How should I review First Posts?

Question

I keep finding myself inside the review queue of First Posts, and then not knowing what to do. If there are grammatical or formatting issues, those are easy - and I edit the question/answer and fix those.

But almost always, I wind up hitting "skip" on 2-3 posts, and then I just go back out to the main site because I feel like I'm not getting anywhere.

Most of the questions I see are not as thorough as one that I would probably post. But I see few posts that I think deserve a down vote or some other intervention.

I feel like I should "do" something more than hit skip all the time. If I'm honest, I'm secretly afraid of hitting "No Action Needed" if there's the off chance that action is actually needed.

Other than the Theory of Moderation, are there other resources I might look at? Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on my comments above? And finally, do you have any personal "theories" or habits as you go through the review queue?

Answer 1

An explanation is found in priviliges section of the manual: https://serverfault.com/help/privileges/access-review-queues in particular on First Post reviews:

... The First Posts queue contains the first few posts asked by new users, who may not fully understand the best way to ask and answer questions, or what's on- and off-topic on this site. The purpose of this queue is to give special attention to users who may need to be educated on some aspect of our model and to posts that are more likely to need improvement.

In these queues, you can edit the post, flag it, upvote or downvote it, add a comment, or upvote a previously existing comment. When you take one of these actions, the "I'm Done" button becomes enabled, allowing you to complete the review. If you feel that the post is fine as it is, but you don't want to vote on it, click the "No Action Needed" button. If you're unsure about the post, use the "Skip" button to move on to the next review item without taking action on the current one. ...

You get awarded the privilege when you have been an active member and gained a certain amount of points and should by now be more less familiar what the community considers good questions.

My rough checklist is:

• Is the post in English? If not flag, vote-to-close or as a moderator delete outright.
• Is the post clearly Spam? Yes: flag, vote-to-close or as a moderator delete outright.
• Do I understand enough of a question to decide if it is on-topic or not? Vote up or down. Take relevant action if off-topic.
• Do I understand enough of an answer to decide if it is relevant or not? Vote up or down.
• Do I feel inclined to edit the post to improve formatting, grammar, inline screenshots and apply style conventions (such as the one that since every post is already "signed" and attributed to your SE network login posts don't need to contain names and "Thanks")?
• Do I feel inclined to leave one of my canned Auto Review Comments or a specific comment.
• Check if for incorrect/missing tags. (Not really, I personally don't care very much about tags although I probably should.)
• I frequently use Skip and No Action Needed too!