For the folks on the nominations who mention things they want to change, there is a desire to not point fingers, but then how do you describe behaviors you want to change? I was just trying to get a general sense for cases where you felt like the bans weren't being used when they should be.
In a case such as that, good faith should be assumed.
The user is new, and doesn't know the kinds of questions we like here.
It really didn't add any value to the site, especially since his own answer was wrong, but there really isn't any moderator action to be taken there.
If, for example, a user were to repeatedly ask and self-answer every trivial thing he came across in a game, just as a means to expose himself to upvotes, that would warrant closer inspection.
Again, I don't want to go into specific cases where users may have acted in an unbecoming way, but that is an example of what something like that might look like.
I have on occasion seen Chat offenses go unpunished too, but my default reaction is normally just to leave if it is bothering me. I'm not a mod though :)
I've seen worse too. I've seen users stripped of all powers on other forums. I agree the small space is limiting, but I suppose there has to be some limit. That's why I decided to come here. I get where you are coming from now, it make much more sense with context.
I'll comment to that effect over on the thread. Thanks for the time.
@Yuki That's actually a good question. I've mostly seen 30-minute bans but I do also remember at least one 60-minute ban. I always attributed that to stacked 30-minute bans.
For example, if 3 of your messages get flagged and validated, you get 90 total minutes.
Did you happen to get 2 at once?
If not, then maybe there's more to it than I realize.
@EBongo Primarily I want to improve our new user experience. I think that once a user has spent a month or more around here they start to get the hang of the way we work, but that first month is pretty rough on them. Without naming names there are quite a few users who're needlessly blunt when new users that don't know better ask a question or post an answer and I think it's something the community as a whole needs to work on.
Taking for instance a new user asking a question that we know is off topic, I think that rather than just turning them away with a blunt "this is off topic" question we should consistently at least offer some form of help - politely referring them to another Stack Exchange site or other resource on the internet that will help them.
The key here is creating a good enough first impression that the next time they've got an issue, maybe they'll return and give us another chance, rather than forming the opinion that we didn't want to help them in the first place.
There are of course other ways we can improve this experience, like clearly identifying community consensus to make it easier for new users to get to trip with why we do things the way we do
@Strix @uni @yuki custom bans are intervals of 1h on chat and 1d on site.
Flagbans are always 30m per message, but that does stack. And then there's always system bugs (I could imagine two simultaneous flags causing a race condition bug inferpreting it as two messages)
@kalina If you check my Meta rap sheet you'll see plenty of examples of me advocating the same thing. I've gotten a lot of counter arguments that essentially we can't be polite and welcoming to new users without causing content to suffer.
As in other cases, I believe there is a happy medium and right now we too often guard rail to the side of protecting content and shunning new users. These are definitely the kind of changes from the status quo that I would like to see.
@EBongo Being polite and maintaining a high standard of quality are not mutually exclusive. Being polite is a common courtesy, all it costs is a little bit of time and effort. You can still tell a user that their question is off topic while remaining polite. (See my examples)
It's something I would actively encourage from all users on the site.
@kalina @EBongo On that topic, I'd love if when we vote to close identify this game topics, we leave a helpful and friendly comment pointing people to this blog post. Explains that such questions are off-topic (and why), welcomes to the community, AND still potentially helps them
What I don't like is the attitude I sometimes see that "If you help them in the comments, it'll just encourage them to ask more questions like this"
@Sterno and if we have extra questions, they'll be from returning users, and if they've chosen to return then a portion of them will eventually pick up how we work and maybe start contributing in a positive manner
@kookman98 As a community, we have decided to disallow these questions unless you have an actual screenshot, video, etc. of the game you want to identify; not just a description of vague recollections. Otherwise they turn into guessing games, which the Q&A format is not good at. For some suggestions about other sites where you might be able to find your answer, read this. — Sterno18 hours ago
I do seem to remember a script or something that let you save and insert some custom close reasons. Maybe I should dig that up.
Speaking of welcoming new users, I have no issues at all being welcoming to them; in fact, I try to leave a comment on all new users' problematic questions to point them in the right direction.
I do have an issue of putting new users above quality content, however. If we're bending the rules to accept them here, that's something I'm totally against.
@Frank Nobody is saying leave the questions open - off topic is off topic and that's clearly defined. Therefore nothing is being put above quality. That being said, there is no harm in being friendly and helpful.
The whole "be friendly and helpful to new users" movement is not about making off topic questions on topic, leaving off topic questions open, etc - it's about pointing the users in the direction of their answers regardless of the quality or the on topic-ness of their question.
@Frank If a question seems obvious to you - great, help them with it. Just because it's obvious to you doesn't mean it's obvious to them.
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And if the first result on Google isn't a link back to Arqade, then most of the time we could probably do with a question covering it, so our extreme levels of Google-juice can help others with similar issues.
Such as our most downvoted (and yet, still valid) question. A user shows up, asks about something that happens at the beginning of the game, and points out that he totally ignores every story bit that has happened thus far.
That, right there, is utterly worthy of every downvote it accrues.
It's still a valid question, however, so it doesn't get closed.
Either way, this isn't the place to try to convince me about anything. That is my stance; there are questions that are too simple or stupid to be allowed to exist.
On Arqade we have very well defined and frequently refined rules for what is on topic - if a question can make it past that net I don't see why we should then go on to tell a user their question is "pointless because it's obvious" or whatever other bluntness we can apply.
I find it funny when things are up-voted even when they show absolutely no research effort on the part of the user, and sometimes it feels as it it's simply people up-voting because it's not badly worded, or whatever, and they don't understand why someone down-voted it. It sort of annoys me that a good chunk of my rep on this site isn't from answers that provide thoughtful responses, but from stating the blindingly obvious (not that I necessarily want to lose that rep).
I can see a lot of questions of the form "I missed this key information and now can't progress because of it", which would be perfectly valid, because humans make mistakes and don't all have eidetic memories.
They won't be the best questions on the site, but they certainly have a chance of helping out other users in the future.
@TZHX research effort isn't the only reason to downvote or upvote - there are many questions on the site that are genuinely useful to the rest of the internet that demonstrated zero research effort.
@TZHX sometimes asking a variety of questions about a new game that you already know the answer to is important for driving traffic to the site - quite often, if we're the first site with any real resources for game, that in itself will attract more users here to ask questions - because we already have questions and they're already on here
take the last Candy Box game, fredley got a large number of questions on the site and the site went completely crazy for a few days because we were one of the few places to find conclusive answers about the game
It's a bad question, but not a question that doesn't belong on the site.
Categorizing content that doesn't belong on the site on its quality is completely arbitrary. When is it enough effort to be asked on the site? After sifting through pages after pages of manuals, forum discussions and wikis?
Not to mention that there is a difference between deletevotes and downvotes for a reason. Otherwise we could just delete anything that hits score -X
Applying such a filter is, in my opinion, actively harmful to the site.
Right now, our questions that fall into that category are rather minimal. If I see another one, I'll just grumble and downvote. If it turns into more of a problem, though, it's something I think we should visit.
@TZHX Arguably. A case can be made that a question with negative score and no answers is unfit to be answered (not clear enough, etc.). I don't like auto-deletion in general, I'd much rather get a review queue for such stuff that triggers every time a set interval is hit (f.e. 6 months) and we then get to decide what to do about it.
@FEichinger If we happen to get questions of that nature more often. I can't define an exact figure, because I don't know when I think it would be more of a problem.
You seem rather pessimistic on this. Rather than expecting good quality to come out of serving such questions in the long run, you are preparing for what might happen in the unlikely event that there may be more of these questions at some point in the future.
Their askers stick around, get accustomed to the site and may post better content in the long run. On top of that we get more traffic onto the site, because we have yet another question to be found on Google, which brings even more users on board.
I don't think "slippery slope" arguments are a helpful way to look at site growth. Even in some of our worst floods, like say, the LoL contest, the situation still did not become completely untenable and cleanup was able to be reasonably done, both during and after the event.
@Frank I don't think that's entirely true. We have to be honest here; Google is a majority part of search traffic. The fact that we take steps to improve SEO kind of is proof that we want to leverage Google to get more people here.
@Frank I disagree, as with the example I provided yesterday - two of my WoW questions which were immediately self answered displayed a lack of effort - they were simple issues where a quick Google would have revealed the answer and between them they got ~700k hits. That is a significant amount of traffic and many, many instances where we fulfilled our primary objective: to provide answers to the internet
@Frank You're referencing questions that display a lack of effort and research, I think it's completely relevant. What is to stop a new user from asking a question displaying a lack of research and effort that then goes on to get similar levels of views?
You'd never know, because it would have been downvoted and deleted before its potential was realised.
@Frank I never said it did, however it does mean that it was useful to the internet at large. Striking the right balance between useful to the internet and satisfying our quality requirements is important. If we remove a question that some may deem low quality but that was essentially on topic and resulted in driving a significant amount of traffic to our site, I view that as a failure on our part.
I think we're kind of talking in circles here. I'm pretty sure that you all agree that there needs to be a good balance between quality and views for the overall health of the site.
A random question, that probably 10 people here know the answer to: When a user becomes a mod, do their old posts inherit the diamond? I would assume yes, but if so it creates another factor for me to consider.
The statements in the nominations about previous posts and the diamond make more contextual sense now :).
@kalina @FEichinger I'm happy to see I'm not the only one who feels this way. In days of yore I asked and answered a Meta question very much in this vein. There was a little more to it, but I think most of the controversy around DragonVale questions was that they drove a lot of traffic, but were perceived as being too easy to answer.
Views don't guarantee that we helped every person that looked at those questions, but because of the nature of them, I think it is fair to argue we helped a large majority of those that viewed..... and that's a lot of people.
@EBongo I've read through that meta question again, and once again I find myself agreeing with agent86 - one great reason to allow simple questions is that we can provide a better answer than the other places.
@EBongo Every single thing inherits the diamond in name. Posts, comments, even closures and the like. That's why sometimes one can see a diamond in the middle of a close chain, for example.
@JasonBerkan Yes and I appreciated that then, and now. I don't think there is much that needs changing with Arqade - but being a little more welcoming to new users, and a little less elitist about simple questions would go a long way in my book.
@LessPop_MoreFizz I don't see myself as an expert gamer nor an expert programmer, yet I participate in Arqade and Stack Overflow. Also, how exactly do bad questions drive good questions away?
@JasonBerkan That's great, but a good Q&A site lives and dies by the expertise of it's most knowledgeable users - that's the whole basis on which SE was built. If you create a place where experts want to go for their information, everyone else will want to go there too.
High standards are good for everybody.
Bad questions drive good questions away because Yahoo Answers.
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Eventually, the people who know the most get tired of dealing with all of the garbage and leave, and all that you have left behind is the idiots that can't string a few sentences together.
And so, the internet evolves and some new site takes over at the place people are going for information.
If you want to stave off that last phase, you need to be aggressive about not letting sand overwhelm your diamonds.
@FAE right, but do you remember how many people flat out left until the event ended? And not just 'people', but the very 'experts' that we need to guard so jealously because they keep the site going. The reason it's important to downvote garbage is to, among other things, avoid our eternal september scenario, The Perpetual League of Legends Contest.
@EBongo I think, fundamentally, my issue with the whole 'BE NICE TO NEW PEOPLE' movement is the implication that so many seem to be hung up on that downvotes aren't nice. If that argument disappears, I think most of the contention goes away in general.
@JasonBerkan Right. Which is why we need high standards, and a welcoming presence. I have zero issue with anyone who wants to argue for nice friendly "Welcome to Arqade!" comments. I find the whole scripted copypasta thing to be a little cheesy and possibly kind of robotic and off putting - and it's too much work, at least for me, to be the guy to actually write up something new every time, but I'm willing to accept that maybe that's on me.
What drives me up the wall is the implication that that 'go out of your way to be friendly' behavior is incumbent upon anybody; the only thing that ought to be incumbent upon anybody is not being a jerk. And pointing out that something is wrong without a friendly word (but also without a hostile word) is not being a jerk. NOR IS DOWNVOTING BASED ON CONTENT. EVER. POINT BLANK.
@LessPop_MoreFizz Yet many people (myself included) see large numbers of downvotes on their posts as the site being mean / unwelcoming. How do you propose we get past that hurdle?
I agree there should be no onus on anyone to leave nice comments. At the same time, flat out saying "this question is dumb" is damaging, I think.
That's not something anyone typically would directly argue with, yet I still see comments that either directly say that or heavily imply it quite a bit. In those cases, I think people should find a way to nicely explain their problem with the question or say nothing at all.
@Sterno It costs 0 effort not to leave a hostile comment, and at least some effort to leave one that's hostile. I don't quite understand the people who do the latter.
@LessPop_MoreFizz I don't see how that solves the issue. That solves the arguing about the issue, since we'll all be on the same side. But the 200 rep user with a question with 10 downvotes?
@JasonBerkan I said it's step one. Which is to set a tone throughout the community that understands the fact that a downvote doesn't mean "I Hate You". Lead by example and all that.
It's a lot easier to downvote someone and be nice when there isn't some other high rep user yelling at you that downvoting is inherently mean.
I'm not saying a person should never explain their downvotes, but if you're going to bother, you might as well try to sugarcoat it to alleviate the drama
I think you're confusing what I'm talking about with being lenient. I'm not even talking about new users specfically. All I'm really saying is "If you can't manage to not be a dick, or come off sounding like one, stay silent. It's better for everyone."
Because I'm having difficulty trying to think of any scenarios where established users have voiced displeasure or indicated that they feel undervalued due to us trying to create a better new user experience.
I'm not talking about bending over backwards, I'm talking about giving them a single friendly comment pointing them in the direction of their problem, after kindly welcoming them and explaining why their problem is not on topic here - which could just be a nicely framed link to a blog or meta post - before we go and downvote and close their question
@Frank What I want to know is essentially what @kalina just asked. Have you seen a larger number of users voice this problem, or is this just your own personal feelings on the matter?
I really don't like this constant negativity. Almost any suggestion you disagree with gets met with big talk about how you expect the worst to actually happen.
@Frank I'm unsure as to why you keep bringing this up as a sticking point then, if it's a complete theoretical that even you yourself don't have a personal issue with.
I'm sorry, but when I look at a moderator position, I'd like to see someone who doesn't frequently make up worst-case scenarios and then argues as if they already happened.
@Frank If others have an issue with behavior welcoming new users, then I would hope they would voice it. Until then, until such an issue exists, it seems confusing to me to worry about something on the behalf of others who aren't even having a problem with it yet, and for whom we don't even know if it ever will be.
Pretty sure I just posted the definitive answer to "What can you do as a mod that you can't with that big pile of rep" in the comments on my declaration.
@ken Wipqozn is certainly in it for the long haul. Dunno m'vy well enough to judge, but the low flag count/meta participation 1-2 punch seems to be very strongly correlated with flakery.
Presumably because when it's pointed out, it boils down to "that stuff you aren't doing? As a mod, the primary thing you will do is a lot more of that. So if you don't like doing it now, why will you start liking it later?"
@OrigamiRobot I know. I know he's not going to ban him. My point is, that style of communication is very @LessPop_MoreFizz, and he's definitely not afraid to let it show during the election (for good or bad).
@LessPop_MoreFizz - I’ve had some time to organize my thoughts, and I figured I’d spew them out while I have a bit of time before dealing with my kids. (And I hope we aren’t abusing this chat room with this discussion.)
(*) I have concerns about the perception 10+ downvotes on a question gives users who don’t understand how the site is supposed to work, but that is not relevant to the main point that bad questions should be downvoted.
I disagree that all simple questions are bad. In particular, the Dragonvale questions @Ebongo and I were discussing are not bad.
Finally, despite your bluntness, you ability to argue your point will make you a great moderator.
Arqade 2016 Election Discussion
Arqade 2016 Election Discussion