ESR's amazing "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" is far superior to this:

http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

And the discussion that went along with it when it was posted ~3 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2911381

But this is more about sugar-coating questions and using euphemisms so they sound a certain, almost apologetic way. I agree that '[insert life story here]. What should I do?' isn't a good way to ask a question, but instead of suggesting researching some of it beforehand and presenting results alongside the question (like on Stack Exchange), this gives a bunch of canned questions with wordings akin to management speak.

I don't think this is useful for members of Hacker News, which is a very down-to-earth culture. I myself couldn't care less if someone said specifically 'it sounds like...' or asked 'any guidance?' as long as the question was not rude and the asker showed putting in some effort into trying to devise an answer herself.

I agree it's not necessary for hacker news but it is for another site hackers use just as much, Stack Overflow. Being able to ask a question in a clear concise manner with examples of code and a clear line of thinking is invaluable.

I don't understand why anyone would show a big content-hiding popup at any point during my visit to your site. Do they actually work with anybody?

I won't even click to close them anymore. Instead, I just disable Javascript immediately for that site.