Wouldn't requiring everyone to register weed out a lot of flaky people?  What is the "benefit" of allowing people to ask questions without registering first?
1364
I know SO's policy is &quot;you don't have to register to ask questions,&quot; but there are so many new members and so many hit-and-runs... The majority of the questions I see now are coming from new users (i.e., it's their first question). Although unregistered users should still be able to ask questions, I think we should encourage users to create an account. Here is a couple of ways we could do that:  Explicitly encourage people to get an account: there's currently nothing telling people to do that. Maybe tell people something like &quot;Get an account, it's easy!&quot; and maybe show some of the perks of having an account (and having rep).  Maybe give a few bonus points for registering; and have that enable a basic privilege. It could be taken from one of the , for example.   Of course getting people to register is just half of the battle. I don't know what the stats are on this, but I think there's a number of users who create multiple accounts anyways. We could curb that by:  Having smart(er)? duplicate account detection systems, alerting someone who is about to create a new account and possibly has an account already. Give them a message like &quot;Hey, it looks like you already have  account, are you sure you want to create a new one?&quot;  Create a new privilege (10k? 20k?) that gives users tools to detect possible duplicate accounts, eg: &quot;List users with the same e-mail,&quot; &quot;List users with the same IP addresses,&quot;  etc. (without revealing said emails and IPs). Then the 10k/20k can look at other stuff (e.g.: posts) and refer the new user to a moderator for a possible merge.
108415
About a month ago, we rolled out a new feature: . So far, the reception has been mostly positive, and I've definitely seen    posted in this form. But I've also seen something else, a side-effect you may have seen discussed here on MSO:     Ignore for a moment the specific details of the Q&amp;A pairs discussed in those two posts, and note the following: three poorly-asked questions, questions that ordinarily would have been closed, down-voted, and/or edited... But instead sparked a small outrage among the members who came across them. Now, we've known for years that self-answered questions can be problematic. Asking is hard. Answering is hard. Asking a question when you already know the answer can be even harder to do well. But that is - or rather, that should be - beside the point: plenty of people ask really terrible questions without bothering to answer them, and we've certainly managed to handle them over the years. If normal community-moderation is failing when it comes to self-answered questions, that's a problem. These are edge-cases at the moment. But if we're trying to encourage more use of this form to share knowledge on Stack Exchange (), it's something that needs to be faced. I'm presenting one possible solution below (in true gratuitous self-answer fashion), but what do you think? Would some other option work better? Is this even a real problem?
69851
Do not allow people to post the minute they created an account.  Let them ask the question but not allow them to post.  Let them stew for 30 minutes and force them through a nice animated tutorial on what they should do before they post and enforcing the fact that bad questions will not get an answer.  If they had a Need to know! basic rules introduction forced on them asking them at the end to check a box I understand! some might ask better questions and help the community instead of flooding the site with bad questions.  The presentation should be on a timer without the ability to skip and highlight the similar questions asked before that might give them the answer.  Also for the first next 9 posts they should have to check a box next to the first 5 of each similar questions before posting.  I do not mean to be harsh, but the truth is I see more negative votes on questions then positive. It's like 90% of the time people give -1 to first questions.
106292
I believe most people . Surely some use the "" link above, or the others filtering options. Others just attack them randomly when they're feeling a thrust of need to answer questions. And there are the foreigns who come across questions for whatever reason (such as google) to eventually give an answer.  I don't have a method, but I see there are way too many unanswered questions (right now,  and ). There's probably at least one question there that I could answer, but I'm finding it quite too hard to find the ones that are "right for me".  So, how do you do to find your answerable questions?  I couldn't even find a duplicate to this, as I figure there must be one.
56160
I registered on  only to post an answer to .  However, since it's a protected question, I am not allowed to answer it. (I found this info from ).  Worth to mention, I can comment on the above question, just not post an answer.  I was under the impression that the whole point of association bonus was to bypass such limits, so why isn't that the case for answering protected questions?
88818
There are obvious advantages to limiting sign-ups to a service like Facebook connect - getting a name, age, avatar, etc. without the annoyance to your customers of asking them to fill it all in.  We are currently considering this, but there are some good arguments for using other services as well - such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, etc.  I can even think of some very good reasons (privacy being chief amongst them) to still keep our own sign-in.  The issue then is that giving people too many options is not a good UX.  Our target audience is subject specific (architecture, language learning, etc.) so we can't predict our customer audience very well yet.  What would you use for sign-ups and why?  Edit: I need to add that our application is targeted at mobile use, so screen real estate is also a consideration in showing many options.
91807
There are historically locked posts (such as ) containing offensive answers (such as ).  I am not interested in flagging the question for deletion -- a moderator already decided that it's a bad question that should stay anyway. But being locked doesn't mean the answers are all "not offensive" or even "not spam".  I propose that locked posts lose their immunity to spam, offensive, and custom-reason flags.
54948
I often see users who appear as user12345 or something similar. I personally dislike this for a few reasons:    I'd prefer to know who I'm dealing with I think the quality of questioning is generally better from users who have an identity Somehow it seems like cheating... disrespectful in some intangible way.. here we all are helping each other for free, and what? You can't even be bothered to show your face?   I've read the question   and there the conclusion seems to be that we don't mind whether the identity is real or adopted.   Fair enough. My problem is with people who can't even be bothered to have an identity at all. (I understand that in some cultures, it might be seen as problematic to make community contributions on your boss's time, even if there's a net gain. Lots of the user12345 folks seem to be asking for work-related answers: even full-blown solutions.)  Coming back to my first point about wanting to know who I'm dealing with; I actually can't tell the numbered users apart. Those numbers just don't stick in the brain, so it becomes like trying to interact with the Borg. Even if people have reasons to conceal their 'passport' identity, why can't they at least be encouraged to put some minimal imagination into making up a fake?   Stack overflow has successfully gamified all sorts of things, so isn't there a way to lean on people (ever so gently) to put a little bit of effort into dumping the auto-generated name. Nag them every 5 logins? Whatever.
45842
Possible Duplicate:          I know that this issue has been raised a number of times in the past, with some improvements being made to reduce the negative impacts it has on discussion, but the problem persists, and I would like to suggest a further change.  I am aware that the need to preserve anonymity when voting is an important aspect of the design of the community, and that making comments mandatory on downvotes would negate that.  What I am suggesting is that downvotes, without comments, should cost the voter the same number of Rep Points as the owner of the Answer. So that, if I were to downvote another user's Answer, I would lose 2 Rep Pts as would they.  I know there is a small notification bubble which pops up suggesting the voter add a comment to explain the vote, but it seems that is not encouraging alot of users to do so. If the same bubble basically illustrated a reward for the voter in adding a comment "If you add a comment, explaining your vote, you will gain 1 Rep Pt." there may be a greater engagement for people to do so.  (Yes, I am raising this as I have had 2 downvotes - and no other actions on my answers - in the last 48 hours with no comments, no explanations and no ideas why they did so. But I still think there is merit in this idea all the same.)
36863
I see a lot of good, well-writen and constructive questions (that are probably not only good for me) closed, by various reasons which I fail to digest, so I propose the idea that questions with n upvotes should not be closable.  This would be in my opinion very much in the spirit of "", and unless I'm wrong, it would be beneficial for the users to choose by themselves whether the site should have or not x question. The ones which are low quality never get many upvotes anyway.  The only cons I can think of are... DB space? And at a minimum there's the pro of more popular pages with more ads (for the admins), and questions people like (for the users).  I'm also counting for , in the lines of Google's "", but questions  are more like what I'm aiming at (probably that question has not many upvotes for this though).
10890
I was  the users' first answers,  and I see a lot of people who has answered his own question,  but hasn't accepted it, because of:   He's new on the site and doesn't know that answers can (should!) be accepted. He's new on the site and thinks accepting a self-answer is a bad thing. He had to wait to accept his answer and forgot about that. He intentionally leave it unaccepted (very few cases).   And I have to make tons of comments asking those people to do so.  The proposal  Wouldn't it be great to let the site ask you to accept your answer? I know there's a waiting period: if it hasn't expired yet, remember the user to accept his answer when it expires.  For example, by showing a notification or sending him an email when the waiting period expires.
58321
Why is it that people who have low reputation on Stack Overflow have to wait 20 minutes per question asked? I am trying to teach myself python programming and head the club at school - this website has been a magnificent resource. But, as I work on a problem the issues often come up quickly - so once more, what is the reason for the wait.   As an extra question, why is it that the limit is applied to IP addresses instead of accounts?
5527
Now this is probably a surprise to many since I always see thousands of comments like :  @Sarfraz, @balpha just told you they did in the first comment he wrote. Also, allowing only one Stack Overflow user to be logged in per IP address would be problematic for networks with shared IPs.  What's surprising is that apparently the notification will trigger only for Sarfraz and not for balpha. As you can see from the :  Only one person can be replied to at a time in a comment. The first one in the string wins.  I propose to increase the limit to let's say 3 or 5 people; it won't hurt (never seen that feature being abused) and especially many people believe it already works that way.
99095
I've been lurking Stack Overflow whenever I had a problem for at least the last 2+ years. More times than not, I find my solution (or cobble one together) before I get frustrated enough to have the innernets help me with my specific custom problem.  Many times, the only commentary I would be able to add would be "thanks!" which really only wastes bits and bandwidth.  I understand implementing measures to keep the bots and SEO kids out, but sometimes it's a PITA to start participating in a community.  If you couldn't extract my question from the above rant (or title), this might be a little more clear:  Why do I require 15 reps to just up-vote something?  I feel like it's kinda silly.  Additionally, I noticed the quote off to the left:     We prefer questions that can be answered, not just discussed.   yet I have looked around here and haven't been able to find any justifiable explanation.
123686
It’s just a consolation badge, and I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of asking my second question that would earn the badge. It would be nice (for some strange reason) to get another tumbleweed badge.  I’m not sure if the reason is that given in “”. That is, my first question was eventually answered, so it negated my first tumbleweed badge, but it wasn’t taken away; I just didn’t receive a second one. But this seems to conflict with the definition of the tumbleweed badge:     Asked a question with no answers, no comments, and low views for a week.   which is still true of both questions.
71243
I'll start with  which sparked my thinking cap. It's becoming extremely overwhelming with the great number of new users who seem to think that Stack&nbsp;Overflow is a forum, that they can ask whatever they want, ignoring the FAQ and the strict guidelines we have here. It seems that anyone who has a simple question can come create a new account here, throw their entry-level question up, and expect a bunch of people to tell them exactly what they need. Unfortunately, that's of course not how these sites work.  Imagine a new user who's never used any Stack&nbsp;Exchange sites, and doesn't know how it works, coming to Stack&nbsp;Overflow for the first time. They are new to programming, and have a lot of learning to do. They create a new account, and ask their question such as "How to write a web hook with a third-party API?". Now imagine how critical people will be to them. That user will cringe and start fighting back in the comments with "Why do you have to be so mean?"  Now, imagine a new user, same as before, coming to Stack&nbsp;Overflow for the first time. When they go to register, first of all a page will show with a message explaining that Stack&nbsp;Overflow is not a forum, and doesn't work like the rest of the sites they might be used to. Make this mandatory for them to read and approve before even creating an account. Then, once they've registered, require that they go through a short but thorough step-by-step tutorial to understand how they should contribute to the site. Make sure they understand how everything works before they dive into it.  I personally work for a software company which has troubles getting our clients to understand how to use our software, and they always mis-use it. Kind of like selling someone a 747, but instead of flying it, they strap a bunch of mules to the front and sit on top with a whip. It's very huge and complex (inventory/point-of-sale) and there's a lot to know before using it. Well, Stack&nbsp;Overflow works in the same precise manner, and it's expected that people follow by the rules of how it was designed. So now I'm making training videos for them.  Currently, when you sign up, there is nothing that really forces you to read and accept before using the site. I signed up for an account a short while ago, and I did not face anything which really made sure I knew how the site worked before letting me in. Sure, there's a first question guide, but it's just one single step, kinda like a terms &amp; conditions checkbox, which everyone tends to ignore anyway. This needs to be a step-by-step (not all in one page) tutorial. And a clear warning before they even create an account. It really sucks when you sign up for something all excited, then when you finally get to ask your first question, you're faced with terror. It's a lot better to tell someone the truth up front before they begin than to lure them in and once they're here we practically say "Oh, by the way, your questions probably will not be answered."  It's simple. We educate the newbies.
78580
They says that Stack Overflow is a community-driven web-site. But, as a matter of fact, it is not.  There is no community at all. It's more like an imageboard, as a number of participants makes them pretty much like anonymous to each other despite of registration.   Stack Overflow is a site of passers-by.  Passers-by who want to solve their silly typo problem and passers-by who eager to share their vast knowledge in spotting silly typos. And - oh - sometimes to perform a civic duty and vote to close a question they have no idea what to answer to and thus calling it "not a real question".  So, as a funny consequence, whatever question can get   answered upvoted downvoted closed deleted   depends not on its quality but only on the fluctuation happened to "community" at the given moment, at a pretty random rate.  It is not only quite discouraging. It makes the very idea of collecting and improving knowledge quite impossible.