How should I handle law-abiding but low-quality users who frustrate other users?

Question

I have a few users who are sincere, rule-abiding, earnest, not help vampires -- and a great deal of work. One of them struggles with phrasing his questions coherently; there's clearly a language issue and we want to help, but it's bad enough that we have to ask him what he meant (we can't just fix it for him) and he gets frustrated and people feel even worse. Another writes just fine but is fixated on questions that are noisy, trivial, or boring, so they get downvoted. People leave helpful comments but it just doesn't seem to make a difference.

This has been going on for a few weeks now and I'm getting complaints from some other users asking if I could talk with these users about the problem. Now if they were breaking site rules that'd be one thing, but I feel awkward telling somebody "yeah, you're not breaking any rules, but your contributions are too crappy for us".

Should I say anything to these users? Should I tell the complaining users to try to do more to help? Should I encourage them to ignore the problem on the theory that these users will eventually go away? Something else?

Answer 1

I'm not quite sure what the topic of your forum is, but generally, you can take two approaches.

If you're comfortable with it, you can just talk to the people. Tell them that you understand it can be difficult to write in a language that you're new to, but it's still a problem. If you see egregiously poor grammar usage, simply edit the post and say, "Please try to phrase your post clearly." Even if they have English problems, it still doesn't change the fact that it's bad grammar and/or sentence phrasing that needs to be clearer.

From personal experience, a member of a forum I moderate had very, very bad grammar. We had to tell him that since the board is for intelligent discussions, he should likewise use correct grammar because it is easy to understand.

If you want to try a more public method, it's a good idea to put in place some general rules for grammar or helpful questions. You'd be able to explain it there rather than as a personal approach, but you'd still probably have to talk to him telling him he's breaking rules, albeit without the said awkward phrasing that you mentioned:

"yeah, you're not breaking any rules, but your contributions are too crappy for us"

This is my method of choice, as a matter of fact. But do whichever one you think would work best. As for telling the complainers to do something, that's generally not advisable. They're not the moderators, after all, you and whoever else is on your team are.

One more thing: Does your site have a chatroom? If so you can probably encourage the one with poor grammar to participate in it more. This way if he says something incoherent, he can just correct himself when someone says in the chat:

Hm? What do you mean?

These are my suggestions.

Answer 2

It's entirely up to who you're prepared to cater to. You can never provide for everyone, only a majority at best, and a niché audience at worst.

From what you've mentioned, I suggest perhaps using Private Messaging features to include some helpful pointers. Small tips that are positive but also constructive, like what questions or topics to post about. Language barriers are naturally difficult however and unfortunately you may just have to accept that unless the person in question is themselves willing to learn more of the language, they will have difficulty communicating with others.

Answer 3

In the first case I'd say "suffer, revert, endure." There is hope the user will get better...eventually. Damage from editing should be reverted, and for answers/posts, the community will deal with these, no need for moderator action.

In the latter case - it's not like people write these questions because they don't need the answers. So it's good there's someone who can handle these. It's not like all questions must be expert-level, and that one removes burden of answering "poor" (but still valid) questions from expert users. Also, on SE site, if you're lower-intermediate in given discipline, it can be hard at times to gather enough rep points to attach a large bounty to that one expert-level question, which you really need it answered, and it didn't get any good answer the first time round. Hunting down the "easy questions" is about the only way.

Answer 4

As for the first user or his likes, then there are some options:

• Help them out by editing to make their posts better
• If the post is very bad that english people cannot understand, then close their questions as unclear and tell the user/remind the user the site is an english one.
• use Chat to discuss the issue with the user

As for the second user, if he/she or his likes simply just keep posting low-quality over time, then you probably should use the private contact system, and if it continues then ban the user.

Answer 5

The reader might find the following points helpful:

• From a more general point of view, the context of the OP apparently is that members, including moderators, of a community are upset by some members' behaviors which do not violate the existing community rules. The (general) solution is simple: If, really, the overall community are disturbed by such behaviors, the community decision-makers should add new clear and consistent rules to the existing rules so as to disapprove those behaviors. In the specific case of the OP, the new rules would require everyone to "phrase their questions coherently" and to avoid asking "trivial, boring" questions; as the OP describes the users in question "law-abiding", this approach should work out. Regarding making any new rules, the following considerations are noteworthy. Firstly, rules should be clear and unambiguous enough to follow; for example, when asked not to ask "trivial, boring" questions, how could the terms "boring" and "trivial" be characterized unambiguously, noting that those terms lack unique interpretations. Secondly, every rule must be followed by any member at any time, rather than being targeted at certain members.
• It is perfectly natural for a community with a worldwide general audience to have difficulty in conveyance of thoughts. (Even that may be true of people sharing the same native language.) Similarly, in such a community there may be many members, especially newcomers, whose contributions are quite far in quality from ideal. However, for a community to flourish, its members lying in the course of developing their abilities and performances is far more important and influential than the current enjoyment of high quality contributions. In a successful community, rather than complaining and/or being frustrated, members, not restricted to moderators/managers, help improve others' weak points by constructive means. In the specific case of the OP, those users could gradually enhance their quality of language and contribution by constructive communication with experienced/skillful members.
• From the context depicted by the OP, it seems that we are dealing with an online Q&A community many of whose members get very disturbed when an oratorically inept member cannot ask questions coherently. So in that community inarticulate questions of brilliant and novel content might well be rejected by apparently nearly the whole community, which is not a sign of a healthy community. Although articulately expressing content should be highly recommended to the community, should that be considered so crucial and primary that excellent content and its creator(s) might be sacrificed (as reflected in the OP, "he gets frustrated")? In online Q&A communities there are usually many volunteers willing to edit posts to facilitate the conveyance of their main points---if such volunteers are not discouraged by such artificial norms as avoiding making minor edits or bumping old posts. Moreover, it should be explained to the community that in a successful, healthy community---a healthy community is characterized by the fact that the only genuine, main concern of its members is to develop success for their community---everyone should feel a sense of responsibility to any events taken place within the community and try to do their best whenever seeing a problem or situation which needs to be fixed or improved. For example, when it is seen that a member asks inarticulate/incoherent questions, other members should not be indifferent or merely complain based on the wrong presumption that the quality of a post is up to only its creator; rather than complaining and then becoming frustrated, is it not better to educate the member on how to express ideas more clearly and coherently by, say, making helpful edits and related constructive points, so that he/she can gradually improve required skills, which might take much longer time for some people? A similar approach could be thought of for the other situation mentioned in the OP.
• Finally, perhaps as a side note, some disapproval of an attitude reflected in the OP needs to be expressed. At the end the OP says, "Should I encourage them to ignore the problem on the theory that these users will eventually go away?" Evidently, the attitude implies that losing a few members is not serious enough to worry about; this is, unfortunately, common in online communities, probably because it is thought that a few is very minor with respect to the number of potential worldwide members. Quite the contrary, the truth is different. Each member of a community should be regarded as a vital and priceless component of the community who could play a constructive role in developing incredible ideas and contributions for the whole community. Is it rational to fail to keep gold jewelry merely because it is broken? Gold is always gold, be it broken or not. Furthermore, the users in question are described as active contributors, so one should be more meticulous in taking care of such very invaluable members.