to what @Eric said about the the box on the right, there's also a link to the Help Center which from there you can access the tour, so to get to the tour it's just 2 clicks away. even if we make it more obvious it would only be an improvement of 1 click. if a user can't do 2 clicks to the tour then they aren't going to read the tour even if it was one click away
    – Memor-X
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 22:47

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