Enough with the flood of artificial questions!

Question

We've had a single user for a while now (a few weeks?) flooding the site with questions. These are largely about a single topic.

I agree that the topic belongs here, and if these are truly questions about things he doesn't know and wants to find out, then I can live with this. However, that's not what it seems like. It seems to me that these are deliberately seeded questions. I find this very annoying, and think it's a bad idea for several reasons:

1. It looks fake. If gives the site a cheesy feel to newcomers. It says that we're so lame that we have to seed the site with artificial questions to give the appearance of having real traffic.

2. It is fake. It may drive up our traffic stats, but this is only in the statistics. We don't actually have more people coming here asking genuine questions.

3. It hurts legitimate questions. Anyone coming here really wanting to know something will have their question flushed off the front page quickly by the flood of bogus questions.

4. It gives the appearance of emphasis on one narrow topic. Someone new coming here not interested in the particular topic will likely be turned off by the high fraction of questions about that topic on the front page. We need the front page to have a good mix so that everyone sees something they are interested in.

5. It is selfish, and unfair to those not interested in the particular topic. This site must support a broad mix of topics because the traffic in any one wouldn't be enough to sustain it. We all have our own interests, and except for a few of us apparently, we all understand that many, probably the majority of questions won't be about our specific interests. When questions come up about topics we don't care about, we may not like it, but understand that's how it needs to be for us to have a site at all. We're all in this together.

   When not-my-topic questions happen naturally, it's easy to accept. However, when someone goes out of their way to create a large number of them artificially, it's annoying at the least. It's one user doing something to their narrow advantage at the expense of many others.

   A good metric for such things is to consider the situation where everyone is doing it. Clearly that's unsustainable and will just lead to nuclear proliferation. If this is continued to be allowed, then I could respond with 10 made-up questions a day on things I'm interested in. These of course won't interest many other users, who then respond with their own made-up questions, etc. In the end we have all artificial babble with genuine questions going unserved because they get flushed off the front page quickly.

So my overall point is KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY!

Added

Sigh. Apparently people have a hard time separating the principle from a specific example. I have removed all references to the particular topic that was flood-posted here recently. It's not about that topic or any other particular topic, nor is it about whether I happen to like a topic that was flood posted or not, nor about the total number of questions in any particular topic.

The issue is about having a large number of artificially created questions about a narrow topic. This has the negative affects on the site itemized above.

As I also said, if a user really has a bunch of questions on a particular topic he genuinely wants the answers to, then I can live with that too. However, I think it's quite clear that's not what's happening in the incidents that started this discussion.

Answer 1

I didn't want to pop my opinion on until key contributors from the community had had a chance to, in case I skewed things, but I have to say I am in agreement that OddDeer adding a good stack of questions every day is a good thing.

One of the things I can see as a mod is how his actions affect visits per day, new users etc, and all the numbers have had a positive jump over the time period in question. Sure, I can't say that it is categorically the cause, but the stats look very positive.

Where an individual is trying very hard to up the question rate, they will by their nature be asking from their own experience, so the questions are likely to be in the same area (eg archery).

If you feel this makes the front page unhelpfully full of archery questions, the three obvious solutions are:

• post questions of your own
• answer existing questions (this bumps them up to the front page)
• put the archery tag on your ignore list

Personally, I'd like to congratulate OddDeer on his efforts, and would love it if others could up their game to match (and yes, this includes me - I really need to ask/answer more questions here) because that is how we will work towards graduation.

Quick Update subsequent to your edit

Yes, we don't care whether someone is bringing in a whole host of new questions we haven't previously had. We also shouldn't care that they are self answering - if they are currently the lead on a particular subject, creating these questions is going to help draw others in on that subject. We have had this with climbing, angling, archery and a number of others.

While the short term impact on you personally may be mildly annoying, you can follow my 3 ideas to rectify that, and on balance, the overall gain to the site is incredibly positive.

Answer 2

TL;DR

what rule has been broken here? this appears to be because I find it annoying and I'm not interested in archery?

SE use questions per day as the main metric of a sites performance. The baseline for this is 10 per day. Even with the self answering questions (which I re-iterate are fully endorsed and in fact encouraged by SE) we're only at 6 questions per day. You're main thrust (again I repeat) appears to be that this irritates you. I disagree that discouraging people who have enthusiastically embraced this community is the way forward. In fact I echo Rory's point:

Personally, I'd like to congratulate OddDeer on his efforts, and would love it if others could up their game to match

---

to address some of the points above:

We don't actually have more people coming here asking genuine questions.

..but we do, to quote Rory (who can actually see the stats from the site)

One of the things I can see as a mod is how his actions affect visits per day, new users etc, and all the numbers have had a positive jump over the time period in question. Sure, I can't say that it is categorically the cause, but the stats look very positive.

So at worst it's having zero affect and the stats are going up organically at best it's had a positive impact.

Anyone coming here really wanting to know something will have their question flushed off the front page quickly by the flood of bogus questions

We're getting 6 questions a day currently, SO (for example) gets thousands. Too many questions is not an issue we suffer from.

It gives the appearance of emphasis on one narrow topic. Someone new coming here not interested in archery will likely be turned off by the high fraction of archery questions on the front page. We need the front page to have a good mix so that everyone sees something they are interested in.

archery has 37 questions in total. bears has 47. No one complains about the number of bear questions so why is archery an issue?

It is selfish, and unfair to those not interested in the particular topic.

If your not interested in this topic you can flag the tag as one your not interested. This grays out any questions on archery.

This site must support a broad mix of topics because the traffic in any one wouldn't be enough to sustain it.

In my opinion archery was an under utilised topic. We get questions on many broad topics, this is good. I don't feel that archery is getting too much attention, in fact I believe it is under represented when compared ot other topics such as climbing

If this is continued to be allowed, then I could respond with 10 made-up questions a day on things I'm interested in.

your welcome to do this, if they are on topic then that is fine.

Answer 3

Firstly, I really disagree about the fact people are seeding topics... this has been talked about in Meta before. See: We need to get the question rate up

Secondly, whilst there has clearly been a massive influx of questions on a single topic, and it has seemed like it was spam (I get that seeing just one user post X questions a day seems a little weird) and they could easily, from any of us in regards to any user posting multiple questions on a single topic a day, be spread out a bit... But we've gone from a pathetic 1~ questions a day to a whopping 6+ questions a day - and we've had a lot of less than 100 rep members pop up about the place!

Also a number of the questions have brought people decent rep - and is that not how the SE sites work? Good questions get good rep? Bad ones get down votes?

If this is going to become a bicker about disliking a single topic, then that's not cool - we're a broad spectrum website and we have a large number of on topic questions. I myself have been seeding both the horses and foraging tags and I plan to keep doing so - if that is self answer or genuine requests for knowledge then so be it.

I really do not think it is fair to anyone, if we're going to complain about someone actually asking a regular number of questions then why have the website?

TL;DR

Don't like Archery? Don't read the questions. Simple.

Answer 4

I do understand what you are thinking about, and its absolutely alright to think about it that way, but keeping your opinion personal could have the best thing to do. Or may be better, you could always come in chat and have a word. I don't know if you have recently popped into chat or not, but trust me we discuss a lot out there. And, that has turned me into a better user.

Basically, in here at TGO, personally I'm not thinking much about what are my sort of questions, and what is my area of expertise. Its about us as a community. The more it grows, better answers I might get to questions that I ask.

We all know we've struggled for questions and we all know that we are determined to get the question rate up. Period.

While I personally have no interest in Archery, it is a valid, in-scope outdoor topic, and hence people have liberty to ask them all the time, while you and I have liberty to sort the questions by our favorite tags all the time.

Though, I do agree about the disadvantage of having good questions sidelined due to spurious questions based on one-seeded topic, we can always filter out the tags/topics we don't like. Same goes with other topics.

About:

It is selfish, and unfair to those not interested in the particular topic

Sorry about it Olin, but we have to learn that our scope of interest is a tiny part of scope of The Great Outdoors and not the other way round. I wouldn't say its unfair or selfish. Irrelevant to me and you, Yes.

Olin, I need not to tell you how SE sites work, you are the top user on Electrical Engineering, and I whole-heatedly respect you for that. Sorry its the n^th number of time I am looking at your EE profile. (I was and am always fascinated and keen to go through your answers there, Genius, super stuff). Tags under Your profile reads Microcontrollers, Power Supply, Voltage. Does it mean questions on a topic that you don't really like make you unhappy about the place? No, I don't think so.

At this juncture, If I were you, a simple question that I'd ask myself: If I really don't like Rock Climbing much, would I react the same way you did for Archery? Probably not.

To sum it up, I don't think they are harming us by any means at all. Not having questions at all might be a bad bad stage to regret at.

P.S. You are a very valuable part of The Great Outdoors, and so is a new user.

Answer 5

For what it's worth: Olin, I'm with you on this, although we seem to be in the minority so far.

For me a real question^TM is one that solves a problem or fills a knowledge gap for someone. And not just some tidbit of information someone thought up and decides to share via SE.

SE is not a news channel, it is not a blog - it's a Q&A site.

Answer 6

I prefer the word artificial over fake. The site does not have much volume but I feel these artificial questions dilute the site. They also make the site feel like a club due to a narrow range of topics and users.

If the question is valid then you can vote it down but don't have a cause to Vote To Close (VTC) as artificial / fake is not a VTC reason.

Types of artificial

• Detail that does not matter to the question. E.G. While on vacation.
• XY. Ask for an implementation to a perceived solution without actually stating the question.
• Ask a question they already knew the answer to. Technically it is OK but I it comes off artificial. Had a question and researched it is different - they don't typically come off as artificial.
• Inconsistent. Question has conflicting requirements.
• Not on topic. Just because it can happen in the outdoors does not make it an outdoor question. We have an active mod that is liberal on what is allowed so that is not going to change.
• Would be a better fit on another site.

I used to call this stuff out a lot but was told quite firmly to just let the question stand or suffer time outs.