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Comments on Problems i have encountered/seen in the last week
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Problems i have encountered/seen in the last week
I am a new user to Codidact that just migrated from StackOverflow and there are some things I would like to get across, besides this website being smaller, but we already knew what we were getting into.
StackOverflow's equivalent here has been divided into 2 categories (Power Users/Software Development) which to me makes no sense while your community is already scattered to the cosmic winds.
Everything looks desolate. The first question I clicked on was 8 years old and had 1 answer. Scientific Speculation has tons of question which just don't make sense, I think it is because of the confusion caused by the name, since the community has nothing to do with science, but world building.
People constantly downvote for not "agreeing" with proposals, I thought the use of votes was to determine whether the question was well formulated, included information needed, not have multiple questions, all the bells and whistles it takes for this website to work. But it seems that at least partially are used just to express their opinion on the question's topic itself, and talking about it like it makes any sense.
All of this to end with my suggestions:
- Change the Scientific Speculation name to something more fitting, not involving the word science.
- Remove off-topic question that clutter the good ones, especially if they were imported.
- Educate people a little more on vote etiquette (i.e. just because you don't understand why someone wants to know X, or if you think they are being mean, don't downvote, leave a comment, but I don't think a downvote is merited)
- Add a system where people can just click a button and be transported to one of the recent/no answer questions that need to be answered/edited.
Update : So I ended up updating this rant to more closely get attention to the issues I have been seeing on the website. And to use this rant for something good, I hope this gets seen.
> I am a new user to Codidact that just migrated from StackOverflow and there are some things I would like to get across …
8mo ago
> Codidact has been divided into 2 categories (PowerUsers/SoftwareDevelopment) No, it hasn't. It is a network of 17 c …
8mo ago
Just like on SE, things are vastly different between individual sites. You say you came from StackOverflow. Our most s …
8mo ago
Post
I am a new user to Codidact that just migrated from StackOverflow and there are some things I would like to get across.
Welcome to Codidact! Thank you for sharing your suggestions for improvement. One of the differences with Codidact is that the code is open source, so anyone who wants to can contribute to improving it. This can be by writing code, raising new feature requests, finding bugs, or suggesting improvements to documentation.
There is a lot of work still to be done, but it is encouraging to see regular improvements that do not need to wait for employee availability. You can keep track of these at Recent feature changes to the Codidact software.
Downvotes
The question is a self labelled rant, and that can lead to downvotes, but please don't let that put you off giving feedback. Each potential improvement / feature / bug that you spot is useful to hear about. If you raise each one in a separate Meta question then each can receive up and downvotes accordingly, rather than good ideas being lost under the downvotes on unrelated parts of the question.
Some of the points you raise have been discussed in other Meta questions, so I'll link to them during this answer.
There has also been previous discussion of What should I know when coming here from Stack Exchange?
Codidact has been divided into 2 categories (PowerUser/SoftwareDevelopment) which to me makes no sense
Codidact currently has 18 communities, plus a Proposals section for communities that are not ready yet.
You are not the only person to be concerned about splitting communities. There has been discussion of How granular should network communities be? There has also been a specific discussion about Is it possible to merge Power Users and Linux Systems? For Power Users and Software Development there is less likely to be a merge as Power Users is for software and hardware usage, while Software Development is for programming.
Everything looks desolate, the first question I clicked on was 8 years old and had 1 answer, ... import some questions/answers from StackExchange
Some Codidact communities have tried this, and others have chosen not to. Of those that have tried this, at least one has chosen to later remove them. This still leaves open the possibility of importing or re-asking a small number of carefully chosen questions, but some of the disadvantages remain, so I'd recommend reading the previous discussions before deciding to what extent to do this:
- What is the policy on importing questions by simply quoting the question over here?
- What kinds of data import can QPixel support?
- Proposal: tool for user-requested import of a single question and its answers from SE
- We should delete all old imported content
I saw a question on cabbages needing oxygen to live.
Don't get me wrong but this ... we learn at 4th grade
The question Do plants need ambient oxygen? may seem simple to you, but different people learn different topics at different rates. We don't have a rule against simple questions. It's also worth bearing in mind that the question is from Scientific Speculation, which is a community with roots in Worldbuilding Stack Exchange. This means some of the questions may be from people working on a novel, a screen play, a board game, or a computer game, whose specialisation is not in a scientific field. Their fictional worlds will benefit from being able to ask the basic scientific questions.
There's no in between either it's 5th grade basic questions, or rocket science that only a small group of people can interact with.
I agree that we would benefit from a broader range of questions for many of the Codidact communities. I don't know the best way to achieve this. Each of the communities has a Meta post seeking suggestions on how to grow. For example, the post on Scientific Speculation is How can we grow this community?
SE never had some place suited for discussion
There may be a Codidact chat function at some point but likely not in the near future. There has been some discussion of this:
As mentioned there, we have a link to Discord in the right hand panel in the meantime, labelled "You can also join us in chat!".
Lastly, separate yourselves from SE, ... people who moderate there can't moderate here for the sole difference of objective and rules, it's only a matter of time until someone mixes them up.
There has also been discussion of this, in How can Codidact be independent from Stack Exchange, when you have same moderators?
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