You want people to ask even more questions, rather than guiding them to look for existing answers or even figuring stuff out themselves? I think that's a terrible idea because people will just ask worse questions.

Since it seems to be a KPI you're set on maximizing... be smart about it. Answerers are the free resource that make your site generate revenue at all. Take a load off us. If you unleash even more questions on us, and worse/lazier ones at that, you're just grinding us even faster. The question creation rate stagnating over the past few years actually took pressure off us. Do not use up that buffer, if there even is one. Answerers do leave.

I've got an idea. Hear me out. You should consider dumping a lot of effort into welcoming askers with an interactive AI wizard that does all the triaging that we humans do all the time.

The AI will either lead the asker to a solution ("search function" on steroids), or it will lead them to figuring the problem out themselves (typos, documentation, ..., "rubber ducking", socratic method), or it will beat the question into shape and escalate it to human answerers. That includes catching fluffy AIGC waffling (remove fluff, waffle, awful structure), lack of MRE or it's far from MRE-ish, lack of debugging, lack of research, ...

That "or" there isn't an up-front branch in the game tree, it's just an outcome. People's thoughts are mush. The Wizard has to adapt as the investigation progresses. Make it present somewhat like Claude's chat with artefacts, or even start the asker's journey on the AI's own home page (literally these companies' sites), and give the AI the awareness of the "escape route", expectations/rules involved, and means to take it (post the question for the asker).

That thing being good at its purpose requires actually training (fine-tuning) an AI, not just buying API credits and "prompt engineering". Or very skillful prompting with rules and examples making use of the context these things have now. Triage is the most tiresome part of our work, because many questions require the same handholding and prodding and revisions. Automate that. Train the AI on answerers. It is supposed to serve the answerers. That requirement is important and non-negotiable.

With that mechanism, you would have built a force multiplier for your answerers. That is the kind of automation that benefits everyone.

This scheme would give the asker more time with an ever-patient entity and potentially no contact at all with any of us grumpy mean old answerers. This scheme would increase question quality for us, which would make us happier, decreasing the grump (let's be honest), which is a good thing for askers.

You like KPIs, right? One KPI for this scheme could be how much human triage is still required to make the question answerable, after it's been triaged by AI and escalated to humans. Another is the fraction of questions that need escalation to a human, vs. the other fraction that was resolved by automation to the satisfaction of the asker.

This might be a bit controversial, but actually looking at the ban algorithm and updating it to be more weighted based on recent activity. Some high rep users will never get a ban because of a few good questions, and they can continue to post bad questions; these questions are rarely well received and often deleted (answered or not).

On the other hand users that are banned, but have actually started to turn things around, still have a massive hole to dig themselves out of because their past will always haunt them.

Make duplicates fun: display a huge "Hooorayy" or a moving party popper emoji, I don't care. Simply:

• Finding a duplicate for someone -> should feel like getting your answer accepted. You found the correct solution.

• Having your question flagged/closed as duplicate -> should feel like getting a perfect instant answer. It most often is.

The proposal was already made here: Make Stack Overflow more friendly: remove the stigma of duplicates?

I think the main improvement is actually the color - it's green. Green signals: this was a good outcome for your question. As an anecdote, when scrolling all the way to the bottom on stackoverflow.blog, I sometimes get a slight positive emotion. I suspect it is the theme switcher's similarity to a +rep pop-up:

vs.

If making duplicates fun succeeds, we then need a way to get rid of "bad" duplicates with no or minimum human effort.

And there's some precaution we need to take, as l4mpi pointed out: absolutely make sure this doesn't annoy/hinder experts that answer questions. Those are more sparse than people providing duplicates.

This is a short answer but I've explained it in other posts before. Send more users to the Staging Ground (SG), not less (or let them opt out). You've previously claimed the success of the SG so why are you not utilizing it if survival of questions is important?

And, again, have people who are question banned sent to the SG instead; this helps them get out of that ban as they are guided to write a good question, and can't post a bad one.

Improve duplicate detection!

Many of the new questions are duplicates. However, the current suggestions for duplicates users get when asking a question are typically not that good.

You have a lot of existing questions where many are duplicates. You can try to use that data to train a machine-learning model that attempts to detect duplicates after a question was written. If it detects a duplicate and is confident about it, tell the user something like "Hey, we think we might know the answer to your question" and show them the found duplicate. You can then give the users buttons (or whatever) to use when the linked questions solves their issue and when it doesn't.

If no high-confidence duplicates could be identified, don't try to show the users unlikely duplicates. Just show duplicates when the system is reasonably sure it's a duplicate (for example if it has a score where >40% of suggestions with that score or higher are actually duplicates in your validation data). If only 20% of your users get suggestions for duplicates but these suggestions likely actual duplicates, this is a huge improvement.

I am talking about this thing that is shown upon asking a question:

How about specifically focusing on posts getting closed as Needing Debugging Details? These seem to be the most issue with questions in my experience.

Unlike other close reasons, there is really no reason a user would actively not want to post debugging details. On some level, I understand why it is annoying for a user to be told "your question is off-topic for here" and need to find somewhere else to post it or not have an answer at all. I also, on some level, understand why getting your question about a typo closed is surprising and not something you'd expect, and you might genuinely not know that's closable and even if you do you might not care. But Needing Debugging Details (and Needing Details or Clarity) is different in that the asker can't possibly benefit if they don't adding debugging details. If you tell us "I have a program and it doesn't work how can I fix it?", you actually can't possibly get an answer.

Now, a separate thing. Not all (but probably most) questions on SO are debugging questions. It would be nice to be able to find which are debugging questions, vs. how to questions, etc.

I think we could fix 2 things with 1 feature. What if we had users choose if what type of question their question is (not what its about, this isn't a duplicate of the tagging system), like debugging, how to, etc.

If they chose debugging, then we could actually implement some measures to reduce the number of these questions that are submitted. Here's some ideas:

1. Block debugging questions with no code block. These tends to be Needs Debugging Details questions, and if not they are very likely in need of editing (to format code correctly or put the code in from images). This might not be perfect, so perhaps users should have the option of appealing this block on the question (to the CV/Reopen queue maybe? SG?).
2. Warn users who are submitting images which are likely images of code (this is officially considered Needing Debugging Details, yes). This could probably be detected through one of the AI systems you guys love (please don't just feed it to ChatGPT though, actually use a system dedicated to image recognition).
3. Warn users who are posting a ton of code (this could be defined as, say, more than 50 lines) and actively block users posting an obviously insane amount of code (say 100-150 lines). These users should be told they need to make their example actually Minimal.
4. Give users a "checklist" to complete before posting their question. This could include things like: A.Posted relevant code that reproduces the issue B.Code posted is the minimum amount of code necessary C.Relevant errors are posted D.Information about your system is posted (ex. versions, what computer you are on, what libraries you are using, etc.) E.Code and error are correctly formatted, nothing not needing to be in an image is in an image

It doesn't have the feature-request tag, but allow me to point you to the 2017 Q&A Let's send new users off to see the Wizard (disclosure: my idea) which got a pretty good reception by the community (+107/-5 at the time of this question), and... zero response or engagement from the staff/company. Granted, it was a discussion post, but I think it's very relevant here.

The key recurring feature in the asking wizard demo I whipped up there is "strong guard rails" that direct the user on where to go/what to ask here. I'll provide the Stack Snippet from that question here below as well, for convenience.

It certainly misses a few avenues of questions that should be allowed in its limited demo (and now fairly dated) state, but a major point that remains relevant today is that the user has to explicitly, affirmatively state what kind of question they have by selecting from a prescribed list of various question topics/types (e.g. debugging, how-to, etc.). If they select a certain kind of question, they get hard stopped by the system and told to go elsewhere (try clicking the "I have a question about something else" button on the Stack Snippet I provided).

As it happens, this guided, on-rails experience is already recommended by several other answers here.

From the linked question above:

document.getElementById('Q-debug').onclick = function() {
    var debugPage = document.getElementById('debug-page');
    var splashElements = document.getElementsByClassName('splashPage');
    debugPage.style.display = 'block';
    for (var i = 0, max = splashElements.length; i < max; i++) {
        splashElements[i].style.display = "none";
    }
};
document.getElementById('debug-step2').onclick = function() {
    var debugPage2 = document.getElementById('debug-problem-desc');
    this.style.display = 'none';
    debugPage2.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('debug-step3').onclick = function() {
    var debugPage3 = document.getElementById('debug-mcve');
    var step3Container = document.getElementById('step3-container');
    step3Container.style.display = 'none';
    debugPage3.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('debug-step4').onclick = function() {
    var debugPage4 = document.getElementById('debug-title');
    var step4Container = document.getElementById('step4-container');
    step4Container.style.display = 'none';
    debugPage4.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('Q-tool').onclick = function() {
    var toolPage = document.getElementById('tool-page');
    var toolContent = document.getElementById('tool-content');
    var toolMain = document.getElementById('tool-mainbar');
    var toolForm = document.getElementById('tool-question-form');
    var splashElements = document.getElementsByClassName('splashPage');
    toolPage.style.display = 'block';
    toolContent.style.display = 'block';
    toolForm.style.display = 'block';
    toolMain.style.display = 'block';
    for (var i = 0, max = splashElements.length; i < max; i++) {
        splashElements[i].style.display = "none";
    }
};
document.getElementById('tool-step2').onclick = function() {
    var toolPage2 = document.getElementById('tool-problem-desc');
    var toolEditor = document.getElementById('tool-post-editor');
    var toolContainer = document.getElementById('tool-wmd-container');
    var toolButton = document.getElementById("tool-step3-container");
    this.style.display = 'none';
    toolPage2.style.display = 'block';
    toolEditor.style.display = 'block';
    toolContainer.style.display = 'block';
    toolButton.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('tool-step3').onclick = function() {
    var toolPage3 = document.getElementById('tool-mcve');
    var toolEditor2 = document.getElementById('tool-post-editor2');
    var toolContainer2 = document.getElementById('tool-wmd-container2');
    var toolButton2 = document.getElementById("tool-step4-container");
    this.style.display = 'none';
    toolPage3.style.display = 'block';
    toolEditor2.style.display = 'block';
    toolContainer2.style.display = 'block';
    toolButton2.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('tool-step4').onclick = function() {
    var toolTitle = document.getElementById('tool-title');
    this.style.display = 'none';
    toolTitle.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('Q-eng').onclick = function() {
    var knowledgePage = document.getElementById('knowledge-page');
    var knowledgeContent = document.getElementById('knowledge-content');
    var knowledgeMain = document.getElementById('knowledge-mainbar');
    var knowledgeQuestion = document.getElementById('knowledge-question-form');
    var splashElements = document.getElementsByClassName('splashPage');
    knowledgePage.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeContent.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeMain.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeQuestion.style.display = 'block';
    for (var i = 0, max = splashElements.length; i < max; i++) {
        splashElements[i].style.display = "none";
    }
};
document.getElementById('knowledge-step2').onclick = function() {
    var knowledgePage2 = document.getElementById('knowledge-problem-desc');
    var knowledgeEditor = document.getElementById('knowledge-post-editor');
    var knowledgeContainer = document.getElementById('knowledge-wmd-container');
    var knowledgeButton = document.getElementById("knowledge-step3-container");
    this.style.display = 'none';
    knowledgePage2.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeEditor.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeContainer.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeButton.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('knowledge-step3').onclick = function() {
    var knowledgePage3 = document.getElementById('knowledge-mcve');
    var knowledgeEditor2 = document.getElementById('knowledge-post-editor2');
    var knowledgeContainer2 = document.getElementById('knowledge-wmd-container2');
    var knowledgeButton2 = document.getElementById("knowledge-step4-container");
    this.style.display = 'none';
    knowledgePage3.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeEditor2.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeContainer2.style.display = 'block';
    knowledgeButton2.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('knowledge-step4').onclick = function() {
    var knowledgeTitle = document.getElementById('knowledge-title');
    this.style.display = 'none';
    knowledgeTitle.style.display = 'block';
};
document.getElementById('Q-other').onclick = function() {
    var ontopicPage = document.getElementById('ontopic-page');
    var splashElements = document.getElementsByClassName('splashPage');
    ontopicPage.style.display = 'block';
    for (var i = 0, max = splashElements.length; i < max; i++) {
        splashElements[i].style.display = "none";
    }
};

html {
    height: 100%;
    margin: 5px;
}
body {
    min-height: 100%;
    display: flex;
    flex-flow: column nowrap;
    font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 13px;
    line-height: 1.3em;
    color: #242729;
    background: #fff;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    vertical-align: baseline;
}
h2 {
    margin: 14px auto;
}
button {
    color: #fff;
    background-color: #0095ff;
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px 0 #66bfff;
    padding: .61538462em 1em;
    vertical-align: middle;
    min-height: 2.46153846em;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    font-weight: 400;
    font-family: inherit;
    line-height: 1;
    text-align: center;
    text-decoration: none;
    border-radius: 2px;
    border: 1px solid transparent;
    border-color: #07c;
    margin: 5px auto;
    max-width: 400px;
    cursor: pointer;
    transition: all .1s ease-in;
}
button:hover {
    cursor: pointer;
    color: rgba(255,255,255,0.9);
    background-color: #07c;
    border-color: #005999;
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px 0 #3af;
    text-decoration: none;
    transition: all .1s ease-in-out;
    outline: none;
}
div[id$="-page"] {
    display: none;
}
.container {
    margin-top: 60px;
    position: relative;
    width: 100%;
    flex: 1 0 auto;
    margin: 0 auto;
    text-align: left;
}
.container div[id$="-content"] {
    padding: 24px 15px;
}
div[id$="-content"] {
    box-sizing: content-box;
    margin: 0 auto;
    background-color: #fff;
}
.ask-page div[id$="-content"] {
    min-height: 750px;
}
.ask-mainbar {
    width: 665px;
}
.form-item {
    padding: 10px 0 5px;
}
.ask-title {
    width: 668px;
}
.container div[id^="debug-"], .container div[id^="tool-"], .container div[id^="knowledge-"], .container div[id^="ontopic"] {
    display: none;
}
div[id^="debug-"] h2, div[id^="tool-"] h2 {
    margin: 0px;
    margin-top: 10px;
}
div[id^="debug-"] h5, div[id^="tool-"] h5 {
    margin: 5px 0;
}
.form-item label {
    display: inline-block;
    font-weight: bold;
    padding-bottom: 3px;
}
.wmd-input {
    box-sizing: border-box;
    padding: 10px;
    height: 200px;
    line-height: 1.3;
    width: 660px;
}
input {
    color: #9fa6ad;
    margin: 5px 0;
}
input[type="text"] {
    box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(12,13,14,0.1) inset;
    padding: 8px 10px;
    font-size: 14px;
    color: #3b4045;
    background: #fff;
    border: 1px solid #c8ccd0;
}
input[id$="title"] {
    width: 591px;
}
p {
    clear: both;
    margin-bottom: 1em;
    margin-top: 0;
}
a {
    color: #07c;
    text-decoration: none;
    cursor: pointer;
}
.form-submit {
    display: block;
    padding: 10px 0 15px 0;
}
.container input[type="submit"] {
    color: #fff;
    background-color: #0095ff;
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px 0 #66bfff;
    display: inline-block;
    position: relative;
    padding: .61538462em 1em;
    vertical-align: middle;
    min-height: 2.46153846em;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    font-weight: 400;
    font-family: inherit;
    line-height: 1;
    text-align: center;
    text-decoration: none;
    border-radius: 2px;
    border: 1px solid transparent;
    border-color: #07c;
    transition: all .1s ease-in;
    outline: none;
    cursor: pointer;
}
input[type="submit"]:hover {
    cursor: pointer;
    color: rgba(255,255,255,0.9);
    background-color: #07c;
    border-color: #005999;
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px 0 #3af;
    text-decoration: none;
    transition: all .1s ease-in-out;
    outline: none;
}

<h2 class="splashPage">What kind of question do you have?</h2>
<button id="Q-debug" class="splashPage" type="submit">I have an error or code that isn't working correctly</button>
<button id="Q-tool" class="splashPage" type="submit">I have a question about a programming tool or IDE</button>
<button id="Q-eng" class="splashPage" type="submit">I don't understand some aspect of a programming language</button>
<button id="Q-other" class="splashPage" type="submit">I want to ask about something else</button>
<div id="debug-page" class="ask-page">
    <div class="container">
        <div id="content">
            <div id="mainbar" class="ask-mainbar">
                <form id="post-form" class="post-form">
                    <div id="question-form">
                        <h2>What language are you using?</h2>
                        <h4>Pick a language tag in the field below, and up to 4 additional tags that relate to what you're trying to do.</h4>
                        <div style="position-relative;">
                            <div style="position-relative;">
                                <label>Tags</label>
                                <div class="tag-editor" style="width: 658px; height: 35px;">
                                    <input placeholder="Pick a tag such as c++, android, or haskell, max 5 tags" style="width: 638px" type="text">
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div id="tag-suggestions"></div>
                        </div>
                        <div class="form-submit cbt">
                            <button id="debug-step2" type="button">Next Field</button>
                        </div>
                        <div id="debug-problem-desc">
                            <h2>Describe your problem</h2>
                            <h5>(Don't worry, we'll get to your code next)</h5>
                            <div id="post-editor" class="post-editor">
                                <div style="position-relative;">
                                    <div class="wmd-container">
                                        <textarea id="wmd-input" class="wmd-input processed" name="post-text" cols="92" rows="15" placeholder="Be specific and detailed! No one will help you if they have to guess at the details."></textarea>
                                    </div>
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div id="step3-container" class="form-submit cbt">
                                <button id="debug-step3" type="button">Next Field</button>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <div id="debug-mcve">
                            <h2>Include the code that's not working</h2>
                            <h5>(Your actual code, not a screenshot. If you get an error message, include that here)</h5>
                            <div id="post-editor2" class="post-editor">
                                <div style="position-relative;">
                                    <div class="wmd-container">
                                        <textarea id="wmd-input2" class="wmd-input processed" name="post-text2" cols="92" rows="15" placeholder="Include a complete demo of your code problem here. It MUST be reproducible."></textarea>
                                    </div>
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div id="step4-container" class="form-submit cbt">
                                <button id="debug-step4" type="button">Next Field</button>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <div id="debug-title">
                        <h2>Pick a title for your question</h2>
                        <h5>(Summarize your problem in question format)</h5>
                            <div style="position-relative">
                                <div class="form-item ask-title">
                                    <input id="title" class="ask-title-field" name="title" maxlength="300" placeholder="Be specific. Use proper grammar. Ex: Why isn't my function returning true?" data-min-length="15" data-max-length="150" autocomplete="off" type="text">
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div class="form-submit cbt">
                                <input id="submit-button" value="Post Your Question" type="submit">
                            </div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                </form>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
<div id="tool-page" class="ask-page">
    <div class="container">
        <div id="tool-content">
            <div id="tool-mainbar" class="ask-mainbar">
                <form id="tool-post-form" class="post-form">
                    <div id="tool-question-form">
                        <h2>What tool are you using?</h2>
                        <h4>Pick a programming tool or IDE in the field below, and up to 4 additional tags that relate to what you're trying to do.</h4>
                        <div style="position-relative;">
                            <div style="position-relative;">
                                <label>Tags</label>
                                <div class="tag-editor" style="width: 658px; height: 35px;">
                                    <input placeholder="Pick a tag such as visual-studio, chrome, or eclipse, max 5 tags" style="width: 638px" type="text">
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div class="tag-suggestions"></div>
                        </div>
                        <div class="form-submit cbt">
                            <button id="tool-step2" type="button">Next Field</button>
                        </div>
                        <div id="tool-problem-desc">
                            <h2>Describe your question</h2>
                            <h5>(If you have a problem, specify your desired outcome)</h5>
                            <div id="tool-post-editor" class="post-editor">
                                <div style="position-relative;">
                                    <div id="tool-wmd-container" class="wmd-container">
                                        <textarea id="tool-wmd-input" class="wmd-input processed" name="post-text" cols="92" rows="15" placeholder="Be specific and detailed! No one will help you if they have to guess at the details."></textarea>
                                    </div>
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div id="tool-step3-container" class="form-submit cbt">
                                <button id="tool-step3" type="button">Next Field</button>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <div id="tool-mcve">
                            <h2>Include any screenshots here</h2>
                            <h5>(Screenshots should illustrate sections, windows, or menus of the IDE or tool you're using)</h5>
                            <div id="tool-post-editor2" class="post-editor">
                                <div style="position-relative;">
                                    <div id=tool-wmd-container2 class="wmd-container">
                                        <textarea id="tool-wmd-input2" class="wmd-input processed" name="post-text2" cols="92" rows="15" placeholder="Please use Stack Overflow's built-in image uploader. Don't link an image from a 3rd party website."></textarea>
                                    </div>
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div id="tool-step4-container" class="form-submit cbt">
                                <button id="tool-step4" type="button">Next Field</button>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <div id="tool-title">
                        <h2>Pick a title for your question</h2>
                        <h5>(Summarize your post in question format)</h5>
                            <div style="position-relative">
                                <div class="form-item ask-title">
                                    <input id="tool-title" class="ask-title-field" name="title" maxlength="300" placeholder="Be specific. Use proper grammar. Ex: How do I dock a window in Visual Studio?" data-min-length="15" data-max-length="150" autocomplete="off" type="text">
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div class="form-submit cbt">
                                <input id="tool-submit-button" value="Post Your Question" type="submit">
                            </div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                </form>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
<div id="knowledge-page" class="ask-page">
    <div class="container">
        <div id="knowledge-content">
            <div id="knowledge-mainbar" class="ask-mainbar">
                <form id="knowledge-post-form" class="post-form">
                    <div id="knowledge-question-form">
                        <h2>What language is your question about?</h2>
                        <h4>Pick a programming language in the field below, and up to 4 additional tags that relate to your question.</h4>
                        <div style="position-relative;">
                            <div style="position-relative;">
                                <label>Tags</label>
                                <div class="tag-editor" style="width: 658px; height: 35px;">
                                    <input placeholder="Pick a tag such as Rust, C, or Python, max 5 tags" style="width: 638px" type="text">
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div class="tag-suggestions"></div>
                        </div>
                        <div class="form-submit cbt">
                            <button id="knowledge-step2" type="button">Next Field</button>
                        </div>
                        <div id="knowledge-problem-desc">
                            <h2>Describe your question</h2>
                            <h5>(Be sure to include your expectations or reasoning)</h5>
                            <div id="knowledge-post-editor" class="post-editor">
                                <div style="position-relative;">
                                    <div id="knowledge-wmd-container" class="wmd-container">
                                        <textarea id="knowledge-wmd-input" class="wmd-input processed" name="post-text" cols="92" rows="15" placeholder="Be specific and detailed! No one will help you if they have to guess at the details."></textarea>
                                    </div>
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div id="knowledge-step3-container" class="form-submit cbt">
                                <button id="knowledge-step3" type="button">Next Field</button>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <div id="knowledge-mcve">
                            <h2>Include any references or source material</h2>
                            <h5>(List the source of your knowledge or question here, along with anywhere you've already looked for an answer)</h5>
                            <div id="knowledge-post-editor2" class="post-editor">
                                <div style="position-relative;">
                                    <div id=knowledge-wmd-container2 class="wmd-container">
                                        <textarea id="knowledge-wmd-input2" class="wmd-input processed" name="post-text2" cols="92" rows="15" placeholder="Keep it brief; don't list 20 variations of the same source"></textarea>
                                    </div>
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div id="knowledge-step4-container" class="form-submit cbt">
                                <button id="knowledge-step4" type="button">Next Field</button>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <div id="knowledge-title">
                        <h2>Pick a title for your question</h2>
                        <h5>(Summarize your post in question format)</h5>
                            <div style="position-relative">
                                <div class="form-item ask-title">
                                    <input id="knowledge-title" class="ask-title-field" name="title" maxlength="300" placeholder="Be specific. Use proper grammar. Ex: Why doesn't C++ have garbage collection?" data-min-length="15" data-max-length="150" autocomplete="off" type="text">
                                </div>
                            </div>
                            <div class="form-submit cbt">
                                <input id="knowledge-submit-button" value="Post Your Question" type="submit">
                            </div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                </form>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
<div id="ontopic-page" class="ask-page">
    <p id="ontopic-blurb"><span>Redirect users to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic">https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic</a> so they can realize their question is probably off-topic, with some helpful callouts (examples below), and a link somewhere that lets them ask anyway:</span></p>
    <p>
        <img alt="On-Topic Help Page" src="https://i.sstatic.net/EUAIt.png">
    </p>
</div>

One thing that would be work but could yield great benefit is interactive onboarding.

When a user wants to ask a question using the Ask Wizard, don't just give them textboxes to enter a title and question. Instead, start by giving them a single-choice menu asking them what type of question they want to ask:

• If their code/project/tooling doesn't work, ask them to provide
  • what the issue is
  • a minimal, complete and verifiable example including all code/reproduction steps necessary to reproduce that issue on a new project/setup and maybe even let them confirm this works on a new project using a checkbox or whatever. All relevant code and configuration should be present within the question
  • the exact input (if applicable) and output (actual and expected output)/full error messages they are facing
  • These should be different textboxes.
• If their question is about how to do something, ask them what they are doing, which alernatives they considered and what exactly they expect to happen
• If their question is about looking for software/tools/libraries/books (give users that option!), tell them that these questions are off-topic (with a reference to the help center)
  • As suggested in the comments by Christoph Rackwitz, it might be a good idea to send people asking for software/tool/library recommendations to Software Recommendations Stack Exchange. You could implement this by asking these users another question on what kind of recommendation they are looking for and point them to Software Recommendations SE if they select the appropriate option.
• If their question is getting opinions on a programming-topic (give users that option!), tell them that opinion-based questions are off-topic (with a reference to the help center) on Stack Overflow and that all questions on Stack Overflow should ask for facts and not opinions or point point them to discussions as suggested in the comments by starball.
• If their question is not about programming (give users that option!), tell them that Stack Overflow is a site about programming and maybe redirect them to a list of all sites (where links point to the /help/on-topic pages of these sites) to show them where they might ask their question instead "It looks like your question might be off-topic on Stack Overflow but we have these other sites which may be about the topic you are asking for
  • It might be worth making a special case for server administration/general computing and then show them sites like Super User and Server Fault

The current Ask Wizard isn't doing a bad job for that but it can still be improved a lot.

If a user enters the same text in multiple text fields, tell them that these textboxes exist for a reason and their question will likely be closed if they don't follow it.

If you make something like that, please also allow other sites to use and customize that feature similar to how the help center can be customized. You probably also want to do A/B tests/extensive research on what to best show the user but I'll leave that to you.

Implementing something like that will probably decrease the number of people asking questions but it the fraction of these questions being good will probably be higher.

See also TylerH's answer and their concrete suggestion/feature request on how to do something like that.

Questions go unanswered because answerers either aren't here or aren't finding them worth answering.

Take a step back. Why are people asking questions here in the first place?

It's usually because they have a problem they need to solve, not because they want to contribute to some knowledgebase. They aren't interested in avoiding duplication. They aren't interested in creating a long-term artifact to help others. They need help with their own problem. However, everything that happens during the asking process and after focuses almost entirely on creating that knowledgebase entry rather than helping the user who needs help.

This isn't fun for someone who just wants to help people, they don't want to spend 3 minutes digging through a 15 year old search interface looking for a duplicate they know exists, they don't want to sit there trying to find a reason a post shouldn't be answered, they just want to help people and receive that little bit of recognition for doing their good deed for the day. Yet... they're met with this system that effectively discourages answering. It's almost as if we are expected to spend the first 9 minutes out of 10 looking for reasons to not help someone before we finally settle on answering it, and even then the answerer is still open to being downvoted and criticized for missing that one arcane post from 6-8 years ago that already answers the question with a poor title you'll never find.

I'm not suggesting we should just give up on the knowledgebase and curation.

Maybe the first order of business for a question being asked should be receiving an answer, rather than curating the knowledgebase being the first and most important objective to the point where it gets in the way of the whole reason someone came here in the first place. Maybe a question receiving an answer shouldn't get in the way of curation, and vice versa.

I feel like we've (the community) lost sight of why people on the internet come here, and then we're taking actions that discourage them from doing so. Quotes like the below from highly respected members of the community seriously bother me. (this is from memory and not actually from any specific user)

The knowledgebase already has most of the answers, we shouldn't be concerned with a decline in asking/answering.

This is a defeatist attitude that has effectively given up on serving the very reason people even come here.

Here's a suggestion for improving dupes. Dupes seem to frustrate some users, new and old, both asking and looking for answers.

Someone^* once^* suggested attaching a note to the "closed as duplicate" verdict, which allows us to connect the dots between the asker's question and the dupe target.

Many times, askers don't get how the dupe target helps them. That note would allow us to do that without being a mere comment.

That could even be presented as an answer or other first-class piece, with the dot connecting content going right under the new question, followed by the inlined dupe target's answers (and maybe question too), or maybe a specific one of the existing answers. It could feel like the new question melding into the older one. It'd be seamless. Zero clicks needed, zero thinking needed, vs. the one click to follow the dupe and the thinking to adapt the old answers to the new question.

^{* plural for sure}

36% survive but don’t get answered.

It seems like the first order of business is to figure out why these don't get answered. Were they close-worthy but just got overlooked? Were they answerable, but no-one with the expertise saw them? Were the people capable of answering them spending all their available volunteer time curating posts instead of answering them?

Which askers are the most consistently successful at getting good answers for their questions? What do they do differently from people who struggle to get their questions answered?

My guess is this is not solely a quality difference. At a certain point, people learn how the system works and do things to help their questions be more visible to the right people. Getting a question answered is a marketing problem, not a writing problem most of the time. I have seen people who are interested in a question take the time to bring it on-topic so they could write an answer. Why did that question "spark joy" for them even though it wasn't perfect quality? How many closed questions wouldn't have been closed if they had gotten to them first?

I don't have a suggestion for a particular experiment, but I think it would be good to think about changing Stack Overflow from a firehose of questions to courtyards of gently bubbling topic fountains.

I'm going to zoom in on your tl;dr:

We are open to all ideas that would help more developers’ questions get asked on Stack Overflow...

I think this is the wrong focus. Here's one I like better:

We are open to all ideas that would help more developers’ questions get answers on Stack Overflow...

An answer is a win, whether it involves creating a new post or discovering an existing answer. This wording is still a bit ambiguous, however, and the Tour makes the same mistake (and has for as long as I can remember):

This site is all about getting answers.

I would argue that most new users who read this statement will read it as "Post a question, get an individualized answer." We need to explicitly set expectations that search and research come first, and only when those fail is a new question warranted. If we're going to "build a library of detailed, high-quality answers", let's direct developers to the card catalog first before they ask the harried librarian. Who is also an editor. And a curator. And an author.

...and for more of them to find success here...

20% of questions that get asked today get deleted, 22% are closed, and 36% survive but don’t get answered.

How many of those questions should have been deleted or closed? How many were duplicates (still a win!), or spam, or invitations for open-ended discussion, or so lacking in detail and OP interaction that there is no way to formulate a reasonable answer? Once we understand how many (and which) questions are novel, on-topic, and answerable, then we can begin to talk about why those questions have not found success.

...feel free to think outside the box.

That sounds great, and there are a lot of good ideas in the other responses, but it's important that we first make sure we know where the box is.

Since you invited open-ending brainstorming, I wonder whether it would help if you helped answerers find questions they might be interested in answering.

I don't know whether those 36% of questions are unanswered because answerers see them and decide they can't answer or don't want to answer; or if it's because the right answerer never sees the question in the first place.

If it's the latter, then there might be an opportunity to help people get answers by doing a better job of matching unanswered questions to answerers with the ability and interest to answer.

Right now, the front page on (say) Tiktok or YouTube Shorts is extremely good at suggesting content that might be of interest, based on past interactions. In contrast, the Stack Overflow front page is pretty horrible at suggesting questions that I might want to answer. The front page is basically a firehose, with very little tailoring based on my past interactions with Stack Overflow (questions I've looked at, questions I've answered, questions I've downvoted or voted to close, etc.) So it seems like there might be an opportunity to vastly improve the front page and populate it with questions that I might be able to answer and want to answer.

Will that help? I don't know. It depends why those 36% of questions currently aren't getting answered. If they're not getting answered because relevant people are seeing the question and deciding they're not enthusiastic about answering, then this proposal won't help. If they're not getting answered because they're just not being shown to the right people, then this proposal might help askers have a more successful experience at Stack Overflow.

Frame challenge: this is fine, actually

20% of questions that get asked today get deleted, 22% are closed, and 36% survive but don’t get answered. Another way to look at this is that a question that gets asked today has a 60% chance of going unanswered (whether that's because it is closed, deleted, or just gets no responses).

The community has no real reason to be invested in seeing these percentages improve. Sending individual bad questions through the deletion and closure processes is a relatively mild inconvenience; what actually hurts is the aggregate sense that nobody (including the staff!) understand what we're trying to do here.

The community also has no incentive to take actions that would make the site money. Rather, volunteers who stick around are generally going to be motivated by the desire to help build something cool, regardless of whether anyone gets money out of it. You know, like open-source code projects are at the beginning.

And it's important to understand: in our case, the cool thing being built is not a service that answers questions, but instead a pile of useful Q&A pairs. Our KPIs aren't about the question counts or answer counts; they're about the counts of topics that have at least one good, easily-found question-answer pair. Answering bad questions doesn't help with that. Getting people to stop asking bad questions also doesn't help with that.

In fact, getting new users to ask more good questions is at best only a slight positive. It helps find those last few topics that aren't covered after 15+ years (and the trickle of plausibly important new ones created by new technologies), but it also generates noise that makes it harder to find the real gems.

You are asking the wrong crowd. The Meta users are a tiny subsection of the userbase. The rules are well-known, and the community largely plays by those. So, why ask us why the newcomers aren't following the rules?

What you should do is to interview the new users posting piss-poor questions attracting close votes like bees to a honeypot. If you can find out why they think that "I'll just paste some code here and say that there is some error somewhere, I'm sure someone can help me" is a viable strategy.

But that's hard. A newcomer who's hitten right on the kisser with the VTC hammer isn't likely to engage further. They move along to Reddit or whatever.

Maybe they aren't getting the Q&A model right. They might expect an interactive experience. You know, a tutor who helps them to refine the question by asking about details.

Hmm, maybe that's where you could use the AI. Make an LLM to look at the question and analyze if it has enough details to be a valid question. If the AI cannot figure out what's being asked or notices that something's missing from the question, make the user fix the issues before allowing for a submit.

Another way to look at this is that a question that gets asked today has a 60% chance of going unanswered (whether that's because it is closed, deleted, or just gets no responses).

Many of other answers posted here cover the problem from the question aspect. However, there is an additional problem that can be easily overlooked: SE partnership with AI companies that was not well received by the community and because of which some users deleted their accounts and some reduced their participation or stopped completely.

See: Our partnership with Google and commitment to socially responsible AI and Our Partnership with OpenAI

While there has been a continuous participation drop after general availability of gen AI models, there is another small drop in numbers clearly visible in the answers per month graph at the time when partnerships were announced. Note, that the first announcement in February, 2024 was not picked up by majority of users, while second one in May, 2024 was more publicized and caused protests and account deletions.

Query: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1888350/answers-per-month#graph

Change in 2024

Query: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1888371/answers-per-month-2024

It is not only AI in general that is hurting the participation, but also the stance and continuous push for AI by the company. You cannot fix the former, without considering and fixing the later.

Yes, asking a good question and getting good answers are parts of having a good asking experience, but I'd see them as sort of separate problems to tackle (answers don't grow on trees), and it seems from the question here (the motivating first paragraph), you're more interested in the part on getting good answers, so I'll focus my thoughts here on that, but of course, I also really appreciate the work that's being done on designing the asking experience for quality in questions (Ex. Staging Ground), especially since question closure and deletion (which you focus on in the motivating paragraph) are generally responses to quality issues.

• Attract experts.
  • Maybe you could do more to promote the public platform in dev channels / spaces.
  • Maybe you could push harder encouraging people to share links to questions they want answers to in other dev spaces.
  • Maybe you could make the UX for answerers less painful. General site UX has quite a few pain-points.
  • I know swag is a lot of work and complicated to do, but... it could be a good motivator, and there could be ways to do it at a very small, more manageable scale. (EDIT: oh hey!)
• Teach people how to find unanswered, open questions that askers are already interested in. Ex. is:q answers:0 [tag] score:3.. closed:no. They may be harder questions, but they're likely higher-value. There was a period when I'd use queries like that (maybe I'll do it again sometime), and I have quite a few goodies to show for it. Others might find such badges motivating as well.
• I do wonder if the our bad public image discourages some people from coming to try answering questions, but I don't know how to test that hypothesis, and I don't have any great ideas on how to address that right now.

When a duplicate is not a duplicate

There is such a thing as a duplicate question, but most of the times, the questions closed as duplicate are not quite a duplicate of that other question, they just happen to have the same answer.

This causes a lot of friction:

1. The OP is targeted at the duplicate question, and complains that their question isn't, actually, a duplicate of that other question over there.
2. They are informed that some of the answers to that question actually answer their questions too.
3. The OP complains that the first answer doesn't, actually, answer their question.
4. They are informed that the 2nd/3rd answer does, indeed.

It's frustrating for everyone involved.

And doubly so when, actually, the OP is right -- yes, it happens rarely but it does happen -- and with further clarification on their question it turns out it's not quite a duplicate and the linked answers don't quite fit, but by now the question is closed, and the OP rage quitted.

(It's arguably their fault for not asking a clear question in the first place... but asking clear question is a hard-learned skill, we can't expect someone to ask perfect questions on the first try)

Already Answered

When a question is NOT an exact duplicate, what about importing answers from other questions?

That is, allow a user to suggest an existing answer, and have the answer appear on the new question with a banner: "This answer to "X" may answer this question", with a link to said question.

Possibly, also allow a "note" (as suggested by others) to explain why the answer is relevant to this question.

This is a very different experience from getting one's question downvoted/closed.

Even better, it allows other users to chime in (with regard to the relevance of the question) by voting up/down, and it allows dedicated answers to be posted and ranked alongside the linked answers, so that the best answer to the question naturally floats towards the top -- whether original or linked.

And if points matter:

• Accept points should go to the person who posted the link to the pre-existing answer.
• Upvote points should be split equally between original answerer and the person who posted the link to the pre-existing answer..
• Downvote points should go to the person who posted the link to the pre-existing answer.

Finally, if the question turns out to actually be an exact duplicate? Well, it can always be closed then.

Could you highlight the tag excerpt(and tag info page) to the new comers? The order of asking the questions should be modified to facilitate better question asking.

Tags first, body next, titles last as a summary of the body.

When the main tag is added, show that tag's excerpt(along with a link(More resources) to the tag info page), which contains crucial details expected by the SMEs of that tag. It's the only way for experts participating in that tag to communicate with new users. It's really bad, that you hide those under layers of clicks, which never gets seen. SMEs then blame the new users and new users blame it on SMEs, when the real culprit is you.

When you put titles first, users tend to think of titles as a brief catchphrase rather than a summary/tldr of the entire question, which is what is expected by the SMEs. Again, the culprit responsible for such miscommunication and hostility is you.

You should interview people on other sites, such as Reddit and Quora, because that's where those types go that hate the question asking process on SO. That's where potential new users are. Here you don't have potential new users, only current users. We have ideas too, but we aren't the ones you're trying to attract.

I would begin by ending the practice of encouraging users to ask follow-up questions in discussions, where users are even less likely to receive help.