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A few beginner questions are like this:

title: can anyone help me

body:

i have a few problems with this code:

<code here>

please help. thank you, name here

As pointed out by this Meta post, the asker of that question disagrees with using signatures such as

hi

i am new here

cheers

best regards

But I think there is another one that should be removed from titles and bodies:

please help

The tour says there is no chit chat, just questions and answers. "Please help" is chit-chat. Can it please be removed from the end of bodies?

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  • 5
    Yes, it can be removed. What do you expect now to happen?
    – rene
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:32
  • Automatically? This would be nice. Or a system that warns this when please help is inserted.
    – idk wut to put here
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:33
  • 10
    Let's not do that. Instead we hope that editors remove that.
    – rene
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:34
  • 1
    Hopefully something in the first question dialog will include a tip telling people to avoid "please help"...
    – idk wut to put here
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:35
  • 3
    Can we please save editors' time and effort by finally making this a hard rule? Not that I expect this to ever be done, though.
    – Oleg Valter is with Ukraine
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:36
  • 3
    @rene and that reviewers do not approve those edits.
    – oguz ismail
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:36
  • 1
    @rene I hope you do not really think that most editors are good enough to remove this noise :) What's more, those of us that do are often scolded by OPs. It may not bother me, but it's not a pleasant experience
    – Oleg Valter is with Ukraine
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:38
  • 2
    You forgot "Any help would be appreciated." and the entitled and aggressive "Thanks in advance.".
    – Peter Mortensen
    Commented Jun 14, 2021 at 9:26

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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We're not going to ask the Dev team to do something that has proven to be harder to get right than you think. They had only one pr0blam to solve.

Posts that have these phrases probably have more issues that need fixing. It is better to fix all of those at once instead of the single sentence you identified.

If first-post reviewers, tag followers, prolific editors, Peter Mortensen and the few that want to do data-driven editing based on lame SEDE queries all put enough elbow grease in all the content gets better, not only the last line.

No, you can't find those with a regex. No, we're not going to train some neural network to suggest improvements.

Plz Halp!

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  • 1
    huh, you are right about the quality filter :) Can't a man dream though? With years of neglect from SE editors get in terms of features making their "jobs" easier I prefer to support any good enough proposal in an off-chance (0.000001%) it accidentally makes it through.
    – Oleg Valter is with Ukraine
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:49
  • 5
    @OlegValter I'm not a front-end researcher/believer but I've become very skeptical about systems that remove or alter stuff I just typed and I'm convinced that we have a user base that either can't or won't read instructions. All that is left is fix after the fact.
    – rene
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 17:52
  • 1
    I am not sure I agree with your first part (because if not blocking, we could at least shove a note on a red background in their face - it is a proven way of making users at least note what's written in it), but yeah, the second one is the very sad truth... Can't blame the userbase too much with the processes SE set up (or lack thereof to be precise)
    – Oleg Valter is with Ukraine
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 18:03
  • 1
    You can find them with regex... but not accurately. The HTH experiment I have been conducting for the past year shows that this is possible. However, HTH is pretty regular and often the only issue to be fixed in an answer. With things like "please help" or "thanks in advance" there are usually more pressing issues that need to be fixed in the post.
    – Dharman Mod
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 19:03
  • 2
    I didn't even know people were referencing AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" in posts.
    – Scratte
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 19:13
  • 9
    I love how Peter Mortensen is in a category of his own 😆
    – 41686d6564
    Commented Jun 13, 2021 at 20:44

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