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Excuse my ignorance about how things work, but looking at these questions

I get the impressions that they are being asked by someone who's just trying to ask good questions (an effort that I welcome) but is not really involved with proof assistants. Am I wrong? Is this the standard way of getting a new site going?

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    $\begingroup$ I think these are mostly somewhat naive questions being asked by people who are not experts in the field. If you think these are not good questions, close vote and or comment. In this stage, it is important that people use the close and reopen votes to determine the scope (which is why this privilege is granted at 15 rep on private betas). You can read more about my perspective here: or.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101/… . So yes, I think this is quite common. $\endgroup$
    – Discrete lizard
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 20:16
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    $\begingroup$ I hesitate to massively vote for closing, as closing questions is one of the best ways to make sure that a site is hostile. $\endgroup$
    – Andrej Bauer
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 20:18
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    $\begingroup$ What I think would help a lot is an FAQ. A lot of these questions belong to an FAQ that a newcomner can be pointed to. $\endgroup$
    – Andrej Bauer
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 20:18
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    $\begingroup$ @AndrejBauer: Closing questions is not inherently a "hostile" action (nor is it a permanent, irreversible state). The authors of a question that is closed may be confused if it's closed without any comments explaining why or suggesting how they can improve it – but the closing process itself is necessary to maintain the quality of a Stack Exchange site. ...That said, if you're not sure whether a particular question on the site should be closed (e.g. for being primarily opinion-based or not being in scope for the site), then this Meta is the right place to discuss that with others. $\endgroup$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 23:20
  • $\begingroup$ Surely the third question, at least, is justified by its nice list of answers $\endgroup$
    – Will Sawin
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 23:46
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    $\begingroup$ It looks like around 15 or so of the questions asked (of the first 38 questions) are these "What is bread?" type questions, unfortunately. $\endgroup$
    – Alex Nelson
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 0:30
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    $\begingroup$ It's also worth keeping in mind the labor differential between complex questions and easy questions. For research topics, even an expert would take a moment to come up with a deep and answerable question. A lot of the early questions on nascent sites spend time getting the fundamentals down first. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's done well. $\endgroup$
    – Slate StaffMod
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 1:11
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    $\begingroup$ @V2Blast it will be perceived as hostile, where the intention is or is not. People who feel rebuffed after a good-faith question will not come back to follow-up, and they will tell their friends how bad this place is, etc. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 4:59
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidRoberts There will definitely be people who will not like the SE framework and leave for that reason. However, the solution to getting a community together with those people is to have one elsewhere. While each community should find its own way to implement the various systems of the SE website, it in general is a good idea to at least try to "play it by the book" in these early stages. $\endgroup$
    – Discrete lizard
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 13:45
  • $\begingroup$ @Discretelizard sure. But I'm talking from experience with MathOverflow, and from seeing and participating in discussions with people who should be extremely welcome on MO, and whose questions will all be on-topic, but where they expect (and with justification) that they will be shut down/treated badly. I'm not talking people who don't like the "SE framework". It's all well and good about "have one elsewhere", but that's like "if you don't like the new film adaptation, make your own". There's not really another comparable platform to SE. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 21:58
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    $\begingroup$ I second @DavidRoberts here. MathOverflow and cstheory.SE are both quite good at shutting down newcomers who don't know their ways, even though they are respected members of research community (and let me not get started on what students think about these sites). $\endgroup$
    – Andrej Bauer
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 22:01
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    $\begingroup$ @AndrejBauer I'm not sure if MathOverflow and cstheory.SE are good examples. SE isn't very interested nowadays in supporting more communities that are exclusively academic. Also, are you talking about experience in closed betas or day to day business? Closing is more important in closed betas, it is an (explicit?) part of the process. $\endgroup$
    – Discrete lizard
    Commented Feb 10, 2022 at 8:31

3 Answers 3

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I plead guilty ... I posted one of those questions during the Area 51 proposal stage and it was positively received; the other one I only thought of last night.

Area 51 is where subject matter experts mingle with interested Stack Exchange users; in fact, a proposal needs a certain number of people already invested in Stack Exchange to succeed. That guarantees a new community has some commitment by users who know how Stack Exchange works in general.

Communities are expected to welcome questions which are clear and on-topic, regardless of complexity level. Stack Exchange aims to build a library around a specific subject, and a real-life library has both entry-level and expert-level books.

A related concern is that users can review the Close and Reopen Votes review queues with just the association bonus, i.e. without any involvement in the site other than just joining it.

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    $\begingroup$ To ride on this answer a bit, in my experience, private betas draw interest from both established members of Stack Exchange as a whole, and topic experts who are deeply invested in the specific site scope. Both are helpful, but in their own ways: topic experts bring domain knowledge and subtler questions, and long-established Stack members bring knowledge about how to organize the site, and help set precedent & examples. tl;dr - it probably is happening, but as long as domain experts aren't being drowned out, it may actually be helpful long-term. $\endgroup$
    – Slate StaffMod
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 20:34
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    $\begingroup$ Point taken, and I do believe we have to make every effort to be welcoming to newcomers. I was just taken aback by some of the questions because they were as if someone asked "What is bread?" on baking.stackexchange.com. Also, now that I am browsing through the answers, it looks like we have a lot of early adopters who are clearly not experts. At all. $\endgroup$
    – Andrej Bauer
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 20:48
  • $\begingroup$ @AndrejBauer I wasn't there, but trust me: Stack Overflow got a lot of newbie questions as well. Case in point: the first non-deleted question stackoverflow.com/q/4/4751173 (look at its ID) $\endgroup$
    – Glorfindel
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 20:54
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    $\begingroup$ @GuyCoder Let's keep an eye on it, then. The site is only a few hours old, after all. Hopefully things even out in the short term :) $\endgroup$
    – Slate StaffMod
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 23:52
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The third question you posted is tied for the second most-voted question. It's tied with Non-trivial difference(s) between Computer Algebra System and Proof Assistant, which is also a "what is bread?" type question (maybe "What is the difference between bread and tortillas?").

In sixth place, we have What is the easiest proof assistant to start with? which is a question of interest mainly to beginners.

So some of the questions of the type you don't like are among the top-voted questions on the site. For these questions, I don't think closing them is a good idea. Trying to get 5 close votes, and dodge 5 reopen votes, for a question that currently has 19 upvotes and 0 downvotes seems like a losing battle.

If you want to stop these questions, you would have to persuade people that they're not good for the site.

Personally, I think they're fine - there's only a small number of broad, low-level questions of this type that can be asked, and once they're asked we can close future repetitions as duplicates.

One can also find beginner-level questions on the least-voted questions list. Some of these have been closed. In fact arguably every beginner-level question below 5 points has been closed (but not every question that has been closed is necessarily beginner-level). So for some of these there does seem to be community consensus that they are too low-quality for the site.

(I guess it's worth pointing out that I am at most an interested novice and I asked a question, but I think the question I asked is reasonably good - in particular, it's not easy.)

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  • $\begingroup$ I very much second having some early broad and low-level questions like this so later people can be pointed to them via a meta-FAQ thread that collects links, and re- and re-asked questions can be closed as duplicates (it's better than closing them for nebulous off-topic reasons that seem like "not sophisticated enough ... like me <twirls moustache> ... it lacks a certain ... something"). $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 22:00
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In the email sent when the private beta was opened, there's this specific Q&A:

Q: What else?

A: Remember, you get the site you build! Ask difficult, specific questions — the kind of questions pros and experts ask each other, not the kind of questions novices ask pros, because a site full of pros and experts will attract everybody, but a site full of novices rapidly becomes boring. No easy questions, no survey questions, no polls, no intro-level/basic questions, no unanswerable hypothetical questions.

It seems to me that since we are in private beta, this is exactly what's expected.

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  • $\begingroup$ Unfortunately, that's not what the majority want. Hence the questions: What is bread? Why does a human have a head? Who is Peano? ... $\endgroup$
    – user21820
    Commented Mar 25, 2022 at 16:16

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