Do esoteric rules hurt the site?

Question

As a lurker/new user it seems like the actual rules for what questions are allowed to be asked are esoteric and arcane and are enforced either arbitrarily or with no feedback to the person asking the question. I believe this is detrimental to the site as a whole.

ID this game questions, comparison questions, build order questions, all arguably have value yet are off topic (possibly because they are similar to other question types which are not allowed, like shopping recommendations). This is despite the fact that strategy questions or questions requesting tips are allowed, though they involve a fair amount of discussion.

As a fairly new/inexperienced user I know am discouraged from using this site because questions that have measurable value and useful information are closed simply because they seem similar to a banned type.

Guidelines are fine, but when a question serves as a means of googling into the site, has a significant number of views and upvotes, and contains useful information then removing it from the site is detrimental, rather than beneficial. Isn't it worth judging these types of questions on a case by case basis, rather than deleting them because they are similar to a type of question that is banned for reasons that do not apply?

Answer 1

So, I've already expressed that I think we have a problem; but do we really?

Maybe it's my training as a developer, but I've tried to live by a rule: if you can't measure it, it didn't happen. So let's see about measuring this.

For my metric I chose: Percentage of Closed questions asked by users with <200 rep correlated by the month in which they joined. The 200 number was a bit arbitrary, but I felt it encompassed users who don't stay around much. I've also included the raw closed question rates so you can get a feel for the numbers. Now, as we can see closed rates have always correlated well with new users. This makes sense as the newest users will be the ones least experienced with stagesix gaming.se specifically and stackexchanges in general. The more interesting trend is the increase in percentages. Were this correlated by close date, we could just say that older users were learning not to ask questions which would be quickly closed. However, because I correlated by join date, what it actually says is that users who get a closed question are less likely to stick around and accumulate rep. This becomes progressively more true as time passes.

This leads me to my first conclusion: getting your question closed is a poor user experience for new users

Ok, with that inhand, let's ask the next important question: what percentage of new users are asking questions which get closed?

This graph is the percentage of users which join each month and ask a question which is closed. I've used a logarithmic scale, so the first thing you should note is that it's a very low number (1-4%). However, even if we ignore the last couple months we still see a trend of new users becoming progressively more likely to end up asking questions which will be closed. Since we already know that those users are unlikely to stay around, this means we're throttling our incoming user rate.

This leads to my second Assertion: Knowing that your question will become closed, is getting progressively harder for new users.

If I were the project manager on a team who's job it was to make sure GSE grows over time, these would be two metrics I would care strongly about: How often getting a question Closed turns users off to our site, and what percentage of new users fall into that group. Ideally, I'd want to drive down both of these metrics over time. Sadly, GSE isn't my project to manage, so I am left to send out my plea to the community. New users are having it a little rough, how do we fix that?

note, I drew my numbers off of variations on this query: http://data.stackexchange.com/gaming/query/65149/new-users-rate-of-asking-closed-questions

Answer 2

New Users/Lurkers

So, let's look at both sides of the fence here. New users are the life-blood of this site. We are not exclusive and we don't want to be. Lurkers are great, and new users are even better. We want to encourage people to come and to participate in our site. And we make no assumptions that you should know all of the rules of our site right off the bat. Especially if you've never used a StackExchange site before.

Please do not bite the newbies

There is a policy at Wikipedia to not bite the newbies. Users are supposed to assume that newbies are just learning the ropes, and I for one do try to apply that here. And I know from personal experience a number of our mods do as well. When posts are closed, especially with new users, I often see comments by the mods here explaining why it was closed, usually with links to either the Meta or to our FAQ.

It's not a slap on the wrist

So, this is something that many users have trouble with, new or old. Closing a question is not meant to be insulting, nor is it meant to be a personal offense. Closing a question has nothing to do with the person, it is only about maintaining the quality of the site. But users new and old often times feel hurt by having a question closed. And this is one of the reasons comments are often left explaining things (led with a "welcome", not a "you're stupid"). We want to encourage users to learn to post questions that fit better with our site. Again, it is not meant to be a personal assault if we close a question.

Suffrage

Voting is our system for determining quality of a question or answer on things that are on topic. And often times I will not vote down a bad question immediately if it was asked by a new user. Instead, I will leave a comment detailing how to improve the question, or if I can improve it myself, I will edit it and leave a comment about what can be done better in the future. However, we do have votes for a reason. Our system is designed in a way so that we can vote quality posts up, and less helpful posts down, while still leaving them in the system. So while we can be lenient for a little while, it actually hurts the overall quality of the system if we are too lenient with how we vote.

Positive Reinforcement

Now, while this talks to your problem, and how you might be feeling, it doesn't necessarily address it. It says, "this is why you think we're jerks, but we're not." but doesn't try to help with the fact that "you think we're jerks".

It's hard to make a site-wide or community-wide policy that can fix this, but we, as some of the more vocal or experienced members can take steps to help improve this situation. Not that we will stop closing questions, because we don't want to do so at the cost of our quality, but maybe coming up with a way to help improve things.

So, I'm going to suggest the following for those of us who are a bit more involved in the community.

• Make sure you go through Users' first answers and first questions and vote and comment on the good things, and inform them of what can be improved
• Whenever a question by a user with < 200 rep is closed, be sure to comment and inform them of why (duplicates are maybe an exception)
• Encourage two-way communication by linking to chat and saying "if you have any more questions, feel free to respond by leading your comment with @Ktash"
• Give users upvotes if their answer is right, even if it is not the best answer (but be wary of doing so at the cost of burying a better answer)

I know that many of us here try to follow these guidelines already (or maybe just need a reminder to do so more frequently) but hopefully with these steps we can see an improvement for new users' initial experience in our system.

"Have you tried using an XML parser instead?"

One thing to consider is that we also have to deal with a lot of these, and sometimes that may make us a little curt. I think we all try to do our best to be as sunshiny as possible all the time, but sometimes things may slip through the crack on our 4th or 5th game recommendation close for the day. I'm not using this as an excuse, but merely pointing it out. New users see their one post get closed, and we will do our best to be friendly. But on the other side of things, our mods close quite a few in a day and that is on top of other moderation duties (as well as lives since many are volunteers).

We are a community

Please, come chat with us on the bridge. You will find that a lot of times, we would love to make game recommendations or strategize with you. We are all avid gamers, so we would love to talk about video games. It may seem that there are "powers that be" that dictate everything, but we are a community, and we can be a very vocal one. Many of our moderators are selected via elections, so we promote from within.

Those who don't say anything are hard to account for, so speak up and make your voice heard.

Speaking of speaking up

Our system is ever changing. It has to be, honestly, to keep up and to maintain a quality. We vote on new policies and do our best to address new issues. We often have large, site-wide (and sometimes very heated) debates about what content will and will not work on this site and why. And as with any community or group, we don't always agree exactly. Sometimes we take votes, and sometimes our moderators take decisive action. I know this may seem draconian, but democracy doesn't work in all cases (just like the Q&A format for this site). Sometimes momentum just needs to be force and a decision needs to be made. For example, the Identify-this-game vote that was held recently was within 1 vote for a majority of the time. Had it been split down the middle, I'm not sure what would have happened, but likely it would have come down to our more experienced users coming to a decision on the matter so that things can move forward.

(Seemingly) Inconsistent rules

I know it may seem that our rules are a bit inconsistent. And, you know what, some of them very well might be. But, as stated above, we are always changing, and truth be told, usually arguing about some big site-wide decision like game-rec's or identify-this-game questions. And you'll find a lot of arguments for both sides. Please, I implore you to check out the ITG voting page for links for arguments on both sides. Many of which use existing policies as a basis.

The truth is that it isn't black and white, just like life isn't. Some of us are going to say that strategy-recommendation questions are completely on topic and A, B, and C are why. While others of us are going to say that it's not because of D, E, and F. And you'll likely see both sides citing existing policies as well as making compelling original arguments. But this all brings me around to one simple thing: speak up. If you think something is inconsistent, say so. But do know that there are times when we don't want to revisit a discussion. For example, I wouldn't recommend bringing up the identify-this-game questions. We have come to a collective decision about it for now and that is just where things are going to stand. Sometimes, rules are going to be there because they have been. That doesn't mean at some point in the future they can't be reopened, but it usually needs to come with either

1. something that is not working with what was decided or
2. something that is demonstrably missing or wrong with what was decided.

We all want to make this site as good it can be, and we just are doing our best to collectively decide what that means.

Answer 3

We're a questions and answers site, which brings certain benefits but also means that some kinds of topic just don't work well in this format. The big advantage of the Q&A format with our strict moderation is that the signal to noise is very high, you don't have to wade through a forum thread dozens of pages long to get to the answer, the most useful answer should be at the top of the list through voting here.

Removing those questions that don't fit on the site is important to keep the site focused and to avoid misleading users. We don't want to be a big search target for "identify this game" questions if we decided to not allow those anymore.

Build order questions are still on-topic here, but they can easily become problematic. If you're asking what everyones favorite build is, you'll get a big list with no criteria to judge the usefulness of the answers. Those kind of questions just don't work well with the Q&A format, they lead to questions that are extremely hard to maintain and just don't contain a lot of useful information. If you want your build order question to work here, be specific about your requirements.

The restrictions you encountered are a big part of why this site is useful, they are consequences of the Q&A format. If we would lift those restrictions, this site might become more newbie friendly, but it also will become less useful over time.

Answer 4

We have rules for reasons, if you would like specific reasons please look through our meta as all our decisions are made there.

Guidelines are fine

Guidelines are just unenforced rules. Are you suggesting we just sit here and say "Gosh these questions are really bad, let's think about how bad they are"?

The structure of the site is what sets us apart from forums and Yahoo answers, we have very specific rules to avoid us descending into chaos or going off on tangents.

Answer 5

It seems like the actual rules for what questions are allowed to be asked are esoteric and arcane and are enforced either arbitrarily or with no feedback to the person asking the question. I believe this is detrimental to the site as a whole.

This is certainly concerning, especially given the kind of exposure we're going through during these very hours. If there's a way we can make our policies any clearer I'm all for it.

However, it's really hard for us more experienced users to guess what rule(s) it is the FAQ does not make sufficiently clear by virtue of the fact we've written the rules and at least part of the FAQ. Please do go into more detail if you can muster the will to :)

ID this game questions,

These have been explicitly disallowed for different reasons than shopping recommendations. ITG have been shot down mostly because there's no way to authoritatively provide the answer that is in the asker's head. Game-rec have been shot down mostly because they just don't work in SE and are a source of cheap rep and badges: "OMG PORTAL +1"

comparison questions,

Comparison questions aren't per se evil, but honestly do you want to see questions asking the difference between the X game and the Y game for every X, Y games in the same genre? What's the difference between FIFA 2012 and FIFA 2011? What's the difference between FIFA 2012 and PES whatever?

Those questions are cheap to ask and very hard to answer in a way that doesn't sound like an advertisement for either game; otoh, an excellent answer can help people that are good at a game transition to the other painlessly understanding the differences in philosophy (something that would likely be agnostic of the version number du-jour). I wouldn't ban them all, just like I wouldn't have banned all ITG questions, but certainly I don't want to encourage more of them either.

build order questions,

We have many like these and as far as I'm aware they are welcome. Then again I'm not active in tags where those questions are typically asked.

Strategy questions or questions requesting tips are allowed, though they are essentially discussion questions.

Not really. A good answer to a strategy question doesn't necessarily trigger a back and forth between asker and answerer. If it does, the outcome of the discussion should be integrated in the answer itself. The end result should be an answer that tries to be that: an answer, and not just a stem for further back-and-forth about the topic.

As a fairly new/inexperienced user I know am discouraged from using this site because questions that have measurable value and useful information are closed simply because they seem similar to a banned type.

What I can suggest is this:

Closed questions are typically salvageable through editing. If you ask "what should I buy to do X?" your question will probably be closed, but editing it to "How can I do X?" can make it acceptable again. Try to engage with more experienced users either through comment and chat and see if somebody with experience can help give the questoin the right nudge.

Guidelines are fine, but when a question serves as a means of googling into the site, has a significant number of views and upvotes, and contains useful information then removing it from the site is detrimental, rather than beneficial.

No, quite the contrary. Such high-reward questions are invitation for others to post more questions like it. Just look at all the reps and the badges he got from this one question!

If we don't want questions of a certain kind, the single most effective things we can do is remove all questions of that kind from the site. It's painful but necessary.

Isn't it worth judging these types of questions on a case by case basis, rather than deleting them because they are similar to a type of question that is banned for reasons that do not apply?

Absolutely. Guidelines are not a tool to shut down your brain and just close questions mindlessly. However, do give us the benefit of the doubt and assume that when we close your question chances are it does need that nudge into being the kind of question we do want more of :)

Answer 6

It's not a matter of the questions being useful in general, it's a matter of the questions being useful on this site. The FAQ dictates questions be answerable objectively because that's the only way that the StackExchange engine really works. If questions weren't objectively answerable, then up/downvotes can't reflect an answer's quality. How can someone upvote a good answer when only the asker's opinion matters?

Raven dreamer once compared subjective questions to a "bring me a rock" command. The community in general can't judge what kind of rock the asker wants. Upvotes/downvotes allow the community to help judge question quality. The SE engine breaks down when the community can't effectively do this.

At the heart of it, that's why game-rec, ITG, etc questions are all banned from the site. It's not that they're not useful, they just aren't answerable on this site.

Answer 7

There are some specific question types that are not allowed on the site, and these are enumerated in the FAQ. The FAQ goes into the "why?" a bit as well, and you'll find discussions here on Meta that expand on the reasoning behind some of the more specific decisions.

This reasoning behind each prohibited type of question may seem impenetrable to new users, but it's the result of long discussions, sometimes lasting years, which led to the policies being created that way.

The Stack Exchange model lends itself well to certain types of question, and does poorly at other types - this is very much unlike a traditional discussion forum.

Give it some time and invest some effort, and you'll quickly find precisely how useful this site and it's community can be. :)

Answer 8

I hope you didn't take my recent meta discussion as inspiration for this post. My passionate defense of a single question that is on the inner edge of the rules does not mean that I don't understand the rules or don't agree with them. It was more of an example of a community divided issue, and a great example I think of how a community can ultimately resolve an issue through these meta discussions.

My only criticism for how things are run here is that we over anxiously delete questions, because it doesn't show the type of questions that are harmful to our format. However, I believe the argument for deleting questions which have fallen outside of the scope of the FAQ is specifically targeted at new users. Users would come to a Google searched result of, for example a game recommendation, and ask one of their own - even if it was closed with a reason saying "these aren't allowed here anymore". This type of cleanup is necessary to deter users from asking questions which have not characteristically fit well in the past (identify-this-game questions are a recent example).

I'm sure we actually greatly suffer from diminished SEO as a result of these cleanups, but they are necessary all the same.

The best thing to do if you don't agree with a decision on your question, the first to;

• Search meta for a relevant discussion that matches why you think your question was closed. If there is no discussion, or the discussion did not reach a consensus then,
• Post a meta discussion about your specific question

I feel every meta post better shapes the site in the end due to the community discussion that results from it.

I think Ktash said it best when referring to closed questions:

It's not a slap on the wrist

On a closing note, don't let the vocal minority on some issues deter you from making your opinion heard. Just keep a positive tone.

Answer 9

As a lurker/new user it seems like the actual rules for what questions are allowed to be asked are esoteric and arcane and are enforced either arbitrarily or with no feedback to the person asking the question. I believe this is detrimental to the site as a whole.

Rules are not enforced arbitrarily, we close questions when they don't confirm to our FAQ, or after (in many cases extensive) meta discussion. We don't just close questions because "we feel like it."

A user is always able to give feedback either through commenting, chat, or meta. If a meta discussion is held on a question, the discussion is almost always linked on the relevant question. Furthermore, the person asking the feedback has no more say in whether their question is allowed on the site than anyone else in our community, so even if they disagree with the closure, this doesn't matter if the rest of the community disagrees with them.

ID this game questions, comparison questions, build order questions, all arguably have value and are maligned mainly because they are similar to other question types which are not allowed, like shopping recommendations. This is despite the fact that strategy questions or questions requesting tips are allowed, though they are essentially discussion questions.

I'm not going to discuss the policy on each of these questions with you, if you want to see the discussion on them you should look through meta and voice your opinion there. A post like this is not the proper way to do this.

As a fairly new/inexperienced user I know am discouraged from using this site because questions that have measurable value and useful information are closed simply because they seem similar to a banned type.

Our site has a learning curve, and the only way to learn is by using the site, and as such I'm sure new users can feel overwhelmed at learning all of our rules. However, this doesn't mean we should start giving new users a free pass, but should help them learn how the site works. That's why close reasons contain a short explanation on what they mean, and users will often comment on why the question is a problem. It's not meant as an attack on the user, but to help them understand the site.

Guidelines are fine, but when a question serves as a means of googling into the site, has a significant number of views and upvotes, and contains useful information then removing it from the site is detrimental, rather than beneficial. Isn't it worth judging these types of questions on a case by case basis, rather than deleting them because they are similar to a type of question that is banned for reasons that do not apply?

The argument for questions giving entry into our site has been brought up and shut down more than once. Simply put, it doesn't matter. Either a question belongs on our site or it doesn't. We don't decide whether or not a question should be allowed based on how many hits it will bring us. We're supposed to be a Q&A site for knowledge, not a content farming site.

As for your second point, we do judge questions on a case by case basis, but if the question falls under a type which is now allowed, we shut it down. Certain questions simply don't work on our site, which is why we ban them.

Answer 10

Pretty much agree, OP. The powers that be here don't really care, though.

I go elsewhere for any useful discussion and suggest that you do the same- you won't find much, here.