Can we make some concrete actions to adjust the website topic perception?

Question

Over the past 24h, 22 questions have been posted and 15 have been closed.

That means more than 68% of them have been closed.

All those people couldn't be all wrong. I think it's how we present stuff on the homepage that leads them to posting off topic questions.

Our problem is that we are selling chinese food in a restaurant that looks like an indian flavor.

When we arrive on the website, we see the big letters "Programmers". We should change this and put something more explicit.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Let's go through the questions:

1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142533/which-is-the-best-book-to-learn-ooad-including-design-patterns

   Not constructive for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take.

2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142524/horizontal-navigation-menu-with-sub-menus

   We are not a replacement for Google, and that won't change whatever we may do.

3. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142522/how-to-count-the-number-of-affected-rows-in-mysql

   Off topic, clearly belongs on Stack Overflow, were OP has successfully asked 6 questions (!?). Extremely trivial question (we don't migrate crap) and OP posted an answer immediately after they posted the question (rep-whoring?).

4. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142516/grouping-a-comma-separated-value-on-common-data

   Exactly the same as (3), same OP (off topic, belongs on SO, self-answer).

5. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142513/video-codec-price

   Too localized for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take.

6. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142512/keyboard-shortcut-to-focus-on-side-bar-for-sublime-text-2

   Off topic, a far better version of it could belong on Stack Overflow.

7. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142510/what-is-the-lowest-icq-number-that-was-ever-used

   I don't even know where to start with this one.

8. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142498/how-to-learn-the-math-behind-the-code

   Not constructive and there's a ton of duplicates on the site.

9. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142493/should-i-go-back-to-college-and-graduate-with-a-poor-gpa-or-try-to-jump-into-an

   Good question (the first so far that shows at least some effort), but unfortunately off topic.

10. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142487/decimal-to-hex-with-same-value

    The full text of the question:

    How can I do the below in c, 12 in decimal to 0x12 or 20 in decimal to 0x20

11. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142483/is-it-worth-the-time-to-learn-to-program-ios-apps

    Not constructive for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take.

12. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142470/frustrated-where-i-am-but-not-sure-where-to-go-with-my-career

    Career advice, off topic.

13. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142461/how-to-effectively-design-a-piece-of-software

    Vague, open ended, not constructive.

14. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142451/error-mpicc-command-not-found

    Off topic, a far better version of it might belong on Stack Overflow.

15. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142447/what-web-technology-to-use-for-web-app

    Vague, open ended, not constructive.

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This list of closed questions has little to do with Programmers. Most off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow questions are from unregistered users. There is a trend of people posting their Stack Overflow questions here to sidestep question blocks on Stack Overflow, and if I had to guess I'd say they are getting smarter and posting from unregistered accounts (so we can't find duplicates, or even the fact they have an Stack Overflow account).

I don't know if it's possible but if there's consensus we could require users to register before asking, that way we would at least be certain that OP is trying to sidestep a Stack Overflow ban and we could be deleting these questions ASAP, instead of waiting for them to be down voted to oblivion or attract delete votes.

Anyways, we have four of those, that far better versions of which could possibly fit on Stack Overflow. Then there are the herp derp questions (2), (7), (10), which brings us to 7 questions that are worth no one's time. That's almost half of the list.

Questions (1), (5), (11), (13), and (15) are not a good fit for Stack Exchange in general, there's little (if anything) we can do there. That brings us to 12 questions that we can't really do much about.

And questions (9) and (12) are career advice, the first item on our "do not ask" list and question (8) may be salvageable with a heroic edit, but I'm pretty sure any sane edit would make it a duplicate.

I don't see how any action we take will stop people from asking low quality questions, 7 out of 15 show no effort at all, other than typing the question itself. For the 5 questions that aren't a good fit for the Q&A format of the site, there has been a ton of debates on Meta Stack Overflow, I don't see the format or philosophy of Stack Exchange changing any time soon to accommodate such questions.

Which brings us to the two career advice questions. We can do a lot of things, but there are always going to be some topics that are off topic, regardless of what those are. If people fail to read the FAQ, why should we spent any time and effort on them? Why should the site change for the few that don't care enough to even skim through the FAQ?

I thought the whole point of this was quality, not quantity. We don't need more people or more questions just for the numbers, we are a mature Stack Exchange site with a steady crowd and a steady flow of great questions and even greater answers. There is no point in trying to accommodate every user who doesn't care enough to spend 5 minutes reading the FAQ.

We are not the only Stack Exchange site there is, there are 84 other sites currently, most of which have largely non technical crowds. Somehow people find it quite easy to participate on English Language and Usage, Bicycles, Photography and Cooking, but when we ask them to RTFM on a site called Programmers, we ask too much?

Answer 2

Yes, please change the site's name from Programmers to something that more accurately represents what this site is about (Software Development?)

I have seen this issue many times in the past and feel the same way. Our site name does not accurately represent what our site is about, and I think it is misleading and confusing for both new users and existing SE users

The way our site name is now, it sounds like we are a place for programmers to meet and discuss programmers. Sure it won't stop all the bad questions, but it will stop the off-topic questions that people ask because they think the site is about programmers.

This is meant to be a community-run site, but that's getting increasing hard to do when we don't take the time to make sure new users understand what the site is actually about.