A professor of mine has always said that we learn mathematics via lots of examples and lots of counterexamples, as opposed to stating and proving theorems on a blackboard. I think this approach could be generalized to MSE.
We see many users (many of them new) posting questions that do not abide by the rules and suggestions listed in the FAQ (e.g. using the imperative mood, not outlining good faith attempts to solve, etc.) and it seems the usual policy is to simply refer the offending user to the relevant portions of the FAQ. While I think the FAQ is very well written, I think it could also use additional support in the form of example questions and answers that model good and bad behavior on MSE.
I imagine we could create a few mock-questions that are understandable by anyone; some would be well written and abide by the FAQ, while others would be the kind of questions that would result in a downvote. We could outline what these questions are doing well, and where they could use improvement. This would also be a good place to provide models of well-written answers and answers in need of improvement. We could then refer users to these mock questions and answers, and have them linked to in the FAQ.
What do you think?
Ask a question
dialog. The dialog is the same across the SE network: "Is your question about <blah>? We prefer questions that can be answered, not just discussed. Provide details. Share your research. If your question is about this website, ask it on meta instead. read the faq» asking help »" I wonder if the how to ask page can be customized and expanded (perhaps with sample questions too), like the MO page to which I linked above. $\endgroup$