26
votes
How to improve/maintain the quality-of-life of small fandoms in the face of a dominant big fandom on an open Stack Exchange?
Be the small-games advocate on-stack you want to see on-stack
D&D is overwhelmingly represented on the site, but I don't believe it's a result of any artificial mechanism to monopolize the stack ...
- 40k
25
votes
You can help new users identify their D&D edition!
Recommended course of action
Turns out we have a relatively low-traffic question asking exactly this: see How do I know which edition of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) the books I'm looking at ...
- 53.9k
17
votes
Accepted
Can a new user answer to comments under their own question?
Users can always comment on their own questions and answers regardless of reputation, see the end note of this meta.SE post.
- 908
17
votes
Accepted
When is it OK to assume the system without it being considered a guess?
When there is additional evidence of the system being used already in the question.
As these two answers from experienced, and even venerable, RPGSE members point out, where there is additional ...
- 142k
15
votes
Accepted
What's our policy on editing "Thanks" from new questions?
Remove "thanks" and "thank you" from posts
One of the major strengths of SO/SE is a very high signal to noise ratio, meaning that pages here are laser focused on good quality ...
- 94k
15
votes
Accepted
What to do about a new user repeatedly posting poor questions?
Treat each post on its own merit; if you see a pattern of behavior go ahead and send up a custom flag.
Posts should be voted/commented upon regardless of author. We're all human, of course, but to the ...
nitsua60Mod
- 101k
15
votes
Should a new user be welcomed before the new user's question is closed?
Either can happen in either order. There's not a material difference between them.
In fact I'd encourage you to close first so as to not leave moderation measures waiting 2-5 minutes longer than ...
- 36.3k
12
votes
Accepted
The site's availability to newcomers seems startlingly low
RPG.SE can be daunting to a newcomer especially one with expectations set by forums, Reddit, etc. To address your points in order...
The tour and help center by their nature can only give general ...
- 175k
11
votes
How can we effectively measure user retention?
It's possible to get at this kind of information with StackExchange Data Explorer.
When users sign up, how many of them come back?
This query computes the proportion of users active in the last 365 ...
- 12.5k
11
votes
How can we solve a problem of newcomers getting unexplained downvotes?
One thing to be aware of is that "newcomers who have a bad first experience" are a tiny minority.
They only seem like a larger percentage because of the usual perceptual warps we humans experience, ...
- 243k
11
votes
How to improve/maintain the quality-of-life of small fandoms in the face of a dominant big fandom on an open Stack Exchange?
Ask questions about non-D&D games you're interested in
Answer questions about non-D&D games you're interested in
Contribute answers without "D&D bias" to more general questions as well, ...
- 175k
10
votes
Accepted
What to do when a new user creates a second account to edit "their" question?
We don't need to do anything else.
We could but we have no reason to so we don't want to. There's no problem here, so there's no need to try and figure out a solution.
What should happen, if the edit ...
- 67.1k
10
votes
Can we improve the way we treat newcomers?
We Value Quality
Here on RPG.SE, we strive to generally uphold Stack Exchange-wide best practices as the best way to keep a civil, information-rich discussion going in a community - gamers - that is ...
- 175k
9
votes
Accepted
How can I help a new user reformulate their first question?
Trust the Stack =)
Go ahead and ask for details in comments. I suggest, though, asking only for the two or three most-important-seeming details. Avoid help piling. I think it's important to get a few ...
nitsua60Mod
- 101k
8
votes
How to handle this new user accidentally making multiple accounts and suggesting edits to their own question?
I've rolled back the suggested edit, as it's not clear whether the suggested edit was by the same user that made the original post. While you might be right that it is the same user, you yourself have ...
- 49.6k
8
votes
When is it OK to assume the system without it being considered a guess?
To throw my own answer out there, I'd say that we should revise our definition of system guessing. Whilst there may be plenty of ambiguity between, say, a Pathfinder question and a D&D question, ...
- 78.6k
6
votes
How to improve/maintain the quality-of-life of small fandoms in the face of a dominant big fandom on an open Stack Exchange?
Lobby to restore game recommendation questions
Yes, that is something that you can do. No, it won't be easy. Change never is.
How to improve/maintain the quality-of-life of small fandoms in ...
- 142k
6
votes
How to ask a country-specific version of a more general question?
I am afraid that Where can I find other RPG players? is really as far as we can go. Asking for more specific items is basically a shopping question, and suffers from all the same reasons that those ...
- 175k
6
votes
How can we effectively measure user retention?
Sure! So, we're not free to share the specifics of the diamond moderator version of the site analytics with the public. And beyond that, we don't have a specific "bounce rate" metric.
What I can ...
- 175k
5
votes
Should a new user be welcomed before the new user's question is closed?
YES, but...
In this case, probably two workflows overlapped:
Someone that isn't really into commenting noticed the duplicate, tagged it
Others that just read the queue gave the "yep, is a dupe" ...
- 40.1k
5
votes
How to ask a country-specific version of a more general question?
I'd be open to us offering region-specific advice: we're becoming a large enough community that we could have enough members for that to be viable.
However rather than using my diamond to reopen the ...
- 36.3k
5
votes
The site's availability to newcomers seems startlingly low
What you observe has been a concern to the community at RPG.SE for some time. For a sampling of concerns about climate here, you can take a look at these meta discussions and see that there has been ...
- 142k
5
votes
When is it OK to assume the system without it being considered a guess?
Nothing is gained by editing in a system tag; Nothing is lost by putting a question on hold
Closing the question prevents answerers from wasting time when the guess is wrong
If a system was guessed ...
- 75.6k
5
votes
Should we add a definition of a good answer to the tour?
We can't modify the tour that way without developer intervention.
Only three parts of the tour are editable by diamond moderators:
The blurb at the top—we can change its text. That's the paragraph ...
- 36.3k
4
votes
Should we add a definition of a good answer to the tour?
There is a help article dedicated to this, and we have our own guidance we can link.
How do I write a good answer?. Link this article if you feel the need to leave more detailed guidance about writing ...
- 144k
3
votes
Should we add a definition of a good answer to the tour?
The tour is only a basic introduction to the site
The tour gives a basic, high level introduction to the site. And it's hard to give an actually useful definition of what a good answer is, especially ...
Someone_EvilMod
- 48k
3
votes
What to do about a new user repeatedly posting poor questions?
The site code will take care of this automatically, if the user does not improve. The exact mechanisms are secret, but if a user gets enough Bad Post Points of a type then the site won't let them ...
- 67.1k
3
votes
How can we solve a problem of newcomers getting unexplained downvotes?
Direct them to meta
You don't need to know why each person is voting your answer down as a new user. You do need to know why most people are voting your answer down, if you can't figure it out ...
- 67.1k
3
votes
How can we solve a problem of newcomers getting unexplained downvotes?
So the usual answer is: we just downvote when we have to, and we try to leave a comment when we can and when it wouldn't start an argument. Life is messy, and as in any social circumstance, some ...
- 36.3k
2
votes
Should a new user be welcomed before the new user's question is closed?
Yes
It's OK to have an awkward moment when entering a new group. This group can be frustrating to enter. The only reason I stuck around at all after my initial rebuff was because I am ornery and ...
- 142k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible