How to get a better sense of community going?

Question

I recently noticed a few things that made me worry about the community here. I basically started asking myself if there is one, and if there is, if it's not just a too small clique of users.

I noticed:

• Some questions that are getting close- and downvotes also being upvoted and answered. This means they won't be bumped off the front page with a negative score anymore, and this might have the additional benefit of a few more upvotes/reputation for the answerer. It also doesn't really encourage people to ask better questions, they'll be getting answers anyway.
• Some questions are answered by users with the reputation to cast both close- and reopen votes, yet often aren't discussed on meta or get reopened. Not reopening isn't a big problem, they weren't very good questions in the first place. But it does mean there's a load of questions hanging around that don't get automatically cleaned up when they aren't improved, which means more work for the users with delete vote privileges.
• Sometimes, people leaving comments (indicating to me that they realize something is wrong with the question) but answering them anyway.
• A few bouts of 'Fastest Gun in the West' syndrome, where it looks like people are racing to answer a question seconds after it is posted, instead of first carefully considering whether the question is a good fit or not. (I must admit I'm struggling with this too, when I see a question that I really like).

Now, I'm wondering how we can make people aware that this site has certain standards of what is a good question, and what is needed to do this. I came up with a few questions I'd like to see solved myself, but if there's other things that need to be taken into account, feel free to comment/add.

• Do we need more and clearer policies?
• Do we need to explain these policies more to people, because they are unaware they exist?
• How would we go about getting the attention of people when we want to explain?
• How do we let people know that what they're doing is against policies/might not be a good idea?

I would be really interested in reaching out to those people that have the privilege to close/reopen questions (500 reputation points). But any idea on how to get more people involved in shaping the site (encouraging good behavior/discouraging bad behavior) would be welcome.

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If you want examples, these are from today for example:

• How to mitigate underperformance as a delegation strategy?
• Talking with someone who goes on lots of tangents

And these are older:

• How to build resilience against negative comments online
• How to react when your flirt gives the same respond like you did
• How to handle being interrupted

Answer 1

I think a lot of what you're noticing is a symptom of not having enough questions, when compared to the number of people excited to answer them.

Right now, for anyone who really wants to write answers (and possibly gain reputation) it's pretty difficult to do without quickly jumping on questions. If you wait around at all, every question will have plenty of answers and you won't have anything to do.

Personally, I wouldn't mind writing more answers, but I don't check the site obsessively, so I've ended up answering only a couple times, and generally whenever I look, everything on the front page already has at least a couple answers, often many more. So I really feel like if I wanted to post more, I'd have to start being much faster (or answering lower-quality questions). It's not surprising that some people end up doing exactly that.

So sure, we can talk away on meta, and even start nudging people in comments on the main site. The place with the most room is users with close-vote privileges who answer questions that get closed - if the closure seems uncontroversial, I think it is fair game to leave a comment on their answer suggesting that they think twice before answering in future similar situations.

But as long as the incentives are pushing people toward fast answers, it's going to happen. So how do we shift those incentives? It's pretty tough. For the most part, getting more questions just takes time.

A couple things that might nudge things in the right direction, at least:

• Ask questions. I know, it's hard in many ways, but it's the most direct thing anyone can do. Remember that it's okay to ask questions even if you think you know the answer; you may still learn, and others certainly will.

• Especially if you're a very-involved, high-rep user, consider giving others a chance. Pass up on the chance to answer questions sometimes, if you think others will be able to answer well. If you think that you can do better than everyone, great, go for it, but if you think others can do just as well, consider whether you really need to be the fastest gun in the west. Obviously not everyone out there is going to read this and heed that advice, but if the most active users cut back a bit, it'll at least give a teensy bit of breathing room. Right now, 10% of answers were written by just 5 users, and 20% by 15 users, so there is room to make a difference here.

Answer 2

^{whew, this got long... I bolded my main points in each section if you want to skim!}

Some questions that are getting close- and downvotes also being upvoted and answered. This means they won't be bumped off the front page with a negative score anymore, and this might have the additional benefit of a few more upvotes/reputation for the answerer. It also doesn't really encourage people to ask better questions, they'll be getting answers anyway.

Just because you think a question is bad and shouldn't be answered doesn't mean everyone on the site thinks that. The community is not a hive-mind, so of course we'll have some controversial questions! It's okay for people to disagree. This is accounted for in the system by requiring multiple close, delete, undelete, and reopen votes (unless you're a moderator, of course).

I've answered questions where I felt there was enough information to provide a good answer, but it was later closed as "too broad" or "unclear". Sometimes I see what others are requesting for improvements and agree they have valid points, while still feeling confident in my answer. Other times I'll argue against the closure because I disagree with the reasons. It depends.

What helps most is when close-voters leave comments explaining why they're voting to close. I've been frustrated a couple times lately with people not doing that - a question looks fine to me, but somehow has 1, 2, 3 close votes with no explanation about why it was "unclear" or "too broad". In these cases I wonder, what am I missing here? (Does this only make sense to me because I'm from my particular culture? Am I not experienced enough to know what variables would affect the situation? etc.) Not only does CV-without-commenting not help OP improve their question, but it also doesn't help potential answerers understand why they might want to hold off.

Some questions are answered by users with the reputation to cast both close- and reopen votes, yet often don't aren't discussed on meta or get reopened. Not reopening isn't a big problem, they weren't very good questions in the first place. But it does mean there's a load of questions hanging around that don't get automatically cleaned up when they aren't improved, which means more work for the users with delete vote privileges.

I definitely agree that this is a case to encourage more discussion. If you see it happening, make a meta post! Invite the user(s) to participate by commenting with a link under the question and answers. Don't wait for them to start the discussion - chances are the people who answered aren't checking back to see if the question got closed afterwards.

I disagree that it's a problem that roomba will no longer auto-delete the question. It is operating exactly as intended - we don't want potentially good content to be automatically removed, we want human eyes to make that value judgment. If the post really doesn't add anything to the site, it can still be deleted.

Sometimes, people leaving comments (indicating to me that they realize something is wrong with the question) but answering them anyway.

I think it's appropriate to leave a comment to the user pointing out their conflicting actions. "Hey, I noticed you asked for clarification but have already answered - please don't encourage poor questions by answering them before they're improved."

And just to play devil's advocate, it's possible they had second thoughts. I've done this before, where I thought of a question, posted a comment, started drafting an answer in anticipation, and then realized OP's response wouldn't make a big difference either way.

A few bouts of 'Fastest Gun in the West' syndrome, where it looks like people are racing to answer a question seconds after it is posted, instead of first carefully considering whether the question is a good fit or not. (I must admit I'm struggling with this too, when I see a question that I really like).

Yeah... like Jefromi answered I think this might be a result of high demand / low supply. We have lots of users eager to earn rep, so when a new question comes up people want to pounce on it! And if you don't answer it right now, there'll be a dozen answers by the time you look at it again, and you missed your chance... at least, I've certainly had that feeling about some questions!

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• Do we need more and clearer policies?
• Do we need to explain these policies more to people, because they are unaware they exist?
• How would we go about getting the attention of people when we want to explain?
• How do we let people know that what they're doing is against policies/might not be a good idea?

Personally, I'd comment and possibly vote on these answers. I often just don't vote at all, as I prefer to downvote answers on their own merits, rather than the quality of the question, though how you use your votes is up to you. If the answer was hasty and there was critical information missing from the question, there must be something not considered in the answer (else why close the question?). E.g, "The OP never specified this was their goal. Please note that the question has been placed on hold since you answered - you should consider removing it until after they improve it to give sufficient detail about what they want to accomplish, as it may invalidate your answer and attract downvotes."

Or maybe the question is completely off-topic. In this case I would again leave a comment to the user. E.g., "This question has been placed on hold as off-topic. While your enthusiasm for widgets is admirable, they're not on-topic here. In the future, please flag questions like this rather than encouraging them by providing answers."

(And if they disagree about the on-topic-ness - time for a meta post to discuss and get opinions from more of the community.)

I'm not a fan of copy-pasting the same comment and mass-downvoting every answer to an on-hold question, because it completely disregards the content. In many cases, it's also not completely objective. You may think it absolutely requires a culture tag, whereas someone else wrote an adequate answer without it. That deserves different treatment than, say, an answer on a blatant polling-type question.

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Kinda-side-note: I think by focusing on the answers, this is turning into an X-Y problem. If the problem is "bad questions are getting answers", the root of the issue is not really "people are answering bad questions", it's "bad questions are open long enough for people to post answers".

Otherwise, at what point should a user refrain from posting an answer that they think is good on an open question? Four close votes? One? Because the rules are five - if you want to change that you should be petitioning StackExchange. Or... we need to get more people close voting. This can be accomplished via chat (which seems to have evolved its own system for requesting close votes) or commenting on the question, so visitors can see and consider casting a vote of their own.

Answer 3

Em C's answer is exemplary (although initially it scared me with it's length!)

My views are similar, and simpler.

People seeing closed questions with authoritarian looking comments doesn't do much to encourage the idea that this is a "good community" - it's a sign of heavy moderation. Personally, it makes me less likely to post here for fear of being castigated. This castigation isn't an incentive to "be better", it's an incentive to leave. I have dogs, I know how this works.

It's clear from the Area 51 stats for this site that we need to encourage more questions. We currently attract less than half the daily questions that are deemed as "healthy" for a beta stack.

Heavy moderation and closing questions the way that it's happening now won't help that: Currently, IPS is stamping a cookie-cutter on questions and rejecting ones that don't come out round. This is wrong - I love wonky biscuits!

While I agree that questions need to be on-topic for the site and have enough contextual content to provide answers, closing questions and castigating both askers and answerers does not help - it only pisses people off.

It's my thought that established users here should be helping by:

Engaging OP's through edits to keep their questions open/get them reopened.

• People believe that placing a question "on hold" prompts the user to improve the question. This rarely happens - users see their question as being closed and go someplace else instead. Closing questions the way we're doing it now doesn't incentivise people into staying in the community. Many users here don't have English as their first language or they're not great at clearly communicating their issues (hey, this is IPS after all - users here often have problems relating to people or situations). If the intent of a question is fairly clear, but lacks some quality, at least edit that so that it looks a little better.
• Explanations when stabbing the VTC button. Again, VTC doesn't send a positive message to users. Asking users to clarify points in their questions helps them to craft their question and engage in the community in a lot more positive way than slapping a ticket on their windshield. Explaining to them why they're getting close-votes will give them some guidance on how the site should be used. Make sure the comments are nice and encouraging, and not just stating 'bad, because!'. Encourage users in the same go to improve their question.

Engage users by making edits. They don't have to be big edits, but they can show a certain goodwill and make an OP feel more welcome. This is about the seeing the obvious worth in improving a marginally bad question. Closing a question rarely prompts a user to improve it by editing. They're more likely to react to someone else's edit.

For examples, see:

• Greeting a person that I don't know well, avoiding awkward situations and bad manners. This edit should actually have been done before the question was put on hold, but if it was made earlier it the community might well have seemed more inviting to the OP, the OP might have felt like they have an ally here. Also, most of the comments requesting details were made after that edit. As a community, we can really seem more helpful if we leave such comments when we close-vote.
• Stopping a relationship with a good friend because It's too overwhelming and new for me Please note how, from the 2 choices mentioned in the comments, this edit just picks the one that's actually on-topic for IPS (even before the OP provided their input in a comment). If that's not good, an OP can revert/delete their question. Leave an edit message or comment explaining to the OP what you've done and why, and the community might seem more inviting and gain a new member. Added bonus: A question that might stay open instead of being closed as off-topic. (If it still lacks details, comment and close as too broad).

I am absolutely not suggesting to keep bad questions open. I am pleading for a more inviting community attitude towards those questions, an edit strategy like suggested here can have very positive influence on keeping a community engaged and providing better questions.

Also. Don't be afraid of HNQ. Many sites loathe the very idea of "HNQ fodder" and fear that these questions damage the reputation and quality of their sites. The truth is that it's a really good driver of traffic to the site in question. So, allow a few HNQ type questions to stay open.

Closing questions and slapping people with template castigations is easy.

Let's do the hard thing, lets help users solve the problems with their questions: Help them, guide them, be positive, be proactive.