Timeline for Are we doomed to mirror lack of experts in larger WP ecosystem?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 19, 2011 at 18:52 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | @Wyck summarized my thoughts, as well. If a question's answer is no more complex than a Codex reference link, then such a question at a minimum borders on being too simple/not high-enough quality. We don't have to be an "Elite" site, but I daresay most WPSE question-answerers have no desire to be a proxy Google/Codex search. | |
| Oct 19, 2011 at 16:40 | comment | added | Rarst Mod | @Wyck repeats/easy should realyl be flagged to their duplicates, ignoring them just make things worse... We can't have expert-only site. There are still more than enough challenging questions, it's just they are no longer jumping at you. | |
| Oct 19, 2011 at 15:04 | comment | added | Wyck | Then we might be dommed to 1-click install users, I find myself ignoring a lot of questions because they are repeats or an easy Google search away, sometimes I even answer them by just providing a Codex link instead of putting the effort it to show an example. At the end of the day I think you're only going to attract more experts if the questions are interesting or useful to those experts, developers inherently like a challenge or problem to solve and in WPSE's case the ratio of good questions is just as low as the answer/expert rate/ratio. | |
| Oct 19, 2011 at 13:50 | comment | added | Rarst Mod | @Chip Not different at all. StackOverflow, which was the start, is also site for advanced users (at least in theory). So are numerous others in network. We can entertain such ideas, but I want to be explicit that it is unrealistic to expect exceptions and rule bending for us. We are part of network and play by network rules. | |
| Oct 19, 2011 at 13:38 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | @Rarst but WPSE's purpose is somewhat different from other SE sites. We claim that we want to provide a resource for power-user/developer questions and answers, which ought to imply that those asking questions should more-than-likely be competent to answer others' questions. As such, we're probably always going to have issues, because we are somewhat mis-applying the tools (SE rules/conventions) to our purpose. | |
| Oct 19, 2011 at 13:28 | comment | added | Rarst Mod | @Chip while that might seem viable in abstract, I don't think it would be ever considered in practice by network. Current mechanics will (since recently) block users who ask poor question consistently, but setting up barriers to ask questions from the start is not in line with principles. | |
| Oct 19, 2011 at 13:01 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | @Rarst I'm sure this idea has been discussed before, but one way to weed out so many basic-user questions is to raise the reputation required to post questions. I'll see if I can find such meta discussion, and link here for reference. | |
| Oct 19, 2011 at 9:18 | comment | added | Rarst Mod | Well, problem with promotion is that currently it seems to make things worse. In last two weeks site got something in range of 250+ users. Know how many of them got to 200+ reputation so far? One. Question is - how do we precisely attract more experts, without attracting hundreds of basic users at the same time. Which quite possibly isn't even solvable. | |
| Oct 19, 2011 at 2:26 | comment | added | Wyck | I guess the question is what can we do to improve it, more moderation, more promotion? | |
| Oct 18, 2011 at 18:46 | comment | added | Rarst Mod | The problem is not total amount of people working (and "working") with WP, but their skill levels. We have insane amounts of users with none to basic skills. We have some amount of professionals with WP as shallow secondary skill (template tag level). And we have very thin layer of people with skills up to considerable development level. This site has quite a few developers with serious skills here. The problem is for each of them there is crowd of users with basic skills and endless questions. Proportion is not comfortable. | |
| Oct 18, 2011 at 8:37 | comment | added | Scott | When I was at WordCampUK everyone I spoke to didn't know about WPSE. I'm sure there were some that knew about it but not many. | |
| Oct 18, 2011 at 2:17 | history | answered | Wyck | CC BY-SA 3.0 |