Empathy for those who don't know LaTeX well

Question

I'm a big proponent of TeX. I want it to be accessible to a broad family of people, not just those who are sufficiently technically-minded to understand its inner workings, and/or understand the documentation (which, let's face it, is pretty poor much of the time unless you are already a TeX whizz).

TeX.StackExchange is an amazing resource for those who are not technically able, both in the existing answers to questions, and in the ability to ask a new question. It has, to a large extent, replaced the not-always-useful documentation supplied with different packages.

However, as is often the case in technical subjects, there can be a gap between what a user (asking a question) needs to know, and what an expert (answering the question) supplies. Some examples:

1. Requesting an MWE. Often a valid request made by the expert before considering the matter any further, but does the user have the capacity to provide such a thing? For example, in "Draw this for me" etiquette, one comment is that all questions need an MWE. If, say, a user has never heard of TikZ, then how are they going to provide an MWE? Isn't a mockup of the picture sufficient in such a case?

2. Referring to a similar (but not the same) post. Does the user understand the answer in the other post well enough to enact the modifications? As TeX.SE grows its library of questions and answers, perhaps the calls for help are for experts to carry out this modification?

3. Directing someone to the manual. At least give a link and a page number (e.g. the TikZ/PGF manual is 880 pages long!(Edit: it's now 1318 pages long!)), but is the manual actually user-friendly, or only expert-friendly? Perhaps they came to TeX.SE in the first place precisely because they found the manual impenetrable?

4. Criticizing users for not doing "research" before asking. Sure, there are lazy users out there, just wanting a quick answer and letting someone else do the donkey work. But there are also users out there who spent 2 hours trying to get something to work, but without knowing the search terms to plug into google/TeX.SE they don't know where to start.

5. Not answering the question, but pointing out all the other mistakes the user has made. A user wants something fixed up, but they're using (e.g.) $$...$$ instead of \[...\]. As a user, how does it feel to ask a question, not receive an answer, but get told everything else you're doing wrong? In this case, I think the etiquette should be clear: answer the question first.

This is not a criticism of anyone in particular, but really just a question: Now that TeX.SE is, for many users and experts alike, the place that they learn many aspects of LaTeX (rather than in package documentation), do we need to adopt a more empathetic approach? Do we risk turning people off LaTeX for being too technical, simply because we sometimes expect something of the users that they are not in a position to give?

Of course, I can't guarantee that we will always be able to tell the difference between a lazy user and one who has literally told us everything they can, but much of the time I think it's fairly clear.

Answer 1

I'll take the opposite approach to the other answers (so far), addressing the question of empathy more broadly (rather than the specific 5 points), as I've been thinking about it for a while. I think there definitely is a shortage of "empathy" sometimes, though this site is much much better than most other sites on the Stack Exchange network, or even internet forums generally.

The problem IMO has not much to do with whether the user knows LaTeX well. Plenty of "good" questions from obviously novice users do get empathetic comments and answers that are appropriate to the user's level of knowledge. And there are also occasional "bad" questions from users who may have some expert level of knowledge, but (because of the way the questions are asked) are treated with not much empathy. Rather, the pattern I see, which is mostly just an inevitable consequence of people being human, is the following.

When someone "joins" this site and starts "participating" by looking at questions other than their own, what is their motivation? There could be many reasons why you (not specifically you who posted this question, I mean a generic "you") may start participating on this site: Maybe you just like helping people in need. Maybe your curiosity is piqued by the questions, or you like solving interesting problems. Maybe you have all this esoteric TeX/LaTeX knowledge, and want to put it to some use. Maybe you want to show off how brilliant you are. Maybe you want to "give back" to the community, having benefited in some way. Maybe you just like competing for internet points. All of these are valid motivations! They can all (in principle) be good for the site.

But over time, as you start looking at various people's questions, something happens to you: you become more discerning, and can clearly see that some questions are good and some are poor (by the standards of the site). This is because our brains do that with anything (xkcd 915: Connoisseur). There is reasonable consensus what a "good" question is:

• The hover text on the upvote button says "This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear". This is generic across StackExchange sites.

• On top of that, there are community-specific norms, like (here) the question includes a minimal example (wherever it makes sense), shows that the questioner has made an effort to solve the problem by reading relevant documentation, is otherwise well-written or well-stated except for the part the question is about, etc.

So far, all very good. These considerations influence (as they should) whether or not someone clicks the up-vote button. But beyond that, when it comes to actually interacting with the person who posted the question, that is where the question of empathy arises.

Because you see, you know what good questions and bad questions are. You have seen the entire spectrum of users. When you see a poor question (and that too again and again), it is natural to get annoyed, consciously or not. Grumble grumble, why can't this person state their question well -- look at the previous person: they asked their question so well? Questions like this are not what the site needs. So by now, especially if you strongly identify with this site or community, you may think to "improve the quality of the site" by telling the user how to make their question a "good" question.

But the person asking the question (typically not someone who has read enough of others' questions to have absorbed site norms) does not know or care. They are a separate human being from everyone else who came before and posted other questions, with their own goals and hopes and desires and attitudes and culture and everything. They have no thought or conception of "good questions", the quality of this site, or any of that. They are just here because they had a problem and thought they might get some help. You may think you are helping them to ask a better question "in future" or "the next time", but there likely won't be a next time -- more likely they'll just give up on the site, or even TeX/LaTeX itself, and move on to something else.

This IMO is the crux of the empathy problem: the disconnect between site regulars judging new questions and worrying about the site quality, and question-askers who are removed from all that context and just want help. From the asker's perspective, they came for help but got all this nitpicking about their question. From the site regulars' perspective, they gave the asker all this concrete advice on improving their question, but they showed no interest in improving the question and just went away. A mini-tragedy playing itself out day after day.

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So what's the solution? I'm afraid there's no perfect solution, but I can think of a few things that we can keep in mind that may help. Well, I try to keep them in mind anyway:

• While it's good to improve the quality of this site or questions thereon (after all, most of the site' usage/help over the long run will not be to the person who asked the question, but later visitors with the same or similar problems), never get so involved in this secondary goal that you forget your original motivation (helping people or whatever).

• Always remember that the person you're responding to is a real person, different from everyone else, not just a generic "question-asker" or the same as their question itself. While evaluating questions as good and bad is fine and possibly important, mentally keep this evaluation a separate step from the act of communication. Before writing anything, try to invoke a feeling of empathy with another human being. If the only thing you can think of saying is something not nice, consider not saying it at all; someone else can deal with this question. One more sub-optimal question on a random internet website is not the end of the world.

• This one is more subjective than most, but avoid pre-written text templates. I used to think they save time and can ensure everyone gets a consistent response, but I find I can manage better empathy (or at least be better aware of what I'm communicating) when choosing words afresh, in reaction to the question. The little details help.

• Look for points of intersections between the user's needs on the one hand, and your/the site's needs on the other hand. Focus on and emphasize them. For example, instead of something to the effect of "No MWE. Bad question" (even if stated very politely) (remember, making questions "good" is not the user's immediate need), you could emphasize the benefits to the user (if you can honestly judge them to be true in this instance): "Welcome. It might be easier to answer your question if...", etc. By the way, from this point of view, five of your points can be either acts of generosity or of unhelpfulness; the difference is only in the intent and communication:

  1. Requesting MWE: Help the user get their question answered.

  2. Referring to similar post: Helpful if in the spirit of "in case you haven't noticed, have you seen this question? Does it help you? If not, why not? [let's fix that]"; unhelpful if in the sense of "already answered (even if you can't figure it out), go away"

  3. Pointing out the manual: Similar. Note the user may have already looked at the manual but just forgotten to mention it or say what the difficulty was (it ought to be clear that "nothing makes sense to me" is fine too); bringing up the manual focuses the question and makes it easier to be helpful.

  4. Criticizing users for not doing research: Well, merely criticizing per se is unlikely to be helpful, but pointing out how to do research, and that many of the people best positioned to answer questions are likely to respond better to well-researched questions, can be a way of helping.

  5. Pointing out stuff other than what the question is about: Again, can be either generous or nitpicking.

  The difference is all in the intent, and in the care taken to avoid coming off as rude, and sensitivity to what the user's immediate needs seem to be -- in short, in empathy.

• Finally, retain your humour :-) Things won't be perfect: users will continue to post awful, lazy, poorly researched questions (by the standards of good questions on the site), and you yourself will often fail to be empathetic or helpful. It's fine, when you realize the situation laugh at human foibles and move on.

Answer 2

Many of your sub-questions are addressed in other meta questions, but it's always good to have some further discussion. I'll post here some comments on each of them with links to the other discussions.

1. Requesting a MWE This is an issue on which there is some partial disagreement. There are some who believe that (almost) every question should come with a MWE. These people sometimes reflexively ask for one even when the question could clearly be answered without one. Personally I don't think MWEs are always needed, but there are many cases in which it is simply impossible to help people without one. Furthermore, if the question seems to imply that the user has some code that's not working, it is entirely appropriate to tell them to turn that into a MWE. More discussion here:

   • Should minimal examples be required, or just encouraged, for questions to be answered?

2. Potential duplicates The site is not helped by having the same question asked and answered over and over, which is why there is encouragement for users who know the site contents well to find duplicates where possible. The recent change in the wording of the automatic comment from "Possible duplicate of ..." to "Does this ... answer your question?" is a real step in the right direction, since it encourages users to check the potential duplicate but gives them a clear indication that if the question doesn't help them they can say so. Of course, closing happens a bit too quickly in many cases, but it's really not that hard to get a question reopened. There are almost always enough users in chat to provide the requisite votes if needed. Also, if you think a potential duplicate isn't really a duplicate, (for example, different questions can have similar answers, but are not duplicates) you can add a comment saying so, and vote to keep the question open (if you have such privileges). On the "closing too early" problem see:

   • Reviewers; what do you eat for breakfast?

3. Pointing to the manual Frankly I don't see this as a big problem here in that I don't see many comments simply pointing to the manual. I agree, though, that such comments are likely inappropriate. That being said, it's definitely helpful to point out that the information the person sought was in the manual if you answer the question. It's also the case that many new users don't really know how to find documentation for the packages the are using. See e.g. How to find the documentation for a package?. Also, it's sometimes clear from people's questions that they are such a beginner that the only thing that will really help them is to point them to some beginner's resources. This is also entirely appropriate in my opinion.

4. Criticizing users for not enough research This is fundamentally the "just do it for me problem" and people fall into three distinct camps here with respect to how to deal with it. Some people just answer the question. Some people first ask what the person has tried. Some people just ignore such questions most of the time. I'm in the last camp, generally. There's plenty of discussion about these types of questions on meta. See this question and the questions linked inside it.

   • Etiquette for poorly researched questions?

5. Not answering the question but pointing out other problems with posted code. This is a form of the "problem" of people answering in comments, and as has been discussed before, there are many good reasons for this. When people post comments about code errors, they usually say explicitly that the comments are not related directly to the problem at hand, but I think they help new users by not perpetuating bad code practices. As for not answering the question but commenting instead see:

   • Why do people answer in comments?

Some comments on the user vs expert distinction

I think the 'user' vs 'expert' dichotomy is really a bit of a false one. Of course there are many of us on the site who have years of experience with TeX and/or LaTeX, and in fact many of the LaTeX core development team are active members of the site. But 'expert' is really a continuum. Personally I know quite a lot, but compared to others I am certainly no expert, yet I definitely have more knowledge and experience than many others too. But remember that the site is built on the goodwill and volunteer time of its users no matter how much or how little knowledge they have. That means that users with little knowledge do have a responsibility to try as best as they can to ask questions that have at least some effort put into them. Just because it's easy for me to answer a question doesn't mean that it doesn't take some time to do so. This fact alone is why MWEs are helpful: they reduce the time it takes an "expert" to produce a good answer, and this is a good thing for everyone.

Some comments about empathy

Overall, I'm not sure that we suffer too much from a lack of empathy for new/novice users. For one thing, from the very beginning of the site, there was agreement that downvoting should be used very sparingly, and comments should be used as much as possible to improve questions. See:

• TeX.SE really are nicer voters

This practice is very much in effect still, and it's definitely a good thing, in my opinion.

I think also, that most of us do show quite a bit of patience with new users, as you can tell from the sometimes quite extensive comment threads asking for more details that arise on questions. On other sites these questions might be almost instantly closed as unclear, but we tend to only close as unclear if the questioner fails to answer the questions in the comments, or simply disappears.

That being said, I do think that we should all bear the points you have in mind when we deal with new/novice users. But there's one other thing that is also fundamental about making a community with many disparate views on interaction with others: you can't and shouldn't legislate behaviour, apart from the basic "be nice" edict. To see the diversity of views on this, however, see Should we "educate" (new) users by not answering until...? in particular this answer which reflects my views too.

So I think you're absolutely right in reminding people that they should take into account the novice user's perspective when they respond, but we should leave it as exactly that, a reminder.

Answer 3

Taking the points separately..

1. MWE ... Isn't a mockup of the picture sufficient in such a case?

I would say here that a MWE is almost always an improvement, and should usually be asked for even though some people will helpfully provide a full drawing anyway.

It may be that the user is a beginner and does not know where to start. That is fine, but in that case they should ask "how do I draw a square in tikz" and they will get an answer or be pointed to a similar duplicate beginner question that has the answer they need.

It simply isn't reasonable to say "I am a complete beginner, how do I draw an entire technical diagram."

2. Closing duplicates.

It's just how the site mechanics work. It seems a bit odd at first, but it is not a criticism of the person asking the question. In fact rather the opposite, questions with lots of duplicates are weighted highly in searching the site. For future readers it is an improvement: when searching for their term rather than being shown dozens of more or less similar answers that they have to look at to realise they are similar, the site should have pre-filtered it, and show the one "canonical" example. That's the idea anyway, in practice it's always slightly subjective what is a duplicate (and whether someone answering wants to search for duplicates before answering).

3. Pointing at the manual

I think it's helpful to point at a relevant place in the manual if there is an obvious manual that has the information, but I don't think information being in the manual is reason for not answering the question here. More or less by definition all questions here should be covered by reading enough manuals, but that isn't the point. So manual references should be in addition to a specific answer.

4. Criticizing users for not doing "research" before asking.

There shouldn't be need to criticize anyone, basically there are no bad questions, only bad answers. But as commented in the first point, it can be the case that users are asking a too complicated question and they should start with simpler examples and just ask when they get an error. If doing that then they always have some code that they can show, and always have a specific tex question.

5. Not answering the question but pointing out other problems with posted code.

I commonly do that in comments (less so in answers). Seems no harm in being helpful, and sometimes the questioner has posted a lot of code, but missing important information like what document class is being used, the actual problem is unclear and the error described is due to code not shown. In such a case, you may as well comment on the code that is shown even if the comments are not related to the problem in the question title.

Answer 4

While I can see that there are communication problems, I feel that the question somewhat neglects one important aspect:

The answer and question should be useful for as many users as possible.

It may be true that one reason why some users ask for an MWE is that it saves them some time when writing an answer. I can speak only for myself, but this is hardly the really important reason. IMHO many of the points that you describe/criticize are not to save some time but really to make the thread useful. In more detail,

1. Requesting a MWE is in many cases essential to define the question. It is very common that a potential answer clashes with some other package you load, and so on. An MWE will also allow future users to find more quickly the related post. So, in short, an MWE helps the one asking the question more than the one who answers it.
2. Referring to a similar (but not the same) post. I cannot see anything wrong in pointing the OP to a related post. It happens quite often that this solves the problem. If it doesn't, all the OP has to do is to indicate that it doesn't, and why.
3. Directing someone to the manual. I can't speak for everyone, but usually the comment does not just say "please have a look at the manual" but something like "see the example on p. xy of the manual". Very often (according to my experience) this solves the problem. Again, if the OP is not able to use this to solve their problem they can just indicate that it doesn't, and why.
4. Criticizing users for not doing "research" before asking. This is a problem, yes.
5. Not answering the question, but pointing out all the other mistakes the user has made. I guess this is a matter of perspective. While I understand that getting a comment that is not directly related to the main problem may be frustrating, you may want to look at the situation from the perspective of the one making the comment. In the case of most of the users the main intention is to help the OP (and not showing off, which applies to only a small number of individuals).

Overall I feel that your post is very lopsided in the sense that you only describe the things from the perspective of the one asking a question. Even more, you seem to assume that the purpose of this site is only to provide a quick fix for some problem. And you seem to complain that users do not explain things. However, explaining things requires some information about the knowledge of the one who is asking the question. To see what I mean you may want to watch this interview with Feynman. You can only give a good answer if the question is well-posed and it is clear what kind of information the one asking the question is really seeking.

To be honest, I find the title of your "question" really off, and also do not think that this is a true question. Rather, this seems to be a broad attack on those who answer questions. Why you suggest that anyone looking at the problems of the OP and giving feedback may lack empathy is really mysterious to me. It seems not to be a question, but (sorry to say that) only an attempt to show off and demonstrate how empathic you are. IMHO you are not. You do not seem to care at all about those who spend time trying to solve the problems of others, and try, using comments, to gauge which information the questioner is really seeking.

Answer 5

This answer will only deal with the 5th point "Not answering the question" and might perhaps just be an extended comment instead of a full answer.

With that being said the following is what I'd do if I had to meet a deadline and faced a problem I couldn't solve after investing several hours:

1. Ask the experts (post on this or similar sites).

2. Leave the question alone until there is response to it (be it comment or answer)

3. In the meantime get as much work done as possible with the skills and knowledge I currently have.

Only if I get feedback on my question will I stop working on the project and care for the question asked. That approach is the most efficient way to spend my time.

What will be the outcome of all the work I do with my current skills and knowledge if no one points out that I shouldn't start displayed equations in LaTeX with $$? I'll continue to do so, resulting in inefficient time usage because I later have to revisit all those places I made this mistake. The same is true for many other of the many mistakes a beginner in LaTeX could do (e.g., using \\ all over the place).

And if the problem I asked is so hard that it takes a week until someone answers my question, I have done a weeks worth of work in the wrong way, only because someone felt it would be inappropriate to tell me my wrongs and rights before he fixed my hard problem.

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tl;dr

Long story short: It is better for the questioner if those small mistakes are mentioned early, even if it might feel unkind. If a questioner is annoyed by honest help, then maybe he shouldn't have asked for help in the first place.

Answer 6

This is a much more complicated issue than it may appear, and by no means limited to SE or LaTeX.

I have seen many instances where someone has written "RTFM" and TFM actually does not contain the requested information. Even where it does, a helpful answer will indicate where in the manual the user should look.

Worse, the documentation is decentralized. If you point the user to the documentation, point him to all of the relevant files.

If you know of inconsistencies, warn the user of them.

Sometime a smaller document doesn't fail. That can make an MWE awkward.

Not only is good style subjective, but much of it is oral culture. I'm not aware of any single concise manual of good LaTeX style.

Try to explain why you are asking for additional information, or why a specific construct is bad form. Be a teacher, not a disciplinarian.

If you provide examples, explain them.

Sometimes the user knows things that you don't. Even when he doesn't, it won't hurt to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there is a legitimate reason for something that strikes me as bad form.

If you give a man a fish, you fed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for life. If someone asks how do something, don't do it for him, explain ho to do it.

Answer 7

As a person who asks questions on this site, part of the problem re trying to find answered questions is knowing what search text to use. For example, and obviously I'm not posting it here, I have a problem today.

It is a quite specific problem, and it's hard to know what search terms to use. So I search for every single phrase/set of words I can think of that might locate a solution. The upshot is spending over an hour reading irrelevant questions because they just might contain a solution to my problem. And this is what is happening every time I have a problem. I am unlikely to be the only one experiencing this.

There could be a great question with one or more great answers (giving viable alternatives to solving the problem). But unless the questioner has used the same words as exist in previously answered questions, the correct solution may not appear.

IMO and YMMV, LaTeX has so many packages, and some of them are quite complicated with hundreds of pages of manual, with an index that may not be helpful with respect to the problem. Using Rumsfeld, the problem is unknown unknowns: I don't know how to do this and I don't know what terms to use to find out how to do this.