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Comments on Why prefer Codidact to Stack Exchange?
Parent
Why prefer Codidact to Stack Exchange?
As I explained in this post and some community staff confirmed, Codidact is almost a miniature version of SE. In fact, I see no radical difference between them.
As we know, almost all (in my opinion, all without exception) people coming to Codidact are already familiar with SE. So, why should we expect that they prefer to contribute to this community, rather than SE? Only because of some meta issues?
I know that the main motivation for creating Codidact was some controversy about some meta issues. But, please note that many people, who are interested in contributing to a Q&A community, do not care about meta subjects like "Code of Conduct", "Copyright Licenses", firing some community staff etc.
Even, almost all Codidact community staff are still serious active SE users, and I think almost all user protestors against some SE policies will continue their contributions to SE even if they face more unpleasant policies. Why? Because the main important thing to almost all contributors is "asking and answering."
In my opinion, if we want active communities, we need many people to contribute regularly, especially for some communities like a math community.
Updated
There are some some points in the answers, which need to be responded to (Since a math community is about to launch, I use this community as an example to clarify what I mean):
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I agree with the fact that Codidact is a non-profit, community-focused, and open-source platform, which distinguishes Codidact from Stack Exchange. However, such characteristics cannot motivate enough people to contribute to such a community regularly. I, as a typical math enthusiast willing to contribute to a math Q&A community, prefer to spend my time and energy in a community in which I can be sure that there are enough math experts to communicate with them. Why has Math Stack Exchange become successful? Because at the time of its beginning many people needed a math Q&A community and there was no serious rival, so people had to join Math.SE and developed it. But, now there exists a terribly successful community, Math.SE, so that I think almost all career math experts (including teachers, students, and researchers) prefer to devote their little free time to contributing to a developed community, rather than an embryonic one; one can only hope that a few idle math experts contribute occasionally to such a new community.
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Some people believe that they can always have an alive small community and do not need to attract individual people. I think such a claim is not true for any Q&A community; it may be true for some people willing to discuss some topics with each other, but the story of a Q&A community is different. Mathematics has terribly many independent branches. So, if we want to have an active math community we need many people, and a small community is not enough for such a subject. The point is, that when people see that their questions are not answered (properly), they become discouraged from asking in such a community.
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I agree that many people opposing SE policies and rules; I personally have many problems with them. But, such people still continue their contributions because the most important factor of a successful Q&A community is its population, especially for some communities like a math community. People like good policies, rules, and norms, but their needs, namely asking and answering, are their priorities, which would not be satisfied in a small community.
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I agree that casual users do not care about meta issues. But, the point is that active meta users will come from such casual users; if not enough casual users are not interested in continuing their contributions to a community, we cannot have enough active meta users to develop the community. Each community first needs to attract casual users and then it expects to be developed by serious users.
There are several differences in the philosophy of Codidact vs. Stack Exchange that may contribute to people preferring …
4y ago
> please note that many people, who are interested in contributing to a Q&A community, do not care meta subjects like "C …
4y ago
> As I explained in this post and some community staff confirmed, Codidact is almost a miniature of SE. In fact, I see n …
4y ago
Superior technology The site software supports more post types than just Q&A, and multiple Q&A sections with separat …
7mo ago
I appreciate your passion! It resonates very strongly with me, as someone who wears his heart on his sleeve. One thing I …
4y ago
Since this is obviously open to individual answers, I will give my reason. The structure of SE leads to it being much m …
7mo ago
Post
please note that many people, who are interested in contributing to a Q&A community, do not care meta subjects like "Code of Conduct", "Copyright Licenses", firing some community staff
The casual user of any system generally doesn't care about this type of stuff. The active, involved, users - a small percentage on almost any public system - do care. They care because it affects them directly in some cases, or because they are concerned about the goals, morals or other aspects of a system where they spend a lot of their time & energy.
It is, in some ways, similar to politics (in a nominally democratic nation, not the same in a totalitarian regime - but consider US, Canaa, Australia, most of Europe, etc.):
- A very small group really do things (career politicians, the Codidact developers)
- A larger group, but still a minority, put a lot of time & energy into the system (politically active, "Meta" users)
- The vast majority have their opinions but relatively little real action (voters, regular users)
We don't expect 100% of Codidact users to become developers or even significant Meta users. But we want to provide an environment where everyone who wants to participate in a productive way (from asking & answering on up to helping develop and run the system) can do so. For the casual user, Code of Conduct and similar issues will have zero effect on them - they just need a system where they can find answers to their questions. For the more active users, these things matter.
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