Multiple questions in one thread

Question

Relatively often, especially new users, ask a few related questions in one thread. It may sound natural for them (they treat it as a forum or want to solve all doubts in one question). However:

• it takes time to read the question,
• it is hard to answer,
• it is hard to read answers (like respectively: no, yes, no, no, shift, attack),
• it is hard to vote meaningfully (as e.g. I can consider some parts of answer good, some - not),
• it is hard to recycle it / make it useful for another users.

So, what we should do in such cases? Once they are answers it may be wasteful to trash them. But I would suggest comment + close vote ASAP (but no down vote, if the subquestions are otherwise good).

Or, even better, adding close vote option with "multiple threads in one question" (it is not as common on other SE sites, but here it is very much).

A recent example:

• Why do PhD students complain so much?

Answer 1

This is a problem among all the Stack Exchange sites. This almost always occurs with new users, and stems from their not understanding how we work here. The best solution is to (a) leave a comment informing the OP what they've done, asking them to open individual questions, and (b) do one of the following:

• close as too broad, OR
• if it's obvious that there's one main question and just a bunch of side questions, answer the main one.

That's how we usually handle this here and it usually works very well.

Personally, I think the "too broad" closing reason works just fine; I don't think another close reason is warranted for this.