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Q&A

Comments on Questionable Promotions!

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Questionable Promotions!

+9
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I notice we have a dearth of activity on this site.

With a relatively small number of active users, perhaps we can add a tab to the "Questions" Page. We have Activity, Age, Score as sorting algorithms. How about a "Lottery" tab?

Once a day, randomize the questions we have, and use that as the order for the "lottery" tab. Leave it up for the day; I think we can get new answers, or at least votes on questions.

I visit the site daily, as I did for SE, and (as my profile indicates) I pretty much exclusively answer questions. On SE, I seldom look past the "new questions" or "active questions". With not many users, those are dead zones; so perhaps in lieu of new questions, we can focus on "filling in" the content already created; particularly questions and answers without votes.

It would be nice to have something to do, here, and I think there are just not many questions (and I seldom have any...)

EDIT: I like Mark Baker's suggestion, instead of a randomized list, a tab of "On This Day" previous questions asked on the same calendar day (Jan 10). That would still amount to about a page's worth of questions, and could be constructed on the fly pretty easily, and would ensure all questions be shown within a year. (Well, Feb 29 gets the shaft).

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General comments (2 comments)
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+6
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First: Allow re-asking of old questions. I've always felt it was odd to say "that question has already been asked--search the archives instead of asking it again." If someone has a question, they likely have a shading of their question that is specific to their individual story or project.

So, I'd suggest allowing people to ask whatever they like without the old culture of searching the archive first. I'm working on my sequel, and I'm coming across all sorts of issues--but I refrain from bringing it up here, in part because I know there are plenty of resources in the archives. But--I don't feel like trawling through five-year-old threads looking for ideas or answers. (I mean heck, publishing changes in that amount of time anyway.)

Sometimes the process of writing out the question helps me figure out my problem on my own anyway, and that can't happen if I feel like I'm discouraged from asking a question 'that has been asked before.'

tl;dr: Allow people to ask old questions, at least til the site has more activity.

And: I tried to log on a few times but could not. My password was forgotten (by my brain) and the recovery methods weren't working to get me logged in. It was annoying enough to make me question whether it was worth it to keep trying to gain access.

I doubt I'm the only one who ran into that issue.

And: more leniency toward conversation would be nice. I was not a huge fan of the Q/A nature of SE ('no conversation, please!')

Anyway, them's my thoughts.

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General comments (7 comments)
General comments
Monica Cellio‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

A lot of questions have some nuance that makes the new one different from the older one anyway. My recommendation: ask the new question, and if it turns out to be an exact duplicate the community can mark it as such. If you know about the older question (or someone points it out), you can edit to explain what's different about your new question, and then it's not a duplicate.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

Also, sorry about the password problem! This current site is a stopgap, to keep our community from falling apart over on SE. Better software is coming, but we could get this now. We're depending on the servers and caretaking of one person -- a reliable person, but one person nonetheless, and we do let him sleep sometimes. :-)

DPT‭ wrote almost 5 years ago · edited almost 5 years ago

To your first comment--I know, but the SE practice of saying "A similar question has already been asked, now jump through this hoop please" will have a dampening effect on participation in my opinion. Of course, I'm not invested enough into the site to make a fuss--but it's feedback y'all can use if you like. Or not. To your second--thank you for your help sorting it all. As you can see, I'm here! :)

Amadeus‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

I agree completely with this; especially the duplicates. If there is a duplicate, recommending the previous question is just an Answer itself, not a disqualifier. Like, "Check out the answers to this question, as well", but still let others answer the question directly. Maybe you are talking about your own question or previous answer, that's fine. Accumulating new fresh answers to a previous question seems valuable to me; and people can vote on the current, on the old, whatever.

ArtOfCode‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

On the bright side: I've just fixed emails, finally. If you forget your password again, try the reset mechanism, and it should work for you this time.

Galastel‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

I wholeheartedly support the "more lenience towards conversation" part. We want to build a community here. Community is built by personal interaction, a.k.a conversation.

Galastel‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

Re-asking old questions - there's merit in that. I remember getting frustrated more than once when I had to edit and re-edit my question to explain how exactly it differed from the "suggested duplicate". It always was different, but I had to "prove" it. We're not a technical site, questions might easily be similar without being exact duplicates.