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Note: a similar discussion is being held here but I felt my question might be hijacking that discussion.

I am sure (or I hope) I am not the only Joomla.SE enthusiast that is only beginning to climb the joomla ladder. Many of my issues at this point are rudimentary and basic. There's a good chance that the answer is already available on another internet venue; however the answer to "well, did you Google it?" is usually "yes, but the resource I found was unclear or unhelpful". This is sometimes true even when the answer is in the Joomla documentation.

My question boils down to, "what role do Joomla NOOBS play in the joomla.SE community"? I've noticed other beta sites have struggled with this issue by treating it as the elephant in the room so I think it is beneficial to grapple with this problem.

If I might pose an answer to my question here, I would propose that a tag be included and applied to questions at the level of:

  • How do I change the admin password?
  • How do I install a template?
  • How do I get started with Joomla?

By keeping questions like these around, we establish Joomla.SE as a one-stop-shop for quality Joomla information at all levels of expertise. Addressing these questions early on in Joomla.SE's life allows future trusted users/moderators to refer newcomers to established Q&As.

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  • Isn't there a wiki function or something that could meet this need?
    – Andrew Eddie
    Apr 27, 2014 at 22:55
  • @AndrewEddie We could in principle have some "best practices" style questions that are edited by the community in a wiki format. I've seen this work well on some sites, but it does take a critical mass of community members interested in maintaining the wiki Q&A.
    – bobthechemist
    Apr 28, 2014 at 2:45
  • Good point. Maybe just leave the JSE community wiki for policy and guidance information?
    – Andrew Eddie
    Apr 28, 2014 at 6:21
  • I concur with your points, though I'd say the example questions might be TOO simple to demonstrate it. Joomla has become quite an extensive piece of software, and even as a developer using it since v1, I find myself with questions that are too broad to suit many SE gurus. Somehow tagging them as newbie/beginner/novice, or tutorials, or SOMEthing I think is the only way we can welcome new Joomla users as well as keeping the quality of "real" questions up to par as a quality resource for Joomla on the whole.
    – GDP
    Apr 28, 2014 at 18:49
  • I think the basics of how to use Joomla are already documented very well so although it is a very valid point in my opinion it isn't really necessary. I'm sure it won't take long before we find many of those questions coming in anyhow as there's plenty of people who don't know how to Google but I'd like to believe this site will be about more advanced issues.
    – Adam B
    May 2, 2014 at 18:01

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There is a difference between asking a basic/noob question and asking a Too Broad/Tutorial question.

Multi-step solutions (complete tutorials) can in some cases lead to differing points of view about what is best practice. If multiple people have muliple preferences on how to perform a string of actions for a particular outcome, pages will grow to a large length.

Q&A pages are meant to be answerer attractive and researcher friendly, this is one reason why Too Broad questions are closable.

As for the most basic questions that seem under-researched, this is territory that should be treaded carefully.

We want to be inclusive and inviting, we don't want anyone to feel that their question is unwelcome.

  • If a question has already been answered in JSE, mark it as a duplicate.
  • If a question shows no evidence of research or effort, disincentivize that behavior by leaving a comment asking for proof of effort and definitely don't upvote the question. If the user shows a continued pattern of low/no effort questions apply a downvote and explain that help-vampirism is abusive of the volunteer support community.
  • If a question is not sufficiently narrow and is asking too much of answerers, then ask the OP to narrow down the question to the earliest point of trouble. There is nothing wrong with asking 3 associate questions on this site, in fact by posting links (connecting) to the related questions, researchers can easily navigate to the content that they are interested in and answerers won't be burdened to write one massive post to cover a multifaceted question.

Our community must never sense that asking a question is an admission of stupidity. There are no stupid questions. If you have a basic question and read the JDocs, but they don't make sense to you, say exactly that in your question and link to the docs page(s) that you read. This will help volunteers to better understand your issue and serve up an educational solution that is most valuable.

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