Timeline for Why are we so strict on the rules?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
22 events
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| Sep 28, 2016 at 15:46 | comment | added | Sven Mod | @Reaces: Your Q&A ratio and rep proves that you are neither lazy nor an idiot (obligatory disclaimer: At least as far as this site is concerned) :) But seriously, my remark was purely about the semi-regular idea to let mods do some thing or another "to improve our site". Remember the difficulty class triage idea from a few weeks back? The occasional edit for a missed tag isn't a problem, but I would be weary of having to actually read every question to check if they are appropriately tagged. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 15:26 | comment | added | Reaces | @Sven As a lazy idiot... I am very sad to hear that. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:36 | comment | added | Sven Mod | @user121391: We are a bit of an odd thing in the Stack Exchange universe with being one of the very few communities that are decidedly not open for everyone (the others being MathOverflow and Network Engineering, I believe) and I am not sure what the company thinks about it. Certainly they don't actively cater to our "special needs" (I am OK with that...). | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:31 | comment | added | user121391 | @Sven So I assume the parent company does not care to improve the technical side or is unable to (regarding the search). It is unfortunate, but I can see why it may frustrate good people and over time scare them away (problems, like broken windows, do not get attention and are not fixed). In this way, maybe I can relate to the broken windows theory, but not on the "zero tolerance" side, but the "improve the community proactively" side. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:31 | comment | added | user9517 | @user121391 Everyone is free to vote as they see fit. Everyone gets to decide by voting. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:27 | comment | added | Sven Mod | @user121391: We have discussed this again and again - just iterating this again is pointless. The majority of our active users want a limited scope with more or less strict enforcement of our arbitrary(!) rule set. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:25 | comment | added | user121391 | Who decides what is good and what is crap? You? Me? Some randomly chosen n people that have amassed m reputation points from completely different topics? Experts on the subject (which would have to be chosen and tested continuously)? AI? I'm interested, as I could not imagine anything of those to be viable in the long term. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:21 | comment | added | user9517 | Closing crap questions is a social good. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:20 | comment | added | user9517 | There are lots of things that could happen that don't. People could read the site help before posting. People could search the site before posting. People could use Google before posting. People could write interesting, well researched questions but none of that happens either. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:15 | comment | added | user121391 | @Sven Instead you do work by closing questions. Also, you would not have to to it, it could be done by others that want it, or auto-tagged by the system. You could also limit your search to properly tagged questions, which would be those of un-lazy people. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:12 | comment | added | Sven Mod | @user121391: As a mod, I have zero interest in becoming a secretary for lazy idiots and do their work by tagging for them. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:09 | comment | added | user121391 | Your cpanel example would be solved by better search and ignore options almost completely - mods could tag untagged questions and you could then ignore them (while others can use them, if they want). | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:09 | comment | added | Sven Mod | @user121391: I disagree with both you and Andrew. We (well, I) want questions that are good and within the scope of our site and I don't see why we should widen our scope or loosen the "enforcement" of our rules. I am fine with excluding home users - they have other places to go to. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:07 | comment | added | user121391 | @Hanginoninquietdesperation Broken windows theory is only that, a theory. I agree on your second point, searching for good questions is difficult here, but I think it could be improved by tools. For example, fuzzy tag search over multiple sites, include and ignore lists of users for search, generally stored search criteria, tag hierarchies/trees, multiple separate upvotes for effort/content/etc. and searching for them, ... that just from the back of my head. Similar to the web, I want to find what I want to see, not tell others they should do how I want them to. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:03 | comment | added | user9517 | Evidence of broken windows theory in action. We once allowed CPanel questions with the intent of gathering Q&A for sysadmins unfortunately all we did was bring in the clueless pointy click crowd. Now we can't get rid of them. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 9:00 | comment | added | user9517 | Broken windows theory. I search every day for good interesting questions that are well researched. I am always disappointed. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 8:59 | comment | added | user121391 | @Sven Yes, this was the problem I wanted to highlight (and what the asker also said) - the rules are too strict and exclude good questions by strict enforcement. To solve this, either the rules could become more differentiated (my proposal) or the enforcement could become less strict (Andrew's proposal). | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 8:57 | comment | added | user121391 | @Iain This is a very negative outlook that would ultimately either destroy you or lead you away from this site. I think it would be better to reward good, interesting questions than to try to destroy or prevent bad ones. It is difficult to reliable say wether a question is good or bad, it is much easier to judge the effort that went in it. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 8:55 | comment | added | Sven Mod | What Iain said and also: Anything in a home environment is clearly off-topic, "best practices" or not. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 8:52 | comment | added | user9517 | You could conceivably ask any IT related question on Server Fault and expect to have it answered. That would make us (like many other places) an helldesk for the internet. That is not our mission. We limit the scope to a business environment so that we are not overwhelmed by crappy questions from home users and the hoards of cluelessness that surrounds Stack Overflow. Sadly we have failed. Hanging on in quiet desperation... | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 8:48 | comment | added | user9517 | We have changed our scope and reduced our quality requirements several times over. All it does it allow more crappier off topic questions. The end result being few people bother any more and the river of shit becomes Amazonian. | |
| Sep 28, 2016 at 8:24 | history | answered | user121391 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |