Timeline for What can we do to help users understand our site better?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 31, 2012 at 12:05 | vote | accept | Rachel | ||
| Jan 12, 2013 at 16:35 | |||||
| May 24, 2012 at 19:56 | comment | added | Rachel | @MarkTrapp I did not understand the scope change until just recently. I was happy just using the site, and stayed out of meta until I started seeing a lot of questions closed that I thought were useful to programmers. Now that I understand it, I've stopped trying to chance the site's scope, although I would like to change the name and/or description/branding because I see new users almost daily who mistakenly think this site is for Q&A about programmers, not software development. | |
| May 24, 2012 at 19:53 | comment | added | user8 | Which is a okay, albeit futile, thing to do. But it'd go a lot better if you made an honest case about what you wish the site to be and about what's going on instead of rewriting history. The site simply never was, or was for a very short period of time, the site you want. | |
| May 24, 2012 at 19:51 | comment | added | user8 | @Rachel Since September 29th, 2010, there has been no change in scope. I know you like to keep insisting that there was, but just spending 15 minutes looking at the questions during beta shows people attempted to make the same arguments about the site you keep making almost two years later. Even granting your completely bogus start date of August 2011, that's still almost a year: site history has nothing to do with you keep trying to redefine the site to something you'd prefer more. | |
| May 24, 2012 at 19:44 | comment | added | Rachel | @MarkTrapp That is not an announcement stating the site scope has changed from Programmers to Software Development. It is an announcement stating subjective questions need to meet specific guidelines to stay open on the site, which I supported | |
| May 24, 2012 at 19:39 | comment | added | user8 | @Rachel That's a very big dose of revisionism. I was very active during that time period: it was a big deal then and everyone knew about it. Enforcement notice, dated September 29th 2010. A casual look through the questions list sorted by date shows site scope and closures was the main topic of the site throughout beta, and people started complaining about it almost immediately. | |
| May 24, 2012 at 15:05 | comment | added | Rachel | Actually, the site tolerated the "free-for-all" (aka Q&A for Programmers to ask questions and get answers from other programmers) for almost a year. No announcement was ever made about changing the site scope from Programmers to Software Development, and nobody started seriously closing questions until around Aug 2011, which is when users started noticing the change. Take a look at this data explorer query which graphs questions asked and closed. Perhaps it will help you understand why users didn't bring up the subject until months later | |
| May 23, 2012 at 22:39 | comment | added | user8 | At a certain point, it becomes untenable to blame it on systemic confusion as the number of excuses without merit or basis in reality start to dwindle. I have a far more simple answer: people come to this site, refuse to RTFM, and ask anything that pops into their head. It's the main reason why moderation is based on reactions, not predictions: no matter what we do, there will be a non-trivial portion of the population that does not or will not attempt to figure out if this site's for them before participating. And for that, we have close votes, down votes, comments, etc. | |
| May 23, 2012 at 22:38 | comment | added | user8 | While the site history caused problems for people who joined when it was a free-for-all, it hasn't been a free-for-all for 20 out of the 21 months this site's been in existence. Besides there being nothing we can do about the past, the vast majority of users and activity on the site occurred after the random-crap-as-a-programmer stuff was banned. | |
| May 23, 2012 at 20:08 | history | edited | Daenyth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 123 characters in body
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| May 23, 2012 at 19:33 | comment | added | Roc Martí | @Daenyth It's funny that your answer is downvoted while your last comment is upvoted, I think you should include it in the answer. I'm upvoting the answer, but 90% of my upvote is for the comment, I came here expecting the "random-crap-as-a-programmer" site you talk about, after reading an old blog post somewhere. But I like what I found. | |
| May 23, 2012 at 15:09 | comment | added | Jim G. | @Rachel: Yes. While I am interested in clearing up misunderstandings on Programmers.se, Super User is far more confusing. I don't even go there anymore. | |
| May 22, 2012 at 13:38 | comment | added | Daenyth | I think in our particular case the name causes confusion more than other sites because of the history the site has as random-crap-as-a-programmer, though maybe it's a red herring and the site history is the real problem. | |
| May 22, 2012 at 13:37 | comment | added | Rachel | Super User is confusing (I have to check the FAQ every time I want to post something to be sure it shouldn't be on Server Fault instead), Skeptics is also confusing but has a great introduction to the site for new users, and DBA, Webmasters, Andriod Enthusiasts, and Writers are all a much narrower group of people than Programmers, whose title spells out what they do. It's pretty obvious what the content of their site is just by the group description, while in our case it is not. | |
| May 22, 2012 at 13:35 | comment | added | yannis Mod | I'm not saying the name should be completely dismissed as a potential source of confusion, however I strongly believe that most of the confusion comes from people failing to read the FAQ. Even if the name is a tad confusing, the FAQ is not (imho) and spending 5mins reading it should help alleviate any confusion about the name. | |
| May 22, 2012 at 13:32 | comment | added | Daenyth | @YannisRizos: That's a good point, I hadn't considered those ones. | |
| May 22, 2012 at 13:29 | comment | added | yannis Mod | Super User, Android Enthusiasts, Database Administrators, Webmasters, Skeptics, Writers are all doing just fine, and none of them is about a group of people, but about what that group of people does... | |
| May 22, 2012 at 13:27 | history | answered | Daenyth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |