Site approachability

Question

I just had the following conversation with a friend of mine, summarizing him grumbling about RPG.SE not being very useful to him.

Mikhail: Being a total stranger to the resource, i come there, and look at the front page of questions, just clicking on the ones that look interesting. half are trivial, the others have immediate comments of "rewrite this" or "too general/specific, throw away"

Mikhail: I don't feel like i'm wanted here

Brian: Well, what do you mean by wanted? Cause you do have a lot of gaming knowledge. So we can use your answers.

Mikhail: my input, whatever it would be, will be criticized for not fitting some criteria or others, until i learn what the spoken and unspoken rules are like. this presents 2 clear options

Mikhail: 1) put effort and time into learning the rules, observe how people post and answer questions

Mikhail: 2) shrug and not bother writing answers that will not be appreciated despite being correct

How can we make the site more approachable for newcomer experts?

Answer 1

This started as a comment on @mxyzplk's answer... and then it got long.

If we're thinking of and describing our FAQ as "a big ol faq or whatnot" I think it means our FAQ could use some streamlining and editing. It literally is the "New to the site? Go read this!" page:

One thing I find interesting is that our FAQ contains both sections What kind of questions can I ask here? and What kind of questions should I not ask here?... but more than half of What kind of questions can I ask here? is devoted to what not to ask and where else to ask questions which don't belong here.

I think the above fact is interesting on its own; it reflects the way the community seems really fixated on what rpg.stackexchange is not as opposed to what it is. Mikhail's opinion (from the original question) of the community also reflects that mentality; there are lots of concrete rules people can cite when pointing the finger claiming others aren't fitting in, but not as many rules for others to understand quickly how to integrate; the only way they can integrate is the long way.

So I think we need to brush up that What kind of questions can I ask here? section, thinking of it as a "rpg.stackexchange bill of rights" which anyone can easily cite saying "Yes, my question belongs here".

Edit

We still have the same problem: the "get off my lawn" part of the FAQ "What kind of questions can I ask here?" is still lengthier than the "welcome to our site part" - visually it's twice as big and textually it's 30+ words longer:

This makes no sense and is redundant since there is another section of the FAQ devoted to "What kind of questions should I not ask here" later on...

Answer 2

One way to help: address the tone of the comments.

We're all geeks, and we prize efficiency. Some questions are closed in a way that feels efficient to the poster but brusque and dismissive to newbies.

Some posts are closed after a few terse "This looks off-topic" comments.

Often, posts are simply closed, with little or no explanation to the questioner besides the (also brusque) text "closed as not a real question...It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. See the FAQ."

Put another way: if a family member asked you a question, can you imagine answering him or her with those words?

So, a solution is to add a comment explaining the close in a friendly way, describing why the question is off-topic. I'm not suggesting we coddle people; just that the directness of the current interface could be softened by a human touch.

Answer 3

I think that this group is too fast to close questions down. It seams that a few of the regulars have topics that they either don't like, find uninteresting or seam to think is an incorrect question. This makes it seam a very unfriendly place, it is better to correct a question, to improve it or to point it to a matching question before closing it down. Newbie are the life and soul of a community, frighten them away and you will be left with only the old hands, that can't post on anything as it has already been done. Also, sometimes an old question can be re-asked and new answers found, there is no point posting new answer to an already blessed answer on a previous question.

Answer 4

Well, a community like this has to balance "the Stack Exchange way" with "Not being rude." I feel bad for people who come and ask a question that in their minds seems reasonable (like "where's the Star Wars license" guy) and bam it gets shut down. Justified or not, they'll be leaving and not coming back, obviously. But of course we need to have some concern (maybe not as much as we have, but some concern) over having good questions. Not every question on SO/SF is one for the ages, I'll note.

Now, I don't see as much of a problem with answers. It's "hard" to write a good SE question out of the gate, but the only real reason to not write a good answer is that you're not writing an answer, you're writing a discussion-forum-esque comment. And the response to those should be to migrate them to comments. I am dubious that anyone who is a real expert will write many answers that will get massively downvoted, massive downvotes tend to be for people being hostile in some way or completely off topic. Now, some people do get upset about one downvote, and that's sad but nothing to do about that.

Also, it seems like the rules are hard to find - we need to figure out a way to have a very clear "New to the site? Go read this!" that concisely (not as part of a big ol faq or whatnot) explains the basic concept of the questions/answers nature of the site. I can write one up, need to figure out how to place it prominently enough though.

Answer 5

I think perhaps you're asking the wrong questions.

What topical sites does this person participate on? How do they work? What audience do they have? Why do they work for him?

(And if the answer to the above is "he doesn't participate on any", then well.. that's that.)

There are a lot of people in love with the phpBB status quo and you will never change them. Furthermore -- we don't want to. We want the smart users who are sick of the discussiony, signature-laden phpBB status quo and want a higher signal to noise ratio -- even if, yes, that requires so many stupid rules!

You know, rules like.. stay on topic.. ask questions that can be answered.. don't waste our time with idle discussion, stuff like that. :)

Answer 6

Your friend seems to be looking at how questions are policed and extrapolating that the same is done for answers.

That assumption is understandable, but incorrect. SE is extremely accepting of answers both in the system (you can't vote to delete them) and in culture (rarely do people argue in comments to an answer).

If we're going to think on how to make the site more welcoming to new experts, I think we need to somehow emphasise that not only are all answers welcome, but that eliminating bad questions is a feature of the system for the benefit of people who like to answer interesting questions.

---

And on that note I'm going to address the part of Mikhail's comments that have gone without comment so far, and go out on a 4e limb: A portion—not most or even many, but enough to taint the well—of the 4e questions asked here seem to be ridiculously trivial. I get the (perhaps mistaken) impression that many people are playing using only DDi without reading the books, and come here to ask questions that would be trivially answerable if they had ever Read The Fine Rules. To be fair, I've noticed this with 3.5 too, where a small number of questions look like the asker is trying to play using only the SRD, having never read the actual rules—but it's 4e questions that dominate the front page and end up setting the tone of the site.

I submit that a significant percentage of trivial rules questions—enough to form a visible trend—is a flaw for attracting experts. Those questions are just boring. To connect this to the first half of my answer, I don't think we're doing a good job of eliminating bad questions when it comes to The Most Popular Game.

Mikhail's impression was that the questions he saw were all either trivial or shut down, and if we are going to discuss how to make this kind of potential user more welcome, we should really be addressing both halves of that equally.

Answer 7

Two approachability suggestions (just minor things):

Coming here from Reddit, the instinct to upvote is automatic and it stinks to click the arrow and be denied. Also, upvotes only give one karma on Reddit so you think "I have to get 15 upvotes before I can register my opinion? Forget it." I would change the hover text somehow to say say "Requires 15 reputation to upvote (15 rep = about two upvoted answers)".

The other thing is that I thought the privilege "talk in chat" sounded like "ability to banter in the comments under each answer," and I was confused trying to find the link. I'd change the privilege name to "talk in live chat," so I'd know whether I was interested in it.

Answer 8

I just joined today. Promptly after writing my first question I was told I used an incorrect tag line. I will say that it wasn't rudely stated but it was surprising to just be called out. It would be great if we could answer questions more freely and easier. I was scanning through some questions that I would have liked to answer but cant because I have 0 reputation and no one has answered my question or voted on it, I cannot. I am new to these type of board pages but I feel like if I have a helpful answer that no one has posted, wouldn't it be positive for me to answer and help that person? I feel a little intimidated but I hope my experience will change.

Answer 9

A certain amount of 1) is necessary when joining any new community IMHO. A newcomer to any regular forum isn't necessarily going to be welcomed into the inner circle despite demonstrating obvious expertise. Does he feel that it would be an excessive amount for this community?

StackExchange is optimized for getting answers to your questions. I'd agree that it isn't necessarily optimized for new experts.

I get the feeling that I'm not answering your question as so much as restating it. :-S

I would point out that due to the mechanism of reputation and increasing access to new functionality based on the same that everyone is guaranteed a seat at the table here, unlike most other forums/sites. Especially with the site still in beta, it isn't a lengthy process to get the rep necessary to influence things.

Answer 10

As a thought after reading @mxyzplk 's answer, I think having a tab pop up saying 'read the FAQ' is not effective - in this age of advertising being shoved down your eyesockets, everyone just goes for the X button without reading what the tab says. I propose we give newcomers an incentive for reading the FAQ - like have a quiz that is only accessible from a link in the FAQ page with questions about the rules of the FAQ and based on what people just read (not aiming to provide a challenge - so in that sense, I suppose it's not a real quiz - but to provide an easy way for people to remember the most important rules, if not all, of this site) and if they get an X number of them right (or all of them, depending on what message we want to put through to the newcomer) then maybe they win something, like reputation or some medal? I am not sure if we can do that, I think we are bound by the same medals and rules about how to gain reputation as any other S.E site, but why not apply this idea to all S.E. sites, they could all benefit from it.

If that still doesn't work, well then we'll just have to keep closing off topic questions (explaining why we did in the right way, of course). But I don't think we should be too pushy about it; something like, for example, not letting people with less than X amount of rep post a question without having to scroll at the bottom of the FAQ page and clicking on a "I have read all this" button is a bit too paranoid and sanitized.

Answer 11

I'm not sure how we would go about directing people to them, but there certainly are some questions that are more "expert" level than others on the site (and I imagine we would have a heck of a time distilling such a list).

I wonder if there are any views that are more conducive to encouraging new experts than the front page?

• Hot questions: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/?tab=hot
• Unanswered questions: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/unanswered
• FAQ questions: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=faq
• Active questions: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active

Answer 12

With all that's been discussed so far, here's a few (perhaps opinionated) conclusions I've reached.

1. The FAQ needs some work. Plain and simple, although the work itself may not quite be. We need to make it clearer what is and is not acceptable here, while at the same time putting some more emphasis on the former.

2. We're too soft on "trivial" or "off-topic" questions. If we're really going to push for a certain level of "expertise" or "complexity" in our questions, and really want to disallow certain subjects or types of questions, we need to get better about closing them. This statement of course is only meant to address questions that cannot be modified to more properly fit the intent of the site - whatever we conclude that to be.

3. Questions that are closed because they are genuinely not appropriate for the site should be deleted in relatively short order. This is just a simple matter of maintaining a clean site.

4. We should continue to gently prod people into asking better questions. If a question is salvageable, either edit it directly or post a comment to the OP with appropriate suggestions.

5. We need to start cleaning up our comment space. If certain comments have outlived their usefulness, such as edit suggestions that have already been implemented or rejected, or comment-debates that have run their course, it's time for them to go. Again, it's just another part of keeping a clean site and pleasant appearance.