New users often post bad questions (the issue raised might be valid and interesting, but I am referring here to the **format of the post**).

They don't mention the language, put the wrong language tags (e.g. [c++](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/c%2b%2b "show questions tagged 'c++'") instead of [c](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/c "show questions tagged 'c'")), don't mention the error they get, don't specify the output they get and so on.

When these information become available (the language is obvious, they respond to a comment asking clarification) I always refrain from editing their question, instead I add a comment asking them to edit themselves the question to include the information and I explain why that is needed.

**E.g.** When they add the error they get or some clarifications in the comments alone. The edit I am referring to would add that information to the question.

I think this is important because by forcing them to do it themselves **we educate them to write good questions** (as opposed to have someone else edit their question). After all, all they have to do is click Edit and paste the information they already provided in comments. By doing it themselves it also puts a light on **the importance of having this information in the question**. If someone else edits their question after they post the comment, they might get the idea that posting a comment is enough, they don't have to do anything else.

Even if I post a comment asking them to edit the question themselves and explaining why it's important, some other user still goes on and edits the question.

So the question is: should we make this kinds of edits? Are my points valid? One downside of not editing the question is that the question remains *bad* for a longer time, possibility missing the opportunity of some answers. However I don't believe this shouldn't weight much because the gain of educating the user is greater on the long term and the question will surface back on the homepage again when it is edited eventually.

And if we should refrain from these edits, should we also educate the community on this?

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*A little more clarification*: I am talking about edits to add information, not to spell-check, rephrase, or format the code.

For instance formatting the code for new users I think is a good thing because the markdown and copy-pasting code in the question can be confusing at first, even if for us it feels like second-nature. This would be an example where learn by seeing at first is better then asking to do.