Comments on How shall we handle our old (imported) content?
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How shall we handle our old (imported) content?
When we created this site, I made the executive decision to import all our content from Stack Exchange instead of starting with a blank slate. I did that for a few reasons:
We have a lot of good content there, and we should continue to have ready access to, and curate, that content.
I felt there would be a stronger incentive for SE users to come here if they could bring their work here. Having some of your content there and some here would be a pain, and I feared we'd lose some people because managing two sites is a hassle.
I wanted there to be a front page full of questions when we invited people here.
I considered asking ArtOfCode to run queries that would pull in only some of the content, like only upvoted non-closed questions or only questions with answers or other things. But that could get complicated (especially when we still want people to be able to have all their content if they want it), and Art was already doing us a big favor in setting up this community for us while we wait for the Codidact software to be ready.
We now have people here (yay!), and as we look through existing posts and (re)cast votes (1) and edit, we're seeing that there is in fact a lot of stuff here. And a lot of it is good, and we should give it the attention it deserves! And some of it is, maybe, not so good, and we should give it the attention it deserves too.
What I, and I think some others, have been doing is to kind of meander through the site, reading and voting. I've tried to review all the answers to all of my own questions, and in the process made some improvements. I also use tags as a starting point, though I'm nowhere near through all the questions on my favorite tags yet. And sometimes I just pick a page of questions and go. I encourage others to do any or all of these, too.
But my question is: how should we be curating this content?
Specifically:
What should we do with questions that were closed at the time of import? I reopened one yesterday, but most should probably stay closed. Some of them are of historical significance (we don't have locks here yet, sorry) and some were well-received if ultimately closed. At the other end of the spectrum, there might be some that have no answers or are downvoted, and maybe those should be deleted -- they can be re-asked if applicable.
What should we do if we come across answers that don't answer the question or are link-only answers? We have a couple moderator flags about this already, which we haven't handled pending some community consensus.
Assuming Art is willing to run some queries, should we do any systematic culling, and if so what? (Downvoted unanswered questions?)
How does our community feel about moderators making unilateral deletion decisions? We don't have auditing tools for this right now, but we can keep a list of deleted posts here on meta and lower the rep threshold for being able to view them. (That threshold is currently 1000, which nobody has.)
Other issues or suggestions?
(1) When we imported the content we reset scores to zero. We did this for two reasons: first, we do not have access to data about who voted, so we can't track your individual votes from that content. Second, we felt that in this respect a new site called for a fresh start, and that the people here should cast the votes that affect the ranking of the content here. We have the original scores available (though not, I think, the upvote/downvote split); if you think we should revisit this decision, please raise it.
The model on SE was moderation, not curation. Nothing was ever removed. Duplicates, were marked, but never resolved. The …
4y ago
One element of curating is which answer got accepted. It relates to what Amadeus says about first answer getting all the …
4y ago
To be honest, part of the reason why I asked this question on the Codidact forum was because of how writing.codidact.com …
4y ago
I just joined, so I'm a bit late to the party, and to begin with I wasn't exactly a particularly prominent SE user. I'd …
4y ago
I'd say if they (Q) were closed before, open them and give them a downvote, and if they get "enough" downvotes (3? 5?) c …
4y ago
I think on the whole, anything that was marked "keeping only for historical value" -- those are probably delete-able. I …
4y ago
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I'd say if they (Q) were closed before, open them and give them a downvote, and if they get "enough" downvotes (3? 5?) close them. I would like the same for both Q and A. SE had a "review queue", ours would just be downvoted questions.
For answers, I'd say any answer with 2+ downvotes should be hidden (viewable with a click) and available in a review queue; deleted after five downvotes. As a programmer myself, I'd put a counter on the user's account to see how often they get hammered for Q and A on review, at some point they are just here to offend, or work out their psychological aggression, and candidates for expulsion.
I agree with Mark about the structural issues with voting; i.e. the best answers (mine!) are often too late to get the most attention. Things I can think of to address that is to put the highest rated or accepted answer LAST, or leave them in answer order but reversed: The Newest answer is on top, whether it is accepted or the highest score or not. Or use the default SE sort and provide buttons to sort the answers by score or age. (I see this was discussed in the comments on Mark's answer.)
I don't mind moderators making unilateral decisions on OLD Q or A or comments. I wouldn't want to see this site get into the autocratic control mode of SE, but I do agree that we don't need to see spam, insults, racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc (unless it is a legitimate question or answer about racism, etc).
There is a rather fuzzy line to be drawn somewhere!
I like the idea of community moderation and curation, supplemented by more professional eyes at times. The only problem would be self-serving moderation; voting down Q or A as part of the "game" of getting the most points. SE tried to fix that in their gamification by making the downvote cost you two points, but an upvote costs you nothing.
I don't think discouraging downvotes is an intelligent answer though, then you have to sacrifice points to be altruistic and serve as a community moderator. A better answer might be requiring a comment to explain a downvote, instead of just accepting it. Review of the lame excuses a user makes for their downvotes could reveal that self-serving downvotes is the real pattern. So it doesn't cost points to downvote, but takes more of an effort than upvoting, you do have to publicly explain yourself. Which might, when moderating is the true motivator, help educate the poster as to what was wrong with their Q or A.
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