Welcome to Codidact Meta!
Codidact Meta is the meta-discussion site for the Codidact community network and the Codidact software. Whether you have bug reports or feature requests, support questions or rule discussions that touch the whole network – this is the site for you.
A refactoring convenience function.
Here is a redraft and elaboration of what this post is about, partially in response to some comments I've received.
This post may be about a few different things at once, and may need to be refactored. (In my opinion, this makes it interesting as a question, since the post acts as a demonstration of what the question is itself about.)
Some sub-topics here:
-
A refactoring convenience function.
-
In general, to what extent is the design intention of Codidact discourage unnecessary on-platform edits?
-
What is a "braindump" (in this context), and to what extent is it against the design intention of Codidact?
1. A refactoring convenience function.
This is a simple topic and I would like to migrate it to a separate question, when I have some time. I just mean a button that reduces the number of mouse clicks, for when you believe a post should be separated into multiple separate questions. It occurs often on Stack Exchange that a question is closed as containing multiple questions. I have often had the thought, "Why not make it easy to split it apart into its constituent questions, then?"
2. In general, to what extent is the design intention of Codidact to discourage unnecessary on-platform edits?
I am new here, so I don't know who has the most influence or personal ownership of "what the purpose of Codidact is". I originally thought it was Monica Cellio, but now think user Andreas also plays a huge role. I am not here to tell anyone what the purpose is, only to suggest ideas to help realize its purpose, once I understand it more fully.
I would like clarification regarding if it is a priority of this platform that people try relatively hard to meticulously prepare good-quality posts off of the platform, before posting them. If that is an explicit intention, then I can think of ways that the site moderation can facilitate that and realize that goal. On the other hand, what is the final purpose of discouraging, say, sloppy contributions? During my time on Stack Exchange, I never minded editing and refining other people's posts. I found it fun. On Stack Exchange, edits on a question do indeed "bump them up" in the feed. That was never a problem for me. One commenter seems to suggest that it is not good for there to be too many active edits on a question. Can anyone confirm this part of the Codidact aim?
3. What is a "braindump" (in this context), and to what extent is it against the design intention of Codidact?
I will migrate this sub-question to another post soon, but it touches, again, on my understanding of the aim of Codidact. To be expanded later.
2 answers
Sometimes a brain dump is a bunch of questions and answers, and in that case (as suggested in another answer) it's best to do the "dump + refine" step separately and post when ready. That way people don't see, and consider answering, questions that aren't yet ready for attention.
Other times a brain dump is really an article or a resource compilation or a blog post. Codidact supports other post types, and some of our communities use them (Electrical Engineering Papers, Languages & Linguistics Resources, and the blog here on Meta, for example). We're happy to set up new post types and/or categories for any of our communities that want them.
0 comment threads
If you want to evolve multiple questions from a long writeup, do it outside the site. There is nothing preventing you from writing as much text as you want as fast as you want into a file on your own system. Then, when you're ready, you can break up the brain dump into individual coherent posts. You don't need Codidact to solve that for you.
We don't want to see all the individual refinements on the way to a proper post. You wouldn't want to read a novel that changes every day as the author goes from a rough draft to the final version either.
1 comment thread
1 comment thread