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Is there any reasonable standard for the minimum effort we'd like to see before answering an otherwise rote question?

I'm fairly new to this site (despite what my profile says, I really only started posting a few weeks ago), so forgive me if my question isn't bad in some way. I've spent most of my time in the newest feed and I've come across some great questions. I've also seen many zero effort posts. Obviously some number of those posters will never give effort. I have no interest in them.

What I am concerned about is a well-intentioned poster who doesn't realize what kind of effort we'd expect before we'd consider answering. Perhaps I'm concerned about the empty set. If there's evidence to suggest that no (or few) such people exist, that would satisfy my question. If not, I'd love a standardized example I could link to and say "here's what your post should look like" rather than ask them for progress or effort. Perhaps this is already incorporated into the moderation process or something. Is there anything like what I'm imagining? Is there even a standard in the first place?

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    $\begingroup$ Related: Examples and counterexamples of good questions and answers $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jun 18, 2015 at 5:46
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    $\begingroup$ If the main reason you want this is to give some pointers for users how to improve their questions, you can link to How to ask a good question?. Or you can choose some of comment templates. (And if you are not satisfied with the already existing comment templates and you are able to formulate a template you are more satisfied with, go ahead and add it to the list.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jun 18, 2015 at 5:51
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    $\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak, there can be a huge difference between a "how to ask" help page and a short list of well asked questions, especially in the eyes of a new user. I think it would be beneficial to give explicit examples of good questions, standardized or not. $\endgroup$
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    Jun 22, 2015 at 16:53
  • $\begingroup$ @JoonasIlmavirta I certainly agree with that. The difference is that these faq-posts on how to ask good question exist. Collection of good posts (whether real or artificial), to the best of my knowledge, have not been compiled. (Well, unless you count the example post in the tour, which seems to be picked by SE software from questions satisfying some given criteria.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jun 22, 2015 at 16:56
  • $\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak, true. If someone answers this meta question with a list of good questions of different types, we could link new users to it. We could in principle add such a list to a FAQ page as well, but that would require more discussion and thought to work well. $\endgroup$
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    Jun 22, 2015 at 17:03
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    $\begingroup$ @JoonasIlmavirta I have made a related post here: Suggestions for examples of well-asked questions. (The only difference seems to be that you propose in your comment to collect good questions from the already existing ones, whereas I suggest to create some questions which detailed explanations what features make them well-asked questions.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jun 30, 2015 at 12:51

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