First FAQ section: What kind of questions can I ask here?

Question

This topic belongs to the more general discussion: What goes in the FAQ?

I'll make a start with the first FAQ section. Here is my proposal, following the FAQs of SO related sites:

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What kind of questions can I ask here?

tex.stackexchange.com is for TeX and LaTeX enthusiasts and users. If you have a question about ...

• TeX or any of its descendants like LaTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX and ConTeXt
• TeX distributions like TeX Live, MiKTeX or MacTeX,
• (La)TeX related software and tools like BibTeX, LyX, LaTeX editors, viewer and converter software

... then you're in the right place to ask your question!

The best questions contain some code. Their answers will most likely give concrete code back to you.

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The FAQ continues:

Please look around to see if your question has already been asked (and maybe even answered!) before you ask...

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I omitted the word 'expert', as I believe this site supports new users as well.

Further, I know that this site is not the perfect place for very specific questions regarding a certain editor or software. Though possibly help is available here because many of us use some of the common editors and tools. It might be hard for a new user to find the correct forum, mailing-list or wiki for a very specific piece of software. If a question is hard to answer here, we know where to lead the questioner as we know the resources. That's the reason why I included such related software: we don't sent the questioner back just because his question concerns a LaTeX IDE feature but not LaTeX itself.

Another FAQ entry or link could write that clearly. Remember the venn diagram on the about page: if the sets stand for TeX, LaTeX and friends: related software, then tex.stackexchange.com could be the tiny asterisk in the middle, their intersection.

Answer 1

What kind of questions can I ask here?

tex.stackexchange.com is for enthusiastic users of TeX, LaTeX and related systems, people who love to create well-structured and beautifully typeset documents. If you have a question about ...

• TeX or any of its descendants like LaTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX and ConTeXt
• TeX distributions like TeX Live, MiKTeX, or MacTeX
• (La)TeX related software and tools like BibTeX, LyX, LaTeX editors, viewers, and converters

... then you're in the right place to ask your question!

These questions are answered by other enthusiasts and by experts in the world of TeX, who are happy to share their techniques and expertise with others.

To help people answer your question quickly and precisely, remember to ask clear questions and, if possible, to include a small example of code that shows the problem that you want to solve.

Answer 2

Just to reiterate the points I made in comments to this on the "What goes in the FAQ" question:

1. I agree with dropping the word "expert". I can see that it might help attract experts to the site, but I think that the negative in dissuading non-experts to sign up is greater. I would expect an expert to be able to assess the site without worrying about individual words much more than a non-expert. So I think that a non-expert would notice the word "expert" much more than an expert would notice that it wasn't there.

2. I do want something about answering questions high up in the FAQ and not relegated to lower down. I think it's an important part of what will make this site work. It won't work if it's just "Ask Stefan" (just since you're currently top of the board!), or at least it won't achieve it's true potential if it is. So I want the expectation to be clear right from the start that people shouldn't just come to ask a question but also to have a look at other questions to see if they're about to answer them or to learn useful hints and tips about other bits of TeX.

   But maybe that belongs more on a "welcome" page (can we have one of those?).

Answer 3

I'm less sure about just dropping talk of experts here: certainly we don't want people to think they are not welcome if they are not experts, but it is attractive to say that the site has experts who answer all kinds of questions.

This might work best if we combine it with Andrew's request to encourage answering. How about something along the lines of:

What kind of questions can I ask here? Who will answer them?

tex.stackexchange.com is for TeX and LaTeX enthusiasts and users. If you have a question about ...

• TeX or any of its descendants like LaTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX and ConTeXt
• TeX distributions like TeX Live, MiKTeX or MacTeX,
• (La)TeX related software and tools like BibTeX, LyX, LaTeX editors, viewer and converter software

... then you're in the right place to ask your question! These questions get answered by other enthusiasts and users, like you, from new users who have recently figured out the answer to your problem themselves, to well-known experts in the world of TeX who know the software inside-out.

Not beautiful prose, but I think it conveys the general idea.

Answer 4

What about questions about typography and style? This category is somewhat orthogonal to the topic of the site, but is still relevant (although possibly subjective). Certainly not many people would be able to answer expert questions, but perhaps the community could be of assistance with recommendations about good style and formatting.