ADMIN PRIVILEGES REQUIRED

This documentation is for Stack Overflow for Teams Enterprise. Free, Basic, and Business users can access their documentation here. Find your plan.

Overview

Stack Overflow for Teams Enterprise (SOE) employs a system of quality checks when a user is composing a question. This is an automated system built into the asking process, unlike the on-site moderation of questions by peers. If a question fails the automated quality checks, the site will prevent the asker from posting the question in its current state and show a message asking them to address the quality of the post. The user must then improve the post before they can post it to the site.

These automated checks are intended to be a low barrier, to help encourage better presentation on the part of the asker. This benefits the asker, as a better-written question is more likely to get attention and answers. It also benefits future askers who may have the same issue.

NOTE: The automated quality checks only apply to the main site, not Private Teams.

Quality standards check

The primary check is the quality standards check, related to grammar and presentation of the post. SOE uses this check to catch low-effort, brief postings that either are rife with errors or lack sufficient information to prompt quality answers. In broad strokes, the quality check algorithm works as follows:

A question starts with a score of 100.
If a question's body is sufficiently long, SOE skips all further quality checks and assumes the question contains sufficient information to prompt quality answers.
If the question's body is extremely short, SOE reduces its quality score.
If the body or title of the question has grammatical errors (for example: bad capitalization, inconsistent spaces), SOE reduces the quality score for each error.

If the final quality score of the question falls below a certain threshold (the default setting is 60 out of 100), SOE will not allow the user to post the question. If the question's score stays above the threshold, the user can post it.

Duplicate post check

SOE will also try to determine if a user is posting a question they've already asked previously. Unlike the close-as-duplicate feature that allows users to flag content that covers the same ground, this automated check searches for existing posts that are near copies of the new question.

SOE will block the posting of a new duplicate question if both the following are true:

A question already exists on the site that is nearly identical to the new question. Specifically, the "edit distance" between the new and existing questions is less than 40 characters.
The nearly identical question was posted by the user posting the new question (or from the same IP address).

Modify the quality checks

SOE's default quality check settings provide a minimum barrier of entry for new posts, but they may not be suitable for your organization. These checks were also designed primarily for the English language, and may not work well for other languages. If the checks are causing problems for your users, your site admins can disable or modify them. If you do lower the quality thresholds, we recommend finding other ways to encourage your users to maintain a high level of quality in their posts.

As an SOE site admin, you can adjust the minimum quality score by going to the site setting at https://[your_site]/developer/site-settings/edit?name=QualityChecks.Questions.Rejections.QualityThreshold. Save a new Network Default with the modified threshold, increasing or decreasing the value from the default of 60 to meet your organization's needs. Setting a value of 1 effectively disables the quality check, allowing users to post any question.

Site admins can also disable the duplicate posting check. The process is similar to that of the quality threshold, but the site setting is hidden. Contact Stack Overflow support if you wish to disable the duplicate posting check on your site.