One of the differences between Physics.SE and Stack Overflow is that SO has at least one review queue which we don't have: Triage. From the 2014 announcement comes this description:
We've been trying to find a more automated way to categorize questions when they're asked rather than requiring each and every question to be moderated.
[...]
Behind the scenes, a "quality score" is calculated for each question based on an automated analysis of the content. Those that score well are sent immediately to the homepage; those that score poorly will now be sent to Triage. From there, they'll go to one of three places based on human input:
- The homepage, where they can be answered
- The close or moderator flag queue where they can be reviewed and eventually deleted
- A new "Help and Improvement" queue where they can be edited
That is, there exists a machine-learning toolset which flags some questions that shouldn't be answered right away, but should be looked at and possibly improved (or closed) first instead. These questions can be reviewed by anyone with 500+ reputation, just like the other review queues.
In a recent Meta post on updates to the review queues, under "Planned changes," appears the statement:
The Triage queue will also be available on all sites but only turned on by default on Stack Overflow. Have a meta discussion and ask a moderator to status-review if your site wishes to add the Triage queue.
The post says that more details about the upcoming changes to the review queues will be available later in Q3 2021, closer to their launch.
Here on Physics, we get a fair number of questions from newcomers and passers-by which are off-topic according to our site's homework policy. While the homework policy was frequently discussed in the past, Meta activity about it has died down in the past few years as our community's consensus has matured. However, we still have a regular trickle of off-topic homework-like questions which accumulate answers before they are closed. Evaluating whether an answer to a homework-like question is "complete enough" to warrant deletion is my least-favorite part of going through the moderator flag queue. It'd be much more fair if those types of questions could be hidden from answerers who don't yet know they are off-topic, so that those answerers don't waste their time on off-topic questions.
So, discuss. Is a Triage queue something that we want on Physics? Attempting to train Stack Exchange's AI to keep low-effort homework questions off of the front page — is that a reasonable goal? How would we decide if it were working like we wanted? What would be pitfalls or problems to beware of?