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How do I use the First questions queue?

Access earned at 500 reputation

The First questions queue contains the first few questions created by new users, who may not fully understand the best way to ask questions, or may not know what's on- and off-topic on this site. The purpose of this queue is to give special attention to users who may need to be educated on some aspect of our model, and to questions that are more likely to need improvement.

Basic workflow

  • Choose Looks OK if the post requires no intervention.
  • Select Edit (or suggest an edit) if the post is clear and within guidelines but could use some editing help to improve grammar, spelling, or formatting.
  • Share feedback if the post has the potential to be a good question, but cannot be improved by anyone but the post author. Choose from the standardized responses or leave a custom comment. You can either post a standardized comment as the Community bot or post as yourself and receive notifications.
  • Choose Other action if the post needs to be flagged or requires a combination of interactions.
  • Skip if you’re unsure about what to do.

One review from a user is enough to dismiss the task, so please review carefully to ensure that this question meets site expectations. Here are some guidelines when reviewing and deciding which actions to take on new posts:

  • Check that the main part of the question is in the post itself and not hosted off-site. If there are links to other sites, the question should be written so that it makes sense even if the links break or change.

  • The question should:

    • be clear
    • have all the information necessary to answer it
    • be on-topic for the site
    • solicit fact-based answers
    • show research
    • be appropriately tagged

  • If appropriate, leave a detailed comment and ask for the missing information to narrow the scope of the question, or reword the question so it fits the site scope.

  • If the question seems like a question you have seen before, check to see whether the post is a duplicate.

  • Upvote good, well-written questions to encourage new users.

  • If the post is spam or contains promotional links, flag it as "spam".

  • If the post is offensive, flag it as "rude or abusive".

  • Sometimes a question will need to be closed, which can be done by flagging or voting to close it. See here for more information about when questions should be closed.

For more information on how to edit effectively, please see our Help Center article about editing.