(Continuing from here, though it's probably irrelevant now.)

MathOverflow gets a fair number of questions that are not research-level, and are quickly closed. In most cases, this seems to happen because the user thinks MO is the math equivalent of Stack Overflow, and does not know what sort of questions are acceptable. Part of the reason I think is that the "Ask a Question" page does not mention anything about this: there is a "Please read the FAQ…" message, but it's almost an axiom of user-interface design that no one reads instructions! There is a "How to write math" on the right, and it has happened that some newbie spent a lot of time learning LaTeX and formatting a question carefully, only to have it quickly closed. On Stack Overflow's Ask a Question, there is a brief message to the right on what sort of questions to ask — in the place where MO has "How to write math". It continues to be displayed while you type the question title, and only when you start typing the text of the question does the message change to formatting instructions. Something like this would be easy to implement here too, I think?

Of course, once math.stackexchange.com goes into Public beta tomorrow, this will probably be less of a problem, but I still think it would be polite and nicer to people who arrive here by mistake to clarify all this (and direct them elsewhere) on the Ask a Question page. There's no guarantee that everyone will read the more visible instructions either, but it's a trivial change that could help quite a bit.

shreevatsa, I gave your comment on the linked thread a +1 and I'd like to reaffirm that vote here. Anyone asking a question should have such a blurb thrust at them, and the SO version is an excellent model: short, declarative or imperitive sentences hitting the three or four most important points. I strongly second the inclusion of such a sidebar on the MO Ask a Question page, in the same location.