Timeline for Usability issues for first-time Stack Exchange users - a micro-study
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
69 events
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| Apr 2, 2023 at 3:05 | history | edited | Rubén |
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| Nov 23, 2020 at 17:14 | history | edited | ArtOfCode | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 5, 2020 at 21:38 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | Folks, I appreciate that you're trying to improve the post, but updating research done several years ago to use present terminology has the (hopefully) unintended side effect of removing the context in which the research was done. | |
| Oct 5, 2020 at 21:36 | history | rollback | ArtOfCode |
Rollback to Revision 9
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| Oct 5, 2020 at 8:00 | history | edited | Mithical | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 5, 2020 at 7:56 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Fix capitalization
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| Oct 5, 2020 at 7:32 | history | edited | Luuklag | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
It should definetly be closed
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| Oct 4, 2020 at 21:00 | history | rollback | ArtOfCode |
Rollback to Revision 9
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| Oct 3, 2020 at 5:06 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
"on hold" is no longer used
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| Jun 3, 2020 at 13:30 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| S Oct 25, 2019 at 17:57 | history | edited | ArtOfCode | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 25, 2019 at 17:37 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Nov 28, 2018 at 13:10 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A Слава Україні | Ha! I've just seen when this was posted, over two years ago. Why then did someone recently post a question linking it to here? Tsk... I should have checked before answering. Wasted time... meta.stackexchange.com/q/318796/223820 | |
| Nov 28, 2018 at 13:03 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A Слава Україні |
mini-research study What were these questions? If they were so bad, lack of motivation probably played a huge factor. All these important details I mentioned previously should have been included in your summary in order to understand better why your guinea pigs were bewildered and confused by the SE experience.
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| Nov 28, 2018 at 13:02 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A Слава Україні |
a group of people I have searched through the comments but I did not find any answer. How many participants were in the test group? What were their ages and how many were men and women? Were they all English native speakers? Were they competent everyday computer users, or do some only know how to answer an email and update their FB profile? How much time were they given to lurk and peruse the site(s) before posting or finding the right site?
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| S Aug 29, 2018 at 23:01 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| S Aug 29, 2018 at 23:01 | history | notice removed | CommunityBot | ||
| S Aug 21, 2018 at 21:20 | history | bounty started | gnat | ||
| S Aug 21, 2018 at 21:20 | history | notice added | gnat | Draw attention | |
| Apr 13, 2017 at 13:00 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/
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| Aug 14, 2016 at 20:20 | history | edited | ArtOfCode | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 10, 2016 at 7:02 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @JeffAtwood There's an element of that, yeah. But most of the stuff I'm closing is coming in because people are totally misunderstanding the topic of the site, rather than being a bad recommendation question. The important bit is HR doesn't do tech support, which people seem to miss. | |
| Jun 10, 2016 at 2:20 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | Unstated but critically important: Stack is not a recommendation engine. So if 50% of questions are closed, this is unfortunately evidence that the underlying topic does not match what the engine is designed to do. You should look at Slant. | |
| Jun 9, 2016 at 20:32 | comment | added | Braiam | The problem is real... I have not created the tag, only using popular tag but still showing validation "Create tag only after 1500 reputation" | |
| S Jun 4, 2016 at 21:58 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| S Jun 4, 2016 at 21:58 | history | notice removed | CommunityBot | ||
| May 30, 2016 at 5:43 | comment | added | D.W. | I wonder if machine learning might be helpful here. Perhaps some kind of automated analysis of the question after they've typed it in saying "It looks like your question might be off-topic here, but might be suitable on Foobar.SE" and then shows them a short highlight from the help page indicating what's on-topic on each site? I wonder if it would be feasible to create something like that, and whether it would affect user behavior. | |
| May 28, 2016 at 15:26 | history | edited | gnat |
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| May 27, 2016 at 22:39 | comment | added | Ramhound | One solution might be to filter questions that have been closed or put on-hold if you have 1 reputation point. Avoids the "why can't I answer" question at least | |
| S May 27, 2016 at 20:21 | history | bounty started | gnat | ||
| S May 27, 2016 at 20:21 | history | notice added | gnat | Draw attention | |
| May 26, 2016 at 13:48 | answer | added | user276487 | timeline score: -1 | |
| May 26, 2016 at 9:34 | vote | accept | ArtOfCode | ||
| May 25, 2016 at 21:38 | answer | added | Jaydles | timeline score: 80 | |
| May 25, 2016 at 21:31 | comment | added | user102937 | You might find this interesting: meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/1204. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 21:29 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Monica the one who posted on HR ended up with an unregistered account, which did indeed see all the on-hold questions pop up. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 21:26 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | Did any of your test users create accounts, or was this all based on the "new visitor" version of the site? I'm particularly wondering about closed questions, which I thought were always filtered out in the not-logged-in view. If they created accounts, though (or maybe only if they registered?), they'd then see all those on-hold questions pop up. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 21:02 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Peanut I might do, but my aim here wasn't to study for the sake of doing studies. It was to get data about how I can solve HR's problem, primarily - the rest of the network was a bonus. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:59 | comment | added | bb216b3acfd8f72cbc8f899d4d6963 | True, but once they get 5 reputation, why don't you study the group? | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:57 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @enderland Sounds like fun, but I might not be able to get at it for some time. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:55 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Peanut Not in this one, no. This was all about first-time users, and first-timers don't have the 5 rep necessary to access meta sites. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:53 | comment | added | bb216b3acfd8f72cbc8f899d4d6963 | Is there any study about the meta sites? | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:52 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Cat I was just looking at the topic, rather than the quality. If I judged it on quality, they'd all be closed in seconds... | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:51 | comment | added | Catija | If it was about the Star Wars movies, it would be on topic on M&TV... we don't exempt SFF subjects from topicality. :D But, certainly, the quality could be an issue. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:49 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Catija They were all of much the same quality as the one on HR; fairly terrible. The SF&F question was something about Star Wars | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:49 | comment | added | enderland | I would be curious if you were able to repeat this study with an A/B study like my suggestion what the outcome might be. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:46 | comment | added | Catija | @ArtOfCode Ah, I get it now. That's too bad. The questions would have been interesting to see, though largely immaterial. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:45 | comment | added | gnat | @Catija this approach is likely a remainder from ancient times when it was expected that every smaller site eventually grows big and will reuse large-scale solutions that work at Stack Overflow. "8,000 questions about bicycles a day, why not?" This theory was officially dismissed a year or two ago but you see, some of its idiosyncrasies are still with us | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:45 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Catija Yeah. I had them on my hard disk until I gave them out this afternoon, then foolishly deleted them thinking they wouldn't be necessary any more. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:43 | comment | added | Catija | Not sure what you mean by that. You said that only one person actually asked the question, right... so they won't be on M&TV or ELU... or am I misunderstanding? | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:41 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Catija I definitely didn't accidentally delete them... | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:40 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Won't good point, cheers | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:40 | comment | added | Catija | I'd be interested to see what the sample questions for SFF and ELL were... I could probably tell you whether those question marks are necessary or not. :D | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:38 | history | edited | ArtOfCode | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
+table of results
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| May 25, 2016 at 20:38 | comment | added | user1228 | Give some thought to the title. I didn't expect this at all after reading it. Perhaps "usability issues for new users" or something similar? | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:36 | comment | added | Catija | @gnat As someone who only uses "smaller sites", I find it disappointing that that's the opinion. Smaller sites have fewer users who can help moderate the site and those users can become overtaxed with dealing with those problems that could potentially be reduced with some UI tweaks. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:30 | comment | added | gnat | at Stack Exchange they purposely design smaller sites so that askers aren't bothered to learn about site prior to asking, "...the idea is that, since they get less traffic than Stack Overflow, there's not as much of a disincentive to prevent people from posting, since the community can help users fix problems with their posts, or close, flag, and delete" | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:24 | comment | added | Kendra | @rumtscho That's funny- My first reaction to finding Stack Overflow and wanting to ask a question was, "Oh, this looks like it could help me. What are the rules for this place?" followed by finding and reading through the help center. :) | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:23 | comment | added | gnat | related: Ways to give users some specific education about question quality and topicality | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:19 | comment | added | Catija | Specific example on M&TV - here. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:17 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @Catija I don't think anyone encountered those, but I do think I've heard it mentioned somewhere before as an issue | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:16 | comment | added | ArtOfCode | @bluefeet I've been thinking about how we help them on HR for a while. This was simply me thinking "why not extend it to the rest of the network, too?". I've also got some more specific stuff coming for HR, because this helped identify some pinch points there. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:16 | comment | added | Catija | Another thing worth noting... on some sites, specific tags have popup-notices with additional "help" text for that tag... unfortunately, the popup often goes unnoticed due to the fact that it is poorly placed and may never pop up at all since it appears after focus is removed from the tag entry bar... and the next point of focus is, inevitably, the "Post this Question" button. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:14 | comment | added | Taryn | Funny you mention this, I just met with a few other CMs to discuss some testing I want to do regarding helping new users. Not necessarily with some of the items you mention, mainly with asking questions. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:13 | comment | added | rumtscho | Nice study! One small nitpick: Your expectation that they will see and use the help was wrong. I have never seen a first time user wanting to start with the help. They didn't see it because they weren't looking for it - but if they had seen it, they wouldn't have clicked it anyway. "Being read first thing by a new user" is not the purpose of the help, and so the topbar does not fail. | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:12 | history | edited | Taryn |
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| May 25, 2016 at 20:11 | comment | added | DavidPostill | I wonder if this would make a good series of questions on ux.stackexchange.com ;) | |
| May 25, 2016 at 20:11 | history | edited | ArtOfCode | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 25, 2016 at 20:02 | history | asked | ArtOfCode | CC BY-SA 3.0 |