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Comments on What's more important for codidact - quality or helping questions get answered?
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What's more important for codidact - quality or helping questions get answered?
When I read through https://codidact.org/ I get the impression that the focus is on helping people get their questions answered. There are obviously other benefits, like providing a platform for people who want to share their knowledge, but the message that stands out to me most is:
This is a place where you can get your question answered.
If anyone disagrees with this, I can try to edit the question to provide examples/quotes, but I feel like it's kind of obvious so I'll keep it brief for now.
However, in my interactions with some regulars on here, sometimes I've gotten a different impression. Often, they assert that content quality is paramount, and seem very concerned about keeping the hapless newbies from posting stuff that isn't good enough for the site. The same people don't seem too concerned about trying to help the most people who come to the site - there seems to be an elitist sentiment of "if their content isn't good enough they can stay out". A lot of voting, moderation, discussion and feedback is currently dominated by this attitude, which I think is very confusing for new users. It's not clear what the site is about. Is it a populist site that tries to help everyone who asks, or is it an elitist site that maintains high standards?
I intend this post as feedback on either the text on https://codidact.org/ being misleading, or the culture being out of alignment with the site's vision. Notably, the word "quality" doesn't even appear on that page. Moreover, it mentions things like "community-focused" and "non-hostile" which seem to me at odds with elitism.
Of course the two things are highly related, but ultimately one must be the first principle. For example, if quality is most important, it is reasonable to close or delete poorly-written questions even if it means the asker might be denied help and other users are prevented from helping them. If answering questions is most important, there is an argument for helping the asker first, cleaning up the question later.
I don't think this is a philosophical question. I'll assert that the two biggest types of user on QA sites are:
- People who want to create quality content - they want to see the site grow and evolve into a compendium of high quality knowledge, where only the best-written questions get asked and answered
- People who want to create a helpful community - they want to see the site become a resource where you can go and ask your own questions, even if they're not the best written
I think currently the "marketing" is aiming mostly towards the "helpful community" group, but the actual site culture seems to be more like the "quality content" group. This is counter-productive to growing the site. Suppose the "marketing" works and you attract the "helpful community" people, and they immediately discover a dominant "quality content" culture - they will probably feel frustrated and not want to participate as much. Meanwhile, if you want the "quality content" group, you will keep getting confused "helpful community" people who wander in and annoy the regulars with bad questions and create more work for moderators. The site presentation should not be encouraging them.
And yes, I do see that these are not mutually exclusive. Some people would be happy with either type of site. My question here is about those people who want only one or the other - I believe such people are quite numerous.
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The quality over everything and running the noobs off users have had their way for years at this point and nothing to show for it.
In the past year, Photography has had 2 questions, Outdoors 8. No one is going to look at that and ask questions, regardless of the "quality" because the lack of activity suggests that no one would answer their question. Stackoverflow as the biggest site had something worth gatekeeping, while I can and do get better answers on FB/Reddit than I would here.
Quality is also subjective,
- Should I use a tippet ring when using dry flys?
- Do I need to use Color Preserver when rod building with silk?
- How to keep eyelets from icing up?
- What side of the spine do the guides go on?
There are all perfectly fine questions and would get answers on FB, they do require expert knowledge, but anyone in the fishing/rod building community would have that. Here people would complain if I didn't explain what a tippet ring is, which means that I would get higher quality answers with less effort over on FB.
Without questions, the sites will die for lack of activity, and some of the loudest voices for "quality" aren't asking any questions so why should we cater to them?
I can get faster/better answers from wider communities who have way less quality control (both FB and Reddit lack duplicate closing) for much less effort, why should I bother spending the effort here? If someone is rude to me, I can block them and never have to deal with them again.
One time on Reddit someone was asking for help with getting the first layer of his 3D-printed object to stick and not only did we solve his problem, but we told him to flip the object 180 degrees because the level of expertise was so high that we knew exactly what he was printing based off only the first layer.
Mass has an expertise all its own, the more eyeballs the more chances someone will have of knowing the exoteric knowledge required. Instead of hoping for mystical experts who can't be bothered to Google things this site needs more users or it's going to end up more dead than it already is.
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