Is it really like this?

I'm sorry you had a poor experience with the Incubator system. The Incubator is a bit of an experiment; as we continue to use it, we'll come across areas for improvement and ways to oil squeaky hinges.

However, taking a look at the post in question, I would dispute the assertion that the downvotes are because of the "unknown". Assuming I have the correct post - one about the "most influential animes among members" - I can spot a number of reasons why it's accumulating downvotes for not unjustified reasons.

First of all, it's unclear what "influential" means. That word means different things in different contexts, and you don't define the word in the question anywhere. "influential" generally means having an impact on a person or that leads to a change in some aspect of thinking about a topic - or at least, that's how I'd define it off the top of my head. However, you then change to using the word "favorite", which has entirely different connotations from "influential".

That alone would indicate that the question is unclear, which is a fairly legitimate reason to downvote.

In addition, asking for people's favorites - or the most influential work on an individual, which is highly subjective as well - isn't a great fit for a Q&A format in the first place. There are potentially ~8,000,000,000 answers to that question, none of which are any more correct than any other. It's entirely subjective with no real lasting value in a repository of information. That means it's not a great example for a proposed Q&A community; it's a poor ambadassor for the concept of a community if it's not a good fit for the format.

On that note, the proposal itself is, in my opinion, a little iffy. Movies and Literature combined is a huge scope, and the audiences for those different topics don't tend to have too much overlap. The methods of consumption for movies versus, for instance, academic literature, have almost nothing in common. This can be observed back on Stack - I've been a mod on Literature Stack Exchange since '17, and I can tell you the questions are a very different style from over on Movies.SE, and I would not be in favor of mixing those communities too much.

I hope that sheds a little light on why your incubator question wasn't received too well. I apologize if this comes off a little harsh; I don't want to discourage you from further participation, but maybe change how you're thinking about the Q&A format a little and take the strengths and limitations of that format into consideration for future proposals and example questions.

posted 4 months ago

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

4mo ago by trichoplax‭

Mithical‭ staff

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To add to Mithical's excellent answer:

I'm sorry you've had a bad experience with your first incubator question. Our vision hasn't changed; that statement lays out our goals. That isn't the same as saying that every possible topic will work, and the incubator needs both positive and negative examples to help work out the boundaries of a community's scope. A proposal does not sink or swim on the basis of one question; if the topic is viable as a Q&A community, it will have many questions. If people ask those questions in the incubator, then we have stuff to work with. If nobody asks anything, then we have no evidence that the community is viable.

Codidact is trying new things (the incubator is one such). We learn from our experience and refine; the incubator was our second community-proposal system. Our communities are experimenting with new content types, sometimes new features, and stronger or looser rules than what's used over on SE or Reddit. We don't think free-for-all a la Quora works, and we're not the best platform for loose discussion forums, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for creativity. The new proposal for a worldbuilding community could be quite creative and flexible in a way that Electrical Engineering is not. We have to try it out to see what's feasible, and that's where the incubator -- and, again, many questions, not just one -- come in.

posted 4 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Monica Cellio‭ staff

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