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As Thevs said

Being noob here doesn't mean being noob in computing and communities.

I have only registered and asked my first question today. However, I am a senior developer (architect) with 21 years experience in numerous programming languages and technologies. I have found answers to other problems on this site and various others but never before needed to raise a new question. I have found that when Stack Overflow is listed first by Google, I get a warm feeling that the help will be of good quality so I chose Stack Overflow to raise my first question. However, I only ever search such sites for specific information. I don't browse sites otherwise. (I wouldn't be allowed to spend work time doing so and choose not to do so outside of work -this comment is an exception to prove the rule.)

Today, I had a problem that I needed to solve before leaving work. Having read the relevant formal documentation, experimented and googled for a few hours for related infomation, I raised a question on Stack Overflow.

I have to confess that pressure of my deadline meant that I did not spend any time working out what the various links and buttons on the question submission screen did, and I didn't find my way to any FAQ until later. I also found that my (employer dictated) Internet Explorer 6 did not display the question entry page properly - some fields displayed on top of each other. Somehow, although I quoted my sample code and could see that I had done so in the preview, after I had submitted my question, I found that the code was no longer quoted. Almost immediatly someone, commented rather abruptly that I'd failed to quote my code and voted my question down giving it a negative score. The commenter did not offer an answer or any advice on how to correct my presentation problem.

Shortly afterwards, some more helpful reader just quietly corrected the layout of my question.

Within a couple of hours my question had attracted more than 50 readers, 3 partial answers and a positive vote. One contributor tried to give a complete answer but someone else pointed out that he was wrong. Five hours later my question on a very common Java library remains unanswered, so I suspect it will prove to be a good question - I actually suspect a bug in the Sun libraries.

So my new user's view is as follows (and of course it is a subjective personal view):

1. The links for edit|delete, the FAQ and other links are not as prominent as other buttons. In fact, even allowing for my Internet Explorer 6 problems, I find some of the screens messy. By that I mean buttons and links in different styles are scattered around the screen, and it is not obvious to a first time user where to look for a button or link or just find all the options available to them. For example, the link to the FAQ is in very small print at the bottom of the page but the button inviting users to submit questions, answers and comments is enormous.
2. Standard comments from a drop down list (rather like FriendsReunited's messages) might help users to provide standard polite responses to the common errors made by new users.
3. I'm happy for questions and answers to be voted up and down based on usefulness. However, since questions can be edited and the presentation improved, it would be nice if voting a question down because of poor presentation were discouraged and advice (or help with) improving presentation offered.
4. My questions has only been half answered (sufficiently for a workaround but not a complete understanding). Even having read the FAQ, I'm unsure of the etiquette for updating my questions to ensure that it is clear to others that it is incomplete.

As Thevs said

Being noob here doesn't mean being noob in computing and communities.

I have only registered and asked my first question today. However, I am a senior developer (architect) with 21 years experience in numerous programming languages and technologies. I have found answers to other problems on this site and various others but never before needed to raise a new question. I have found that when Stack Overflow is listed first by Google, I get a warm feeling that the help will be of good quality so I chose Stack Overflow to raise my first question. However, I only ever search such sites for specific information. I don't browse sites otherwise. (I wouldn't be allowed to spend work time doing so and choose not to do so outside of work -this comment is an exception to prove the rule.)

Today, I had a problem that I needed to solve before leaving work. Having read the relevant formal documentation, experimented and googled for a few hours for related infomation, I raised a question on Stack Overflow.

I have to confess that pressure of my deadline meant that I did not spend any time working out what the various links and buttons on the question submission screen did, and I didn't find my way to any FAQ until later. I also found that my (employer dictated) Internet Explorer 6 did not display the question entry page properly - some fields displayed on top of each other. Somehow, although I quoted my sample code and could see that I had done so in the preview, after I had submitted my question, I found that the code was no longer quoted. Almost immediatly someone, commented rather abruptly that I'd failed to quote my code and voted my question down giving it a negative score. The commenter did not offer an answer or any advice on how to correct my presentation problem.

Shortly afterwards, some more helpful reader just quietly corrected the layout of my question.

Within a couple of hours my question had attracted more than 50 readers, 3 partial answers and a positive vote. One contributor tried to give a complete answer but someone else pointed out that he was wrong. Five hours later my question on a very common Java library remains unanswered, so I suspect it will prove to be a good question - I actually suspect a bug in the Sun libraries.

So my new user's view is as follows (and of course it is a subjective personal view):

1. The links for edit|delete, the FAQ and other links are not as prominent as other buttons. In fact, even allowing for my Internet Explorer 6 problems, I find some of the screens messy. By that I mean buttons and links in different styles are scattered around the screen, and it is not obvious to a first time user where to look for a button or link or just find all the options available to them. For example, the link to the FAQ is in very small print at the bottom of the page but the button inviting users to submit questions, answers and comments is enormous.
2. Standard comments from a drop down list (rather like FriendsReunited's messages) might help users to provide standard polite responses to the common errors made by new users.
3. I'm happy for questions and answers to be voted up and down based on usefulness. However, since questions can be edited and the presentation improved, it would be nice if voting a question down because of poor presentation were discouraged and advice (or help with) improving presentation offered.
4. My questions has only been half answered (sufficiently for a workaround but not a complete understanding). Even having read the FAQ, I'm unsure of the etiquette for updating my questions to ensure that it is clear to others that it is incomplete.

As Thevs said

Being noob here doesn't mean being noob in computing and communities.

I have only registered and asked my first question today. However, I am a senior developer (architect) with 21 years experience in numerous programming languages and technologies. I have found answers to other problems on this site and various others but never before needed to raise a new question. I have found that when Stack Overflow is listed first by Google I get a warm feeling that the help will be of good quality so I chose Stack Overflow to raise my first question. However, I only ever search such sites for specific information. I don't browse sites otherwise. (I wouldn't be allowed to spend work time doing so and choose not to do so outside of work -this comment is an exception to prove the rule.)

Today I had a problem that I needed to solve before leaving work. Having read the relevant formal documentation, experimented and googled for a few hours for related infomation I raised a question on Stack Overflow.

I have to confess that pressure of my deadline meant that I did not spend any time working out what the vaious links and buttons on the question submition screen did, and I didn't find my way to any FAQ until later. I also found that my (employer dictated) Internet Explorer 6 did not display the question entry page properly - some fields displayed on top of each other. Somehow, although I quoted my sample code and could see that I had done so in the preview, after I had submitted my I found that the code was no-longer quoted. Almost immediatly someone, commented rather abruptly that I'd failed to quote my code and voted my question down giving it a negative score. The commenter did not offer a answer or any advice on how to correct my presentation problem.

Shortly afterwards some more helpful reader just quietly corrected the layout of my question.

Within a couple of hours my question had attracted more than 50 readers, 3 partial answers and a positive vote. One contributor tried to give a complete answer but someone else pointed out that he was wrong. Five hours later my question on a very common Java library remains unanswered, so I suspect it will prove to be a good question - I actually suspect a bug in the Sun libraries.

So my new user's view is as follows (and of course it is a subjective personal view):

1. The links for edit|delete, the FAQ and other links are not as prominent as other buttons. In fact, even allowing for my Internet Explorer 6 problems, I find some of the screens messy. By that I mean buttons and links in different styles are scattered around the screen, and it is not obvious to a first time user where to look for a button or link or just find all the options available to them. For example, the link to the FAQ is in very small print at the bottom of the page but the button inviting users to submit questions, answers and comments is enormous.
2. Standard comments from a drop down list (rather like FriendsReunited's messages) might help users to provide standard polite responses to the common errors made by new users.
3. I'm happy for questions and answers to be voted up and down based on usefulness. However, since questions can be editted and the presentation improved, it would be nice if voting a question down because of poor presentation were discouraged and advice (or help with) improving presentation offered.
4. My questions has only been half answered (sufficiently for a workaround but not a complete understanding). Even having read the FAQ I'm unsure of the etiquette for updating my questions to ensure that it is clear to others that it is incomplete.

As Thevs said

Being noob here doesn't mean being noob in computing and communities.

I have only registered and asked my first question today. However, I am a senior developer (architect) with 21 years experience in numerous programming languages and technologies. I have found answers to other problems on this site and various others but never before needed to raise a new question. I have found that when Stack Overflow is listed first by Google, I get a warm feeling that the help will be of good quality so I chose Stack Overflow to raise my first question. However, I only ever search such sites for specific information. I don't browse sites otherwise. (I wouldn't be allowed to spend work time doing so and choose not to do so outside of work -this comment is an exception to prove the rule.)

Today, I had a problem that I needed to solve before leaving work. Having read the relevant formal documentation, experimented and googled for a few hours for related infomation, I raised a question on Stack Overflow.

I have to confess that pressure of my deadline meant that I did not spend any time working out what the various links and buttons on the question submission screen did, and I didn't find my way to any FAQ until later. I also found that my (employer dictated) Internet Explorer 6 did not display the question entry page properly - some fields displayed on top of each other. Somehow, although I quoted my sample code and could see that I had done so in the preview, after I had submitted my question, I found that the code was no longer quoted. Almost immediatly someone, commented rather abruptly that I'd failed to quote my code and voted my question down giving it a negative score. The commenter did not offer an answer or any advice on how to correct my presentation problem.

Shortly afterwards, some more helpful reader just quietly corrected the layout of my question.

Within a couple of hours my question had attracted more than 50 readers, 3 partial answers and a positive vote. One contributor tried to give a complete answer but someone else pointed out that he was wrong. Five hours later my question on a very common Java library remains unanswered, so I suspect it will prove to be a good question - I actually suspect a bug in the Sun libraries.

So my new user's view is as follows (and of course it is a subjective personal view):

1. The links for edit|delete, the FAQ and other links are not as prominent as other buttons. In fact, even allowing for my Internet Explorer 6 problems, I find some of the screens messy. By that I mean buttons and links in different styles are scattered around the screen, and it is not obvious to a first time user where to look for a button or link or just find all the options available to them. For example, the link to the FAQ is in very small print at the bottom of the page but the button inviting users to submit questions, answers and comments is enormous.
2. Standard comments from a drop down list (rather like FriendsReunited's messages) might help users to provide standard polite responses to the common errors made by new users.
3. I'm happy for questions and answers to be voted up and down based on usefulness. However, since questions can be edited and the presentation improved, it would be nice if voting a question down because of poor presentation were discouraged and advice (or help with) improving presentation offered.
4. My questions has only been half answered (sufficiently for a workaround but not a complete understanding). Even having read the FAQ, I'm unsure of the etiquette for updating my questions to ensure that it is clear to others that it is incomplete.

As Thevs said

Being noob here doesn't mean being noob in computing and communities.

I have only registered and asked my first question today. However, I am a senior developer (architect) with 21 years experience in numerous programming languages and technologies. I have found answers to other problems on this site and various others but never before needed to raise a new question. I have found that when StackOverflow is listed first by Google I get a warm feeling that the help will be of good quality so I chose StackOverflow to raise my first question. However, I only ever search such sites for specific information. I don't browse sites otherwise. (I wouldn't be allowed to spend work time doing so and choose not to do so outside of work -this comment is an exception to prove the rule.)

Today I had a problem that I needed to solve before leaving work. Having read the relevant formal documentation, experimented and Googled for a few hours for related infomation I raised a question on StackOverflow.

I have to confess that pressure of my deadline meant that I did not spend any time working out what the vaious links and buttons on the question submition screen did and I didn't find my way to any FAQ until later. I also found that my (employer dictated) IE6 did not display the question entry page properly - some fields displayed on top of each other. Somehow, although I quoted my sample code and could see that I had done so in the preview, after I had submitted my I found that the code was no-longer quoted. Almost immediatly someone, commented rather abruptly that I'd failed to quote my code and voted my question down giving it a negative score. The commenter did not offer a answer or any advice on how to correct mypresentation problem.

Shortly afterwards some more helpful reader just quietly corrected the layout of my question.

Within a couple of hours my question had attracted more than 50 readers, 3 partial answers and a positive vote. One contributor tried to give a complete answer but someone else pointed out that he was wrong. Five hours later my question on a very common Java library remains unanswered so I suspect it will prove to be a good question - I actually suspect a bug in the Sun libraries.

So my new user's view is as follows (and of course it is a subjective personal view):

1. The links for edit|delete, the FAQ and other links are not as prominent as other buttons. In fact, even allowing for my IE6 problems, I find some of the screens messy. By that I mean buttons and links in different stlyes are scattered around the screen an it is not obvious to a first time user where to look for a button or link or just find all the options available to them. For example the link to the FAQ is in very small print at the bottom of the page but the button inviting users to submit questions, answers and comments is enormous.
2. Standard comments from a drop down list (rather like FriendsReunited's messages) might help users to provide standard polite resposes to the common errors made by new users.
3. I'm happy for questions and answers to be voted up and down based on usefulness. However, since questions can be editted and the presentation improved, it would be nice if voting a question down because of poor presentation were discouraged and advice (or help with) improving presentation offered.
4. My questions has only been half answered (sufficiently for a workaround but not a complete understanding). Even having read the FAQ I'm unsure of the etiquette for updating my questions to ensure that it is clear to others that it is incomplete.

As Thevs said

Being noob here doesn't mean being noob in computing and communities.

I have only registered and asked my first question today. However, I am a senior developer (architect) with 21 years experience in numerous programming languages and technologies. I have found answers to other problems on this site and various others but never before needed to raise a new question. I have found that when Stack Overflow is listed first by Google I get a warm feeling that the help will be of good quality so I chose Stack Overflow to raise my first question. However, I only ever search such sites for specific information. I don't browse sites otherwise. (I wouldn't be allowed to spend work time doing so and choose not to do so outside of work -this comment is an exception to prove the rule.)

Today I had a problem that I needed to solve before leaving work. Having read the relevant formal documentation, experimented and googled for a few hours for related infomation I raised a question on Stack Overflow.

I have to confess that pressure of my deadline meant that I did not spend any time working out what the vaious links and buttons on the question submition screen did, and I didn't find my way to any FAQ until later. I also found that my (employer dictated) Internet Explorer 6 did not display the question entry page properly - some fields displayed on top of each other. Somehow, although I quoted my sample code and could see that I had done so in the preview, after I had submitted my I found that the code was no-longer quoted. Almost immediatly someone, commented rather abruptly that I'd failed to quote my code and voted my question down giving it a negative score. The commenter did not offer a answer or any advice on how to correct my presentation problem.

Shortly afterwards some more helpful reader just quietly corrected the layout of my question.

Within a couple of hours my question had attracted more than 50 readers, 3 partial answers and a positive vote. One contributor tried to give a complete answer but someone else pointed out that he was wrong. Five hours later my question on a very common Java library remains unanswered, so I suspect it will prove to be a good question - I actually suspect a bug in the Sun libraries.

So my new user's view is as follows (and of course it is a subjective personal view):

1. The links for edit|delete, the FAQ and other links are not as prominent as other buttons. In fact, even allowing for my Internet Explorer 6 problems, I find some of the screens messy. By that I mean buttons and links in different styles are scattered around the screen, and it is not obvious to a first time user where to look for a button or link or just find all the options available to them. For example, the link to the FAQ is in very small print at the bottom of the page but the button inviting users to submit questions, answers and comments is enormous.
2. Standard comments from a drop down list (rather like FriendsReunited's messages) might help users to provide standard polite responses to the common errors made by new users.
3. I'm happy for questions and answers to be voted up and down based on usefulness. However, since questions can be editted and the presentation improved, it would be nice if voting a question down because of poor presentation were discouraged and advice (or help with) improving presentation offered.
4. My questions has only been half answered (sufficiently for a workaround but not a complete understanding). Even having read the FAQ I'm unsure of the etiquette for updating my questions to ensure that it is clear to others that it is incomplete.