Timeline for Follow-Up: New Site Name and Scope Proposals
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
31 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 16, 2020 at 10:01 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
|
|
| Jul 22, 2016 at 4:39 | comment | added | user22815 | If I could upvote Thomas' answer eleven times, I would, because his answer goes to eleven. Give us two more bullet points, which is still far less than we currently have. Why argue over little stuff? This site needs this change or it will die more than it already has. Trust me, the old group of core contributors and user-moderators are watching these meta posts at arm's length, casually eating popcorn, and watching the CEs delay and ignore what has to be done. Just f-ing do it already. Who knows, maybe veteran users will come back if we can make this change in less than three years. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 17:24 | comment | added | Robert Harvey | @Ana: Seriously, we just need the name change. The Tour page is mod-editable, and we can make that work. The name change is the only thing we can't do ourselves. Oh, and make sure CandiedOrange gets to keep his coffee cup. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 17:20 | history | edited | Thomas OwensMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 33 characters in body
|
| Jul 21, 2016 at 17:19 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Ana Again, why 4? Why not 6? Right now, we have 18 bullets on the on-topic page. On the tour page, we have 7 on-topic and 8 off-topic. We're talking about reducing the /help/on-topic page to 6 bullets and the tour page to 6 on-topic and 4 off-topic bullets. That's a reduction of 12 bullets on /help/on-topic and 3 on tour. We, the most dedicated folks in the community, came up with our bullet points. Please, feel free to drop in The Whiteboard or make a new chat room, but I honestly don't see the issue. Let us have our bullet points, give us the name that everyone agrees is better. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 17:15 | comment | added | Robert Harvey | @Ana: Then here they are: * Software, * Development, * Life, * Cycle. I'm still a bit mystified why it has to be four. It's not like the software can't handle the load (we have seven there right now). For those who don't understand what that term means, they can read this and look at this picture. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 17:12 | comment | added | Ana StaffMod | We're holding to the notion of four, highly informative bullets as a vetting mechanism, designed to put the most dedicated folks in this community in the driver's seat. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 17:09 | comment | added | Ana StaffMod | @ThomasOwens We want the same thing. The issue is it's a trade off between being clear and being broad, and the top two bullets increase broadness while decreasing clarity. The new people you want showing up and asking stuff here will see the on-topic page and existing posts and understand implicitly that questions about requirements and methodologies belong here. Alternately, the folks who you probably would prefer not post here may not even know what those two top bullets mean, which is exactly why they'll ask their question anyway, as means of finding out. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 16:58 | comment | added | gnat | regarding career and education advice it looks like @Shog9 expects "what to read, learn" bullet to cover that. I doubt that it will but wouldn't mind giving it a try, one never knows what goes in the head of folks dumping stuff like that and what would better repel them | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 16:48 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Ana I believe that having them will make it easier to attract more external experts in these subject areas. Especially considering that they aren't in the majority of questions. Like Robert Harvey said in a comment earlier, not being explicit about our scope was one reason why we're here. I don't think we should have massive lists, but I don't think 6 on-topic items is too long and it should help us when we advertise our site to be very clear to the types of people we want to attract to help us get the questions and answers we want. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 16:08 | comment | added | Ana StaffMod | @ThomasOwens Do you believe that questions about methods and requirements won't get asked here if the bullets explicitly saying so are gone? | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 16:01 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Ana Yes, we want to stop the participation that we don't want. We want to highlight the participation that we do want. And we want questions about methods and requirements here. We aren't a software design site, even those most of our questions are about design and architecture. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 16:00 | comment | added | Ana StaffMod | @ThomasOwens It's...a little confusing that on the one hand you want to encourage more participation, but you've all undertaken this process to stop the kinds of participation you don't want. When we said there needed to be no more than four bullets, it was because we wanted it to be easier for y'all to designate what this site is for new users, preferably while keeping everyone's blood pressure at healthy levels. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 15:58 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Shog9 Is it the biggest? No. It looks like design and architecture are the biggest. However, we do want to make people aware that these questions are on-topic here and to encourage more participation from the process and methods community. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 15:55 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Shog9 We have 814 agile, 516 scrum, 8 cmmi, 764 project-management, 531 development-process, 106 development-methodologies, 58 sdlc, 52 extreme-programming, 51 pair-programming, 27 kanban, 11 iterative-development, 10 rad, 9 cowboy-coding, 2 personal-software-process, and 15 lean questions. On our top tags, programming-practices, agile, and project-management all make an appearance. I'd like to encourage more people from the methods and processes world to participate here, and making it obvious that we welcome these types of questions would be helpful. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 15:49 | comment | added | Shog9 | Is it a huge part of this site though, @Thomas? (sorry, can't chat right ATM, will try to jump in later). | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 15:31 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Shog9 Why not? It's a huge part of software engineering. It doesn't require any additional explanation. You can ask about methods and practices here. Of course, like any other topic (like design and architecture), you still need to fit within our other rules like not being too broad or not being centered in opinion. We are all saying we want it, and you are saying no. Maybe you should jump into chat, but I just don't get why you are discouraging us from doing what we want. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 15:27 | comment | added | Shog9 | Why do you want to advertise it? I probably just have a huge blind spot here, or perhaps prejudice... But it strikes me as somewhat akin to Skeptics wanting to put religion as the first topic in their help center. Yes, it's something they cover... In certain specific ways... But those kinda require more explanation than they'll ever be worth. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 15:06 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Shog9 But we want to advertise it. Again: what is the problem if our /help/on-topic page has 6 bullets instead of 4? I pointed out several sites that have more than 4 bullet points. We, as a community, generally like the list of 6 things. Why is this an issue? | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 15:04 | comment | added | Shog9 | So don't get rid of the topic. Just don't advertise it. You wouldn't put "writing code" in the on-topic list, right? Even though there are plenty of questions about writing code asked and answered here, it sends the wrong message. Let's stop sending the wrong message. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 14:59 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Shog9 Yes, we need them in the on-topic list and we want to be explicit that we welcome questions about methods and practices here in this community. Just like we want requirements engineering questions here. The fact that some methods/practices questions are primarily opinion based or too broad doesn't mean we should get rid of it. Design questions can also be primarily opinion based or too broad, but that doesn't mean we aren't putting architecture and design in the things that are on-topic. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 14:55 | comment | added | Shog9 | Do you need them? Or... is it just hard to let go? Does "methods and practices" accurately describe what y'all do here? Because, while I don't deny that some methodology questions have a place, I also feel that it strongly hints at the sorts of questions y'all have spent a good long while (and a tremendous amount of effort) trying to discourage; if it's not sending the right message, get rid of it. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 14:38 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Shog9 Project Management has 6 bullets. Open Source has 4 on-topic and 2 off-topic bullets for a total of 6 bullets. Law has 5 bullets. The Workplace has 4 on-topic and 4 off-topic bullets, plus 5 to link to other places for more information. Please let us list our 6 bullet points and used our new (and significantly shorter) /help/on-topic and move on. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 14:34 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Shog9 We managed to get 15 things into 6 bullets. Right now, /help/on-topic is 18 bullets. What is wrong with letting us have 6 bullets for things that are on-topic? It's 1/3 of what we have now. We talked about this in chat, in comments on that meta thread. I think people are generally happy with a list of 6 things and linking to the appropriate Wikipedia pages to further define them if anyone is confused as to their meaning. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 14:29 | comment | added | Shog9 | Software Engineering - as you've noted for years - is an incredibly broad, diverse set of disciplines, @Thomas. Fortunately, you don't need to list them all out; implying their acceptability is what the name is for. The tag line, the bullet lists... Those should support the name and clarify misconceptions, not define. Y'all needed these massive lists because the name was ambiguous, but fixing that is our primary goal here; if you still think you need them, then maybe "Software Engineering" is the wrong name? | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 14:09 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | I agree with @RobertHarvey. 6 bullet points in /help/on-topic is better than the 18 we have now. We aren't going to get our site into 4 bullet points, considering that software engineering easily has over a dozen subdisciplines. We shouldn't have any of the off-topic items listed in /help/on-topic - those should go into /help/dont-ask. The CM team said on Meta.SE that they can help us edit that page. Let's not be ambiguous - let's clearly state what things are on-topic and define those things with links to Wikipedia. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 14:05 | comment | added | Robert Harvey | @Rachel: Ambiguity is what got us into this mess in the first place. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 13:44 | comment | added | Thomas Owens Mod | @Rachel That last paragraph is shorter than your comment, you know. I do agree that the name change will help a lot, but I also think that being more explicit and linking to the Wikipedia articles on the different topics will help clarify to anyone who is still confused. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 13:26 | comment | added | Rachel | I'll be honest, my eyes start to glaze over on that last paragraph :) I actually like the shorter lists by Shog better than the longer ones here. I think that we won't need those extra off-topic bullets once we're no longer called Programmers, or the few cases we do get questions will be much more manageable than now. And for the extra on-topic bullets, I think that can be covered by saying we're about the SLDC in general. The bullets themselves can be ambiguous to those that don't know the technical definition, and I don't think need an explicit mention in the on-topic list. | |
| Jul 21, 2016 at 13:07 | history | edited | Thomas OwensMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 430 characters in body
|
| Jul 21, 2016 at 11:47 | history | answered | Thomas OwensMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
