Great Expectations... or, at least, user expectations

Question

Well I just saw a second Meta question expressing strong ill-will for this site after first witnessing this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.

The problem

Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:

A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.

There are two parts to this:

1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective
2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.

I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by MichaelT's answer to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.

There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.

How can we better communicate the site's purpose?

Below are all current ideas as to what could be done. If you have any other ideas either edit this question or post them in an answer.

CN | Change Name

Self-explanatory, Pogrammers.SE become OtherName.SE.

ST | Add Sub-title

Add a sub-title to the website's header to better describe the site's purpose (e.g. Programmers: Architecture, Planning, & Concepts).

SA | Make Scope More Accessible

Display the scope in a simply-worded form next to the 'ask a question' interface; this makes it more likely users will read it before posting.

BL | Add Blurb

Add a descriptive blurb that is displayed to users before they are able to post their first question. Make this focus-stealing; i.e. background is greyed-out and the user must take an action to continue (e.g. click 'got it').

CS | Change Scope

Change the scope to include some of the areas that are currently being down-voted as off-topic.

CE | Change Enforcement

Actively cultivate questions to improve them; narrow their focus if they are too broad, make them more abstract of they are too narrow (i.e. they are debugging specific code instead of asking about architecture/concepts), etc. This would mean slower closing of questions and the encouragement of users to learn about what is/is-not suitable for this site.

CH | Change Help Center

Create a series of Meta Q&As that are designed to help user improve their answers. This way people can post links to those discussions rather than forever trying to discuss the same things over and over

So... votes, thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin.

Answer 1

Frankly, I think that you are off base. Or at least your "change enforcement" is too thinly scoped.

No amount of name changing or scope massaging or helpful blurbs will fix the community.

As it stands, we have a fairly insular group of regulars who view questions as something to vet - things to protect the site from. We reliably have purges where old, popular questions are closed. And the regulars do a great job at enforcing the rules to the letter.

That is a huge problem.

SE sites are here to help people. The rules exist to aid all of us in that goal. But I fear that many people have lost that perspective. The rules have become sport; the questions our game. The regulars fight over who can be the quickest to close, who the most rules-lawyery - rather than who can be the most helpful.

Yes, this site gets a lot of crap questions. And I'm not arguing that crap questions shouldn't be promptly and thoroughly razed. But there are a lot of useful, interesting questions that are closed because they're too close to an existing question, or a bit broad in their scope, or heaven forbid have differing valid expert opinion answers.

We spent too much time and effort pruning and not enough time and effort cultivating. Is it any surprise that things aren't growing?

It is entirely a people problem this site is facing, and things will not change without the people involved changing.

Answer 2

Here are my thoughts on the solutions currently listed.

Change Name is BAD because it was already rejected by SE top brass and for seemingly valid reasons; namely, there isn't an alternative name that narrows the definition whilst staying true to this site's purpose.

Add Sub-title is GOOD providing that the right wording could be found. Sub-titles are less restrictive than the main name so they can be a little longer and they can be very effective at refining the definition of the site to a perspective user; they are more likely to read a sub-title than a specific page that defines what is/is-not on topic.

Make Scope More Accessible is GOOD because I agree that finding an authoritative description of the scope can be tricky and putting this front-and-center will at least reduce some of the confusion.

Add Blurb is NEUTRAL because I don't know how viable it is or if it would be read. If anything I would lean towards GOOD because, if it is worded correctly and is sufficiently brief, the fact that it is specifically targeted at new users could be a great improvement.

Change Scope is BAD because the site's scope appears to have been modified to its current form for valid reasons; namely to ensure that the site remains useful to programmers.

Change Enforcement is NEUTRAL because I think it is separate to the current topic. To my eyes, fixing the problem of lots of off-topic questions being posted here would naturally result in people being less trigger-happy with the border-line on-topic questions.

Answer 3

It's the unfortunate fate of software which interfaces with different facets of the collective human behavior. These reactions from the users are inevitable; but can be managed.

A tagline (or subtitle) would go a long way. This tagline should serve as a reminder on all events: questions, comments, votes, and so on. It would serve as a means to return the user's mindset to the original principle which birthed the site.

A blurb would also work on first post. I suggest there should be a series of blurbs which gets less in the face of the user when the site "learns" the user complies more with its principles.

Answer 4

I think part of the problem is it is too easy to ask questions. Not that it should be difficult, but perhaps require taking the tour first even for established users (+100 association bonus). While this is a low bar, I doubt it would work.

It is difficult to force users to read and understand the help center, for example. I am reminded of every time I have had to take sexual harassment training on the computer for work. Play on my phone until the required time passed for a "lesson" then check the checkboxes and hope for the best. Asking on a Stack Exchange site is no different.

When I ask or answer on a Stack Exchange site where I do not already regularly contribute, I am careful to read the help center and some of the meta posts first. I look at recent questions that received both positive and negative attention. I ask myself "why did this question get upvoted, and another downvoted or closed?" In general, this has served me well (also, never post when drunk).

Certain sites go above and beyond the general scope and quality requirements. Code Review (6 "yeses"), Skeptics (citations), Programming Puzzles & Code Golf (challenge type, scoring), and a couple others come to mind.

Programmers is not one of those. We just want a reasonably-scoped, clear, objectively-answerable, on-topic question and answers that actually answer the question as asked. We have a help center and many meta posts describing our standards, which do not require an excessive amount of effort to meet: they are simply unclear to some people.

I do not believe there is anything more we can do to help the situation except for token gestures that in the end, users will ignore.

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On another note, I know several of us do try to post meta-links in response to questions that fall into one of several common traps:

• Why was my question closed or down voted?
• Green fields, blue skies, and the white board - what is too broad?
• On discussions and why they don't make good questions
• Where to start?

There is no point in rehashing the same points over and over: post a link, then if the asker is interested in working with us, we are generally willing to help. If the asker is genuinely concerned in learning and has enough reputation, we have even invited them to The Whiteboard to hash things out.

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Finally, you make a point about possibly changing scope to match what users want. We tried this, it did not work. I recommend reading up on this site's history if you have not done so already:

What is the history behind the site scope change from NPR to “conceptual questions about software development”?

Answer 5

Actions Taken

Suggestion 1 is being advanced by a renewed request for name change, this is being advanced by @Rachel in Four years later - Can we change our site name?.

Suggestion 2 is being advanced by active community discussion about change in moderation style. This is being advanced by @DocBrown in How to improve our style for reacting on “low quality questions”?.

Also see Arron Hall's discussion about Can we resuscitate more content?.

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Recommendations

It is now clear to me that there are two problems with two camps; these are:

1. Improper questions being asked on P.SE; this pertains to users not understanding the site's scope and purpose.
2. Improper moderation/closing; this pertains to questions being closed too abruptly and with too little communication.

I expect that any solution that looks to resolve one of these and not the other would simply fragment the community. So, I suggest that we move to address both problems simultaneously, with one or more people from each faction leading-up a solution.

Suggestion 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose. From the results, this can involve creating a site tagline, creating a blurb that is displayed to new users before they can post, or by displaying the site scope next to the ask-question interface. These all require SE involvement so must begin with feature requests for our preferred solutions.

More immediately, Snowman's suggestion for a series of Meta Q&As about common question phrasing issues could be implemented. This would be advantageous because the community can do it without SE involvement. It also has the benefit of actively assisting Solution 2.

Suggestion 2. Change the self-moderating style I would suggest that this is best addressed by those advocating change being given the opportunity to moderate how they wish for a certain period of time once a week. There can then be discussion about improvements that are seen and lessons that can be drawn by the rest of the community.

Survey Results

Broad support was expressed in one form or another for all of the 'improve communication' type solutions; the general conclusion is that all of the options presented would be helpful and the question becomes how much support we will receive from SE regarding feature requests. In fact, the only negative comments on some solutions (such as name change) were motivated by the expectation that SE would not be supportive of the measure rather than by a dislike for the measure itself.

There was also extensive support for changing enforcement / moderation style. Related to this was the suggestion to update the 'how to write on-topic questions' related Meta posts to make them more helpful for newcomers.

Any suggestion of scope change was universally condemned.

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Conclusion

We now have two clearly defined areas for development and active community participation in both areas. Moreover, the two solutions being developed accurately reflect the entire community, which greatly improves the likelihood of success.

As such, this question has served its purpose and the poll is now closed.

Answer 6

Alright I'll bite. I have a few general points, but first off, it was my question referenced by OP, and I'd like to point out that while I used questionable / bad wording ("Is it possible?"), there was more to my question than that, taking it beyond the yes/no answer format, and of the scope, it certainly seems to meet at least one point, if not a few other vaguely:

• software requirements
• software architecture and design
• algorithm and data structure concepts
• quality assurance and testing
• development methodologies and processes
• software configuration management
• software engineering management
• software licensing

But it certainly had the potential, with a few edits, to become a good question. Instead it immediately, within a few hours, got 3 negative votes, 3 votes to close, and zero suggestions for improvement.

This is the major trend for questions in need of improvement on this site, and my whole point is that a large portion of the self-moderating activity on this site is making the problem of poor questions worse by choosing to down-vote and close rather than suggest ways of improving the question.

Stack Exchange communities improve their user base's question output quality by actively and continuously suggesting improvement to salvageable questions. By immediately pulling the trigger on 3 down-votes, 3 close votes, you skip this step completely.

I pointed out a specific user who I've noticed over a wide range of cases, and a long span of time, has been the "first-responder", and potentially the catalyst for this trend, because psychology and common sense show that after the first vote is made, it will encourage further votes in the same direction. This goes for close votes, positive votes, and negative votes. People follow suit, suddenly one extremely active user is causing alot of damage when his behavior is followed by others systematically over a long period of time.

Just think of how many people you could have trained to ask better questions in the past year with a few moments spent suggesting improvements to questions rather than just cutting them down, closing, and offering at most a link to a related meta post with no explanation.

Thousands.

I made a suggestion on Meta.SE based on my thoughts here.

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Side-note regarding your improvement suggestion:

If you want to make more clear what your awkwardly strict and confusing scope is, how about making it more accessible?

Right now, the scope accessibility is horrible in terms of UX. It requires 2 page changes just to find the full scope definition, and that's after having to read through all sorts of meta information to find the right link.

How about placing the scope definition as an expandable module right there on the question asking interface, and perhaps even use some form of subtle animation to bring it to the attention of new users?

Or even just make it one click away? If you're trying to educate users on your scope the last thing you want is to hide the information behind two links.

Answer 7

Of the list of suggested solutions, the only one that could plausibly fix the problem is a change of scope. The core of the problem is that given the scope, the set of strictly permitted questions is, if not quite empty, something you would have to search through a thousand off-topic questions to find a valid example of. Certainly it is rare for the front page to contain a single one.

Virtually all questions of software are either:

• matters of implementation (Stack Overflow)
• matters of computational mathematics (Computer Science/Theoretical Computer Science)
• sufficiently well-defined to be implemented by a tool or framework (Software Recommendations)
• opinion-based, or have multiple valid answers (Reddit or whatever)

If you accept that is the case, clearly no level of moderation is going to fix that. And if those who attempt an impossible task sometimes become less than perfectly polite, then that's hardly surprising...