Boy, this gets really nasty to take this on without well thought out metrics and goals, and I'm frankly surprised that an organization with such a high engineering component would run down this path. If the goal is "reduce the number of all of these complaints", frankly, that's plain silly. A real process requires a much better framework for decisions than this.

I'm not saying this is easy, but it should be done, unless we enjoy spinning our wheels. For example, what if there was a follow-up question along the lines of "do any of these issues reduce your level of participation?" and then there was a goal to reduce THAT number, this would make more sense to me. Even, "what are you trying to get out of SE?", followed by "Are you getting that?" would be a better approach.

There will ALWAYS be problems, and there will always be interactions between the problems, prioritizations to be made, and choices.

For example, let me toss up the idea that we could really have high quality artifact at the expense of even more rigid moderation (whether we can achieve that with the community moderation model is a different issue!), and that it might be hard to have both of those numbers go down at the same time. Well, which is more important? My vote would be in favor of the artifact, as people come here looking for the artifact, and if that isn't good, people will stop coming. Then again, nobody has told me what we're trying to achieve with this process, so my real answer, if there's a choice to be made on how to prioritize overmoderation vs artifact concerns, would have to be "I don't have enough information to make this choice".

In fact, this brings up the point that the VAST majority of the SE usership probably NEVER asks a question or posts an answer. They type a question into their search engine, which points them to a correct answer on SE, all without even creating an account. BANG -- SATISFIED CUSTOMER!!! I suggest that The Loop does not consider the needs of this user base at all. This means that the participants you're trying to make happy aren't the customers -- they're the product for the real user base. It is important, though, to keep these people participating.

How many need to participate, though? Well, enough to ask sufficient questions to keep people interested, and enough to generate good answers to these questions. We need enough QA to cover the space. Do we need more than that? If the sites generate space-covering questions, and good answers to all of them, probably not. So, I suggest that the metrics should be related to question number/quality and answer quality. If a determination that those numbers aren't good enough, THEN you have a reason to ask what's keeping participants away. If you're long on answers, and short on questions, we probably need to be nicer to newcomers. If all the questions are silly, and the answers to the good questions are all great and numerous, than the newcomer thing might not be so important.

Maybe these real discussions are happening behind the scenes, but frankly, I find it very frustrating being in on half of a conversation.

Personally, I don't think many of the items I see on the list of evils are particularly surprising (except the design issue -- that's a new one to me). A thorough wade through the metas of each site and this one would have given exactly the same answers.

Even if the hidden agenda is to better monetize to promote a sale or IPO, if I were on the board, I would like somebody to explain how this process is going to get us there. Otherwise, this has an Underpants Gnome feel:  

Boy, this gets really nasty to take this on without well thought out metrics and goals, and I'm frankly surprised that an organization with such a high engineering component would run down this path. If the goal is "reduce the number of all of these complaints", frankly, that's plain silly. A real process requires a much better framework for decisions than this.

I'm not saying this is easy, but it should be done, unless we enjoy spinning our wheels. For example, what if there was a follow-up question along the lines of "do any of these issues reduce your level of participation?" and then there was a goal to reduce THAT number, this would make more sense to me. Even, "what are you trying to get out of SE?", followed by "Are you getting that?" would be a better approach.

There will ALWAYS be problems, and there will always be interactions between the problems, prioritizations to be made, and choices.

For example, let me toss up the idea that we could really have high quality artifact at the expense of even more rigid moderation (whether we can achieve that with the community moderation model is a different issue!), and that it might be hard to have both of those numbers go down at the same time. Well, which is more important? My vote would be in favor of the artifact, as people come here looking for the artifact, and if that isn't good, people will stop coming. Then again, nobody has told me what we're trying to achieve with this process, so my real answer, if there's a choice to be made on how to prioritize overmoderation vs artifact concerns, would have to be "I don't have enough information to make this choice".

In fact, this brings up the point that the VAST majority of the SE usership probably NEVER asks a question or posts an answer. They type a question into their search engine, which points them to a correct answer on SE, all without even creating an account. BANG -- SATISFIED CUSTOMER!!! I suggest that The Loop does not consider the needs of this user base at all. This means that the participants you're trying to make happy aren't the customers -- they're the product for the real user base. It is important, though, to keep these people participating.

How many need to participate, though? Well, enough to ask sufficient questions to keep people interested, and enough to generate good answers to these questions. We need enough QA to cover the space. Do we need more than that? If the sites generate space-covering questions, and good answers to all of them, probably not. So, I suggest that the metrics should be related to question number/quality and answer quality. If a determination that those numbers aren't good enough, THEN you have a reason to ask what's keeping participants away. If you're long on answers, and short on questions, we probably need to be nicer to newcomers. If all the questions are silly, and the answers to the good questions are all great and numerous, then the newcomer thing might not be so important.

Maybe these real discussions are happening behind the scenes, but frankly, I find it very frustrating being in on half of a conversation.

Personally, I don't think many of the items I see on the list of evils are particularly surprising (except the design issue -- that's a new one to me). A thorough wade through the metas of each site and this one would have given exactly the same answers.

Even if the hidden agenda is to better monetize to promote a sale or IPO, if I were on the board, I would like somebody to explain how this process is going to get us there. Otherwise, this has an Underpants Gnome feel: 

Boy, this gets really nasty to take this on without well thought out metrics and goals, and I'm frankly surprised that an organization with such a high engineering component would run down this path. If the goal is "reduce the number of all of these complaints", frankly, that's plain silly. A real process requires a much better framework for decisions than this.

I'm not saying this is easy, but it should be done, unless we enjoy spinning our wheels. For example, what if there was a follow-up question along the lines of "do any of these issues reduce your level of participation?" and then there was a goal to reduce THAT number, this would make more sense to me. Even, "what are you trying to get out of SE?", followed by "Are you getting that?" would be a better approach.

There will ALWAYS be problems, and there will always be interactions between the problems, prioritizations to be made, and choices.

For example, let me toss up the idea that we could really have high quality artifact at the expense of even more rigid moderation (whether we can achieve that with the community moderation model is a different issue!), and that it might be hard to have both of those numbers go down at the same time? Well, which is more important? My vote would be in favor of the artifact, as people come here looking for the artifact, and if that isn't good, people will stop coming.

In fact, this brings up the point that the VAST majority of the SE usership probably NEVER asks a question or posts an answer. They type a question into their search engine, which points them to a correct answer on SE, all without even creating an account. BANG -- SATISFIED CUSTOMER!!! I suggest that The Loop does not consider the needs of this user base at all. This means that the participants you're trying to make happy aren't the customers -- they're the product for the real user base. It is important, though, to keep these people participating.

How many need to participate, though? Well, enough to ask sufficient questions to keep people interested, and enough to generate good answers to these questions. We need enough QA to cover the space. Do we need more than that? If the sites generate space-covering questions, and good answers to all of them, probably not. So, I suggest that the metrics should be related to question number/quality and answer quality. If a determination that those numbers aren't good enough, THEN you have a reason to ask what's keeping participants away. If you're long on answers, and short on questions, we probably need to be nicer to newcomers. If all the questions are silly, and the answers to the good questions are all great and numerous, than the newcomer thing might not be so important.

Maybe these real discussions are happening behind the scenes, but frankly, I find it very frustrating being in on half of a conversation.

Personally, I don't think many of the items I see on the list of evils are particularly surprising (except the design issue -- that's a new one to me). A thorough wade through the metas of each site and this one would have given exactly the same answers.

Even if the hidden agenda is to better monetize to promote a sale or IPO, if I were on the board, I would like somebody to explain how this process is going to get us there. Otherwise, this has an Underpants Gnome feel:

Boy, this gets really nasty to take this on without well thought out metrics and goals, and I'm frankly surprised that an organization with such a high engineering component would run down this path. If the goal is "reduce the number of all of these complaints", frankly, that's plain silly. A real process requires a much better framework for decisions than this.

I'm not saying this is easy, but it should be done, unless we enjoy spinning our wheels. For example, what if there was a follow-up question along the lines of "do any of these issues reduce your level of participation?" and then there was a goal to reduce THAT number, this would make more sense to me. Even, "what are you trying to get out of SE?", followed by "Are you getting that?" would be a better approach.

There will ALWAYS be problems, and there will always be interactions between the problems, prioritizations to be made, and choices.

For example, let me toss up the idea that we could really have high quality artifact at the expense of even more rigid moderation (whether we can achieve that with the community moderation model is a different issue!), and that it might be hard to have both of those numbers go down at the same time. Well, which is more important? My vote would be in favor of the artifact, as people come here looking for the artifact, and if that isn't good, people will stop coming. Then again, nobody has told me what we're trying to achieve with this process, so my real answer, if there's a choice to be made on how to prioritize overmoderation vs artifact concerns, would have to be "I don't have enough information to make this choice".

In fact, this brings up the point that the VAST majority of the SE usership probably NEVER asks a question or posts an answer. They type a question into their search engine, which points them to a correct answer on SE, all without even creating an account. BANG -- SATISFIED CUSTOMER!!! I suggest that The Loop does not consider the needs of this user base at all. This means that the participants you're trying to make happy aren't the customers -- they're the product for the real user base. It is important, though, to keep these people participating.

How many need to participate, though? Well, enough to ask sufficient questions to keep people interested, and enough to generate good answers to these questions. We need enough QA to cover the space. Do we need more than that? If the sites generate space-covering questions, and good answers to all of them, probably not. So, I suggest that the metrics should be related to question number/quality and answer quality. If a determination that those numbers aren't good enough, THEN you have a reason to ask what's keeping participants away. If you're long on answers, and short on questions, we probably need to be nicer to newcomers. If all the questions are silly, and the answers to the good questions are all great and numerous, than the newcomer thing might not be so important.

Maybe these real discussions are happening behind the scenes, but frankly, I find it very frustrating being in on half of a conversation.

Personally, I don't think many of the items I see on the list of evils are particularly surprising (except the design issue -- that's a new one to me). A thorough wade through the metas of each site and this one would have given exactly the same answers.

Even if the hidden agenda is to better monetize to promote a sale or IPO, if I were on the board, I would like somebody to explain how this process is going to get us there. Otherwise, this has an Underpants Gnome feel: