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As I understand it, "thanks for your help" and similar messages removed from questions. I believe the aim of this is to leave Crypto.SE as a neat and relatively formal Q&A, where each question is set clearly and concisely.

Personally, I think this is a good policy, but I was wondering if it should be written down in the 'how to ask a good question' section or somewhere similar? As it is, a new member asking a question is very unlikely to find this standard noted anywhere (I haven't been able to find it researching this) before having their question edited.

Possibly useful links: help:how-to-ask & help:quality

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    $\begingroup$ Thes are network wide policies. See What should I keep out of my posts and titles? and Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts? on meta.stackexchange.com $\endgroup$
    – CodesInChaos
    Nov 11, 2013 at 16:00
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks - this will at least give me somewhere to reference when editing. That said, it still feels like these should be mentioned or linked to from the 'how to write a good question' section. It seems a bit silly that there are well accepted standards that users have next to no chance of finding! $\endgroup$
    – Cryptographeur
    Nov 11, 2013 at 16:23
  • $\begingroup$ I think you just did write it up, we only have to provide a link to the question with the title as text. $\endgroup$
    – Maarten Bodewes Mod
    Nov 22, 2013 at 9:36

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Oh, saying "thank you" is not welcome? Did not know that. I'll immediately edit my first question.

Being new around here I say: Yes, it would be helpful to add that information to the about page.

If I did not happen to stumble upon this question, I wouldn't have known.

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    $\begingroup$ Just to reassure you, nobody's going to downvote your question or refuse to answer it just because you said "thank you". That would just be silly. Somebody might edit your question to remove it, just like we edit posts to add better tags or to fix misspellings, but even then it's unlikely that anyone would bother unless they were already editing your post for some other reason. It's just not really a big deal. $\endgroup$
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Nov 19, 2013 at 13:19
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I think the main problem for new users is to understand that SE isn't a forum or something, but a Q&A site. While it only takes an edit for them to notice that salutations and thank-you messages are superfluous, maybe it's indeed not the baddest idea to help them understand why.

Therefore, I tend to agree that it wouldn't hurt linking up posts like the ones @CodesInChaos mentioned.

On a side-note: We just have to keep in mind that new users do not always read the FAQ until someone points them to that area of the website. So, linking up such posts won't solve the general problem that some new users will post such lines anyway. (But… I'm not saying that that would be a valid reason to disadvantaging the helpful few users who do check the FAQ.)

EDIT

Weeks later, it dawned upon me that there is also “Do not use signature, taglines, or greetings.” and if you look at it twice, a "thank you" is nothing else than a thankful greeting which doesn't add any usable content to the related question or answer.

(I guess/hope people will adapt as they learn while interacting with SE sites.)

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    $\begingroup$ Further to your side note, I would conjecture that most users don't. However, there's no point disadvantaging the helpful few that do, and it seems reasonable that the site rules should at least be reasonably self-contained, providing a neat reference point for any edit justifications $\endgroup$
    – Cryptographeur
    Nov 12, 2013 at 19:01
  • $\begingroup$ @user8911 Completely agree. Edited my post to make that clear… [+1] $\endgroup$
    – e-sushi
    Nov 12, 2013 at 19:08
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I've been guilty of this in the past. An obscure Meta post somewhere in StackOverflow is enough to set policy amonst the most established members but does little to introduce these concepts to new users. Especially amongst those who may not have an SO account, or not visit Meta.

I agree it should be written down somewhere, perhaps in the formatting help popup that appears when you write a question. That said, this is a network-wide improvement and so I propose this question be moved to Meta.SO.

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