What to do with questions that show no (relevant) effort?

Question

This might be related to Very poor quality questions everywhere (like panels everywhere but without the magical feeling...) But I do not believe to be exactly the same.

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I believe that I am recently seeing a lot of users that do not really put research effort in their questions, but it might be a wording issue as well.

Take for instance this post: How to make hidden field not required? (one of many.)

I read this as "Here is my code so far and I need you to fix it, so it does X".

So I commented:

Please be aware that we do not provide tutorials or step-by-step instructions as explained in the help center. Instead explain your attempt(s), and be as complete as possible. What have you tried, what did you expect, what actually happened? If you have any code to include in the question, please add it. The more complete you are, the better we can formulate an answer.

User replied that code was provided (but I believe no research effort).

But then Clive provided an answer, making my doubt myself (hence this meta post). I too sometimes do understand an answer a question form the "unclear" review queue, and if you feel like answering I suppose it is good (after all the goal is to help others).

But on the other hand, the first line from the help center literally reads:

Search, and research

Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you found and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer!

So, I guess my question is: "Is a question that shows no research effort, a bad question?" And should it be flagged as such?

Or is just leaving a comment enough and do we hope users will learn?

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Another example: Show admin toolbar to only drupal admin pages

Answer 1

The question you take as first example has an issue: It shows the code, it says what the OP wants to achieve, but it doesn't say what the OP is obtaining from that code. Since it's not clear if that is code written from the OP, this could lead users to think the OP just found some code on Internet and wants to be sure it works for the purpose they have, or they want to adapt existing code for their own purpose.

Commenting and making users understand what we expect from a question is the correct thing to do.
Flagging should be reserved for very specific cases, for example a user who keeps asking the same kind of questions. For different users asking low quality questions, or showing a lack of research, flags should not be used, if you don't think there is the same user behind those accounts. If that is not the case, a question on meta pointing out a possible problem is perfectly acceptable.
Voting to close is the correct action to do, if you think the question suits one of the closing reasons, for example (talking of questions not showing any research effort) the question lacks so much details to be too broad, it is a request for tutorials, or it is subjective.

Keep in mind that it could also be the OP comes from different software, and what the OP doesn't describe is something the OP thinks implicit or obvious; the lack of description, in this case, doesn't mean lack of research. When possible, we should guide the users to make them better understand Drupal and its terminology.