I agree with the sentiments here, and I've voted up several responses made by other people requesting that people show some courtesy to their potential helpers by making a question clear and providing some basic info. I've also posted the same plea myself.

Even if RG had a policy written somewhere, I doubt it would influence the behaviour of most people. The only way I could see it even being read, is if it was presented to everybody on the screen where they actualy type their question.

Hopefully, the selection pressure of the RG system will tend to improve matters: poorly detailed questions will not be addressed, and may be voted down. Well-posed questions will attract useful answers, and if the question is interesting they will also be voted up.

I hope so, but I see alot of people asking supplementary questions to try to get those details. A good suggestion to have a protocol for asking questions on the screen where you create the question. The problem is the questions asked are so broad I am not sure oine policy could cover it would need different policies of different subject areas.

Totally agree with the feeling. Many questions on Research Gate are of very poor quality (no background or goal/objective information, short and imprecise question). It reduces the overall quality of the entire site.

Guidelines, distributed to all members upon registrations AND shown upon adding a question or answer (as suggested by Stuart Jenkins) would be great.

Another thing that I have seen make a difference is for members to politely tell the OP that their question is poorly formed and would benefit from -More context-, -Goals/Objectives info-, -Being formulated at length, with care for important details-.

My suggestion is that you create a template in a text file and, any time you think the OP deserves the speach, copy-paste it as an answer, adding appropriate information about the OP (name...) or the question itself.

Now, as I type this, there is a notice that appears in the upper right region of my Answer box : "Add an answer. High-quality answers appreciated by your peers will help to increase your RG Score." Close, but no cigar. Maybe adding a link under "High-quality answers" linking to a policy page hinting at the elements of a great Answer / Question would bring us closer to high quality questions and answers.

This is all a question of "Forum Naivety or Newbieness". You can't just state: "Please be an advanced and well informed forum user". You have to explain at (some) length what that means and what is expected of you as a forum member.

completely agree. We do this with new students all the time. Formulating questions is a skill and takes practice. I have a feeling in many cases it is a student asking a question they are afraid to ask thier supervisor or lab mates. This is a job for the people who run this web site, they need to create some guidelines and example questions that are good and bad for contrast.

I agree that part of the job should be done by the people who run the website.

On the other side, any forum community is ultimately about its members and what they actually choose to do, how they behave. I believe that if even 1-2% of a forum's members take time to point to newcomers what is expected of them and how to write great questions and answers, then the quality of the forum as a whole goes way up.

ResearchGate is a bit different from more traditional forums, as there does not seem to be a hierarchy of users (members, moderators, administrators...). However, any user with a decent RG Score or a very polite approach can act as a de-facto moderator.

Science is about learning from superiors, but also, and sometimes mostly, from one's peers. Forums are really similar in this respect. Helping people to learn and show good forum behaviour is thus very important and can even be rewarding in itself.

Some of these people who ask poor question have RGS in the 15-20 range. How does this happen? They can't be that "new" if they have been posting and answering questions.

Hi Rohan. Sharing is at the very basis of Science and I agree that the enterprise of science should move towards more and more openness. Calling people with a more closed view idiots is not very likely to help the matter. If you have a nice argument about science and openness, please feel free to share it in a post on RG. I'll be following you to see that thread. Cheers.

Actually science has a long legacy of lies and deceit to maintain an edge over competitors. Wallace and Darwin, Franklin and Watson/Crick, Newton and anyone else who thought they might work on any field of physics or mathematics. Big scientist often have big egos. Cheating becomes legitimized in their head, much like an athlete who take performance enhancing drugs. I am just arguing that there should be some minimal set of information that people who post questions give to ensure that the first round of answers are not just more questions or requests for more information. I think sometimes the questions are asked because the person doesn't really know what they are doing so they do not understand what question to ask or what information/data is relevant. This is poor supervision, these are the questions that should go to your supervisor first. This forum should be for when there is no one else to turn to.

@Phillip Morris. I believe that if this mechanism worked, the quality of the questions found on RG would not be as (extremely) poor on average.

@Phillip That is possible, although my feeling is that RG is poorly thought out and designed from the beginning. It is not a good forum, not a good science sharing platform, not very well administered, not a very good community... It feels like an empty shell to me. A scientific research Facebook failed experiment, although maybe only budding. We'll see. ;)

I think it would be less effort to come up with a policy to point people to when they join RG. As well, when they post a question that falls below the stardard you can point them there as direction for how to rephrase or improve the quesiton. space like this should be mentoring and teach networks. voteing someone down is just elling them they are wrong without giving them tools or direction on how to improve. Voting down might work on a evolutionary scale, but in higher learning it makes progress rather slow.

I think that the first person who joins the RG passed a strict approval process. However, once join in, he can invite his friends, peers to join. The quality of those polled in maybe not as good as the original one who passed the approving process.

In order to get a higher RG score, invite more friendly voters is a smart act. However, it might be abused. I guess.

After posting each project or question, I can see that I can use social media or whatever to invite my friends to join. But, I definitely know that majority of my friends do not have the research interest or background. I gave up to invite them to join directly from RG. I climb to build up my RG score very very slowly. Instead, I post RG on my blog and social media to invite friends and supporters to join and passing through the RG screen gate.