I have noticed that moderators of Biostar complain about the duplicate questions.
I am wondering why we can not put a banner or search bar before post question, just like what stackoverflow does.
some new users may not familiar with biostar and may not aware their questions have been asked.
Check the stackoverflow example below
Actually, StackOverflow (SO) does not show this page when you ask a question. You have to click asking help to see the page.
On the other hand, SO and most other Q&A sites are more powerful than this page. In the Ask Question page, when you type your question, SO suggests related questions, possibly based on keywords. In addition, for each question, SO shows related questions. Every user can see similar questions that have been asked before. Also, if I remember correctly - I could be wrong as I have not asked a question on SO for a long time - SO asks the user to reconfirm submission when the question is too similar to an existing question. All these mechanisms help to reduce duplicated questions.
I think duplicates are becoming a major concern with BioStar. Apparently I am not alone. According to an e-mail interview with Lars Juhl Jensen, who was one of the major contributors to biostar, he is also concerned with "questions that have already been answered before", more or less. We should implement the SO features before considering to add/remove any other features. Duplicates greatly impair the quality of a Q&A site in my opinion.
PS: on the ask question page, SO shows basic help on MarkDown. This will be very helpful to new users who are unfamiliar with the syntax.
PSS: SO requires a title to have at least 15 characters. This will prevent a non-informative title like "epigenetics".
The SO will show this unless you select "thanks, I will keep these tips in mind when asking".
For experienced users, the reminder might be not necessary, but it will be helpful for new users.
P.S: it will be better if the question with title "epigenetics" could be downvoted.
I agree, I wrote a comment instead, but feel bad about the time wasted on it...
Sad but true, we had this kind of functionality all once even on SO1.
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