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Occasionally we get new users that apparently are struggling with the English language and the rules of the site. I have the feeling that simply pointing them to the Tour and Help Center is not really helpful, because they may be too complicated to understand.

Should we collect a set of instructions or comment templates in Simple English, which we can copy-paste or link to in these cases?

I am not talking about translating each and every help page, just providing some very basic “how to get started here”.

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  • We do have comment templates in this Q/A, but some of them are good examples of what I consider “too difficult to understand”.
    – Stephie Mod
    Commented Nov 23, 2018 at 12:46
  • Stephanie: agreed. Heck, I'm a native english speaker, and I had to read some of those twice.
    – FuzzyChef
    Commented Nov 25, 2018 at 18:42

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Generally, I handle this by explaining the rule directly in a comment, in a way that relates to the question. I'm not convinced that a simpler version of the rules, still referred by link, would help.

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  • If your comments (or anyone's) are generally understandable through partial language barriers, it might still be helpful to collect them for copy-pasting/starting points, even if links are tough?
    – Cascabel Mod
    Commented Nov 25, 2018 at 5:07
  • It's a problem of making something both generic and clear. That's a very very hard thing to do, whereas it's easier to make something clear when we can address the asker's question directly.
    – FuzzyChef
    Commented Nov 25, 2018 at 18:43

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