Related to, but not really the same as: What is the minimal amount of research we expect from our users?
Personally, I don't really expect that much effort from a question, because I don't think it takes that much effort to write a question provided you actually have something in mind that you want to learn about (Some of our highest voted questions only have 2-3 sentences).
With the growth in visitors to the site, I've noticed that we've gotten some pretty low quality questions. This is to be expected, and shouldn't be a problem as long as they can be fixed with editing.
But...
At what point do we draw the line and say "Hey buddy, you didn't put any effort into that question. It doesn't belong here until it's fixed."?
- When someone asks a question about the health of their fish, and doesn't give us any information about the quality of the water (or even the size of the tank), should we bother with having the question on the site?
- When someone puts a question in the title, then dumps a couple links into a question body, should we bother doing the work for them and editing it into an actual question?
- When someone doesn't feel like taking the effort to write separate questions and puts them all into one, should we take the effort to do it ourselves (and steal the internet points they could have gotten)?
My worry is not only that we could be creating users who will learn that they don't have to put any effort into writing questions (that other people will edit them and do the work for them) and it will drive the quality of the site down, but also attract more of like-minded individuals who will ask the same quality of questions (aka Yahoo answers).