Hokay, I expressed my fanatical scoping/focus opinions, I look forward to your critique @BenBrocka. Once again, my answer is based on just my opinion, and if the community decides otherwise, I will follow the conventions of the community.
@Jeff many people have expressed the sentiment, and for a large part I think we're not seeing them because they just leave the site; it's hard to poll people who just leave
And I find your 10% argument supports having a boarder appeal more than a narrow research focused appeal because those are the people googling; if it's so obscure and specific it's extremely unlikely to be found, help people or generate new helpful users
Currently the only unique part of our FAQ is as follows:
Cognitive Sciences - Stack Exchange is for practitioners and research professionals of the cognitive sciences.
The rest is boilerplate that applies to all SE sites, but we can edit and expand on the above all we want.
My concern is t...
Extended comment:
I agree with the sentiment expressed by Catharsis that the site is overmoderated (e.g., long comment threads about clarification, and mod-edits instead of user-edits), though I do think most of the questions closed are completely justifiable.
I'm not in favor of a "research-on...
commented: Also, I'm...really not sure what your post is actually trying to say. You say the problem is the audience and then you say the problem can't be fixed by changing the audience. You say we're over moderated and you say we need more moderation.
At this point, any input raising concerns with how the site currently works is valid input.
We have no way of knowing about dissatisfaction with the site unless people mention it. Chat might be more appropriate but I didn't down vote his post. (neither up vote)
Though honestly most people's complaints about the site seem completely paradoxical :/ Everyone wants the site different but they never have suggestions on what to do to improve it, nor do they work to improve it, and for the most part they don't contribute to the site significantly
@BenBrocka You can't say that about @ArtemKaznatcheev. I fully understand why he wants the site as he suggests, but I'm not sure whether that is possible without going through an intermediate 'non-professional' state.
Unlike some in the discussion he has and does contribute and help make posts better, which is unfortunately more than many of those who have shared concerned feedback
SO does that by votes because of the number of users. It's a bit too fast to keep up with, but I'd rather have a psychology Stack Overflow than try and get a totally hardcore research only site that doesn't survive
@StevenJeuris agreed. If we come up with a high quality site about cognitive science we can attract lots of people interested in OR practicing cognitive science
ONce the audience is big enough, like Programmers.SE, we can test splitting off research only/high level stuff
@StevenJeuris "Right" how? There's lots of answerable questions out there with a proper accepted/correct answer
From his answer: "Asking questions: If I ask a question there, then I know the answer will be authoritative, because I trust the person answering it. They can include absolutely no sources, and say things like "I expect this to happen" and I will value that answer above many "here is a list and summary of sources" answers I see at many other sites. Why? It is because I trust that the community knows what they are talking about."
It's an assumption as that which could lead him to wanting a 'professional only' site at this moment.
Otherwise I don't see how they can't live side by side.
You don't just magically have a completely expert, 100% authoritative audience overnight and the SE model DOES NOT REQUIRE such for a site to be high quality
He wants a peer review process or a fellowship or something, that is NOT what a community site is for
The power of Stack Exchange is that expert or helpful users and posts rise to the top and they can improve non-expert posts through editing and moderation
It's a model that works well with lots and lots of people and activity which causes the wheat to separate from the chaff
Agreed, so maybe that should be the area on which we should be arguing with him, instead of the professional/non-professional part which only arises from that.
I think the problem is he really does just expect the community to be there, after all it was on TCS. But it's not how it works, SO already had a very large community of TCS majors and professors
@StevenJeuris Hard to be super polite, I was already out of characters
That might be, but the actual reason why the length is limited is because it corresponds to the Q&A format, not discussions. If you write more than 500 characters, it's probably better of as an answer.
That reasoning just doesn't hold up for discussions.
I'm not sure it warrants a different format though, really long comments are also hard to read because they're already confined to a smaller screenspace. Totally changing how it works on Meta might make meta that much more intimidating and weird to participate in
plus it forces the major arguments into answers, which I feel is more helpful as they can be voted on
@BenBrocka I'm not saying meta should allow longer comments. :) Just saying that as so many aspects those are decisions based on Q&A, and aren't tuned for Meta.
@BenBrocka ... does it?
One option you have is restating arguments from another answer and replying to it in your own post. If everybody does that you'd have lots of duplication.
Usually if you've got a real, cohesive argument for/against something you post it as an answer, that's how it's supposed to work. Comments are more for working out the detail
yeah, replying via answers doesn't work, you reply to the question not other's posts
@StevenJeuris what, that it's more of a comment? I think his problem was that he had no suggestion and his statements were conflicting, thep roblem was the quality of expression not the format of the post
Either way, .. I can go on and on about this. :) I'm pretty sure somewhere in the near future somebody will come up with an improved discussion platform on the internet. If not, I might just start a free-time project .... :) haha ... 'free-time'. Who am I kidding.
@BenBrocka it seems to me, that you are completely misunderstanding @Jeff 's point. Maybe he can come help clarify it, but let me try to explain how I read it (I am one of the upvoters of his answer/comment).
there are three levels of expertise with programming/computers we can look at: (1) I have used a computer/software before, (2) I have learnt how to program, (3) I am an expert that knows algorithm design, software development, of another expert skill
What I think @Jeff is saying, is that at cogsci, he wants (2) and (3) (for comparison, the most fundamentalist version of me, or sites like cstheory, would want only (3) and above).
The idea is that asking questions at the (1) level is way to easy for cogsci, and most of these questions are bad.
You raise the example of this question, and I agree that your answer there is great (that is why I upvoted it), but the question itself IMHO is awful
If we see questions like that once in a while, then it is not TOO bad. Since we can give good answers to them. However, imagine if every question is like that? Who would stick around on such a site?
This is similar to SO, there are occasionally questions from people at the below (2) level, but most of the questions are at the (2) level and there are gems at the (3) level. That is what makes SO work (or so I hear, I am not an active participant, myself)
So the way I read @Jeff 's answer is that we want questions at the (2) and (3) level here, and we should discourage and close questions at the (1) level without drawing so much attention to them. I agreed with this sentiment, and upvoted.
He explicitly said "I guess what I'm saying is: changing the target audience really doesn't fix the problem."
However his problem is with the target audience
Ergo his problem has no solution
As I noted in a comment, he also complains about overmoderation and then makes it clear he wishes more moderation were done to prevent too-easy/unresearched questions
@BenBrocka cstheory was also once young and small, although I do agree with your later comment that cstheory had the benefit of existing user-base. It was not however from SO, it was from MO. A good thing to understand, would be how MO started and gained such an amazing research scope. They also had an easier starting point that us, in that there was already a culture of blogs and other online media in research math that I don't think is present in cogsci.
@BenBrocka his problem seems to be with the questions. A level (1) participant can easily become a level (2) participant at cogsci by first reading a little (say wikipedia and blogs) about the cognitive experience they have felt and ask a question then.
@BenBrocka I was confused by this at first, as well. However, I think what @Jeff means by 'over-moderation' is not closing questions, but the extensive editing and discussion that happens and how it is always the same few people doing it (usually moderators) instead of the whole community.
@BenBrocka I already have a peer review process or fellowship or something. I already participate in scientific publishing. I am obviously not looking for an alternative to it. I am looking for a compliment to it, a way for people to discuss guesses and hunches and be wrong in interesting ways. To have quick feedback and commentary.
@BenBrocka I disagree. The site has to be useful to some community. You can try to make that community be "everyone on the internet" or "people who like brains" or "professionals in cognitive sciences" or "researchers in cognitive sciences" and it is not pre-determined who we should appeal to. It is decided by the community during beta. If you wish to appeal to the whole internet that is your opinion, not some fact-of-nature. I am free to have my own opinion that differs from yours.
@BenBrocka You can attack me personally as much as you want, but I am not stopping people from discussing topics. For instance, I have no interest at all in io-psychology, yet I don't downvote every io-psych question. I have no interest in affect or qualia, yet I don't downvote every question on them.
I am only commenting on the level that discussion is to be had. For me, this is central to the community I want to belong to. And yes, I want to belong to, but that is the point of a community, a bunch of __I__s that associate together over common interests.
@BenBrocka If you have a problem with my attitude or my person, then I don't care. If you have specific problems over how I comment or edit questions, then I am all ears.
@ArtemKaznatcheev I don't think this was intended as an attack on you. At least I hope it wasn't. @Ben?
You're both very strong willed, and you both have very strong opinions about how this site should develop. You're also both very valued members of the community.
mmm, I am trying to hard to make it clear that the opinion I express about the direction of the site are my personal opinions.
I feel like when @BenBrocka comments, he tries to divert to some unknown authority and assert that his personal opinions are more than opinions but are somehow laws-of-nature
Maybe I am just having a bad day and letting my negative mood mess with the way I read comments. I apologize if that is the case.
@ArtemKaznatcheev I hear you. I'll have to let Ben address that myself but the way I read it, they're just strongly worded comments
@ArtemKaznatcheev I know how that goes for sure. Please try not to take offense, I don't think any was intended. But I'll let Ben respond now, I'm just trying to keep the peace :-)
What worries me is that she has provided some good quality answers, and yet, she says the site is not welcoming
Statements like this:
> Frankly, there's little chance I would ask a question here (although I certainly have questions). Why would I? If I did it would likely be closed. I've been reading cogsci.se for a couple of months and, as a lurker, I don't see any room for my professional expertise here
She seems like the kind of user we want more of, not less
But she gives no specific examples of what the problem is, so I am at a loss to assist
> Unfortunately, I don't enjoy it at all. :( I'd like to be part of your community, but . . . the questions that come up are so far removed from anything I know or care about that I just toggle over to the other SE site I frequent (and absolutely love)
the above makes me thinks that @Catharsis is just not seeing the topics she likes
there is not much we can do about that. Hopefully we don't seem to be hostile to specific topics
I think it's both. The way I read it, she's not seeing the topics she likes and because we close questions, she's afraid to ask the questions she likes
The next paragraph is exactly the sort of overmoderation @Jeff mentions:
> Throughout the day my RSS feed hums with the same question coming through again and again as people tweak the title. And then, inevitably, it comes through one last time as "closed".
@Catharsis strongest-worded paragraph does not make any sense to me:
> Frankly, there's little chance I would ask a question here (although I certainly have questions). Why would I? If I did it would likely be closed. I've been reading cogsci.se for a couple of months and, as a lurker, I don't see any room for my professional expertise here. The overall consensus seems to be that researchers and professors are the only types of professionals worth attracting to cogsci.se. I've already been to college -- I don't want to go back.
@ArtemKaznatcheev Yes, and that's where I need more help from the community, which I asked both @jeff and @catharsis for -- I hear the term "overmoderation", but I'd like to know specifically what we'd all like to see the mods do better.
I'm just not seeing the excessive closures people are speaking of though. I thought maybe they were over represented on the front page or something...but they're really not. I don't where they're getting the impression
As a mod, I feel like you two @Ben and @Artem are probably the two most vocal members of the community. I'd really, really, really like to hear some specific advice from the larger community
It was getting to the point I just assumed few others cared about the community / even used meta. So I was disappointed to see that Catharsis was so underwhelmed at the site but yet I was at a loss as to how to help
I'm still trying to find the problem. For the most part I'm not seeing the hostile impression users seem to be getting, except on some of the closed posts (many of which are pretty bad) and the very long comment exchanges. That's why I want to see more user feedback
Perhaps a notification banner wouldn't be a bad idea, Meta and Chat are invisible right now
She is saying: "I am an enthusiastic professional, but not a researcher". I want to contribute 'professional' content that is different from 'research' content, but feel that is not welcome
and what I am not understanding, is how professional content is different from research content
or just good content
a researcher is just a specific type of professional
Based on you and @Ben's comments, I dismissed what my mother said as a lack of understanding about the site and how SE works. Now I see Catharsis somewhat echoing what my mother said about her impressions
@BenBrocka search is failing me also. They show up in the admin tools...
@ArtemKaznatcheev research is a very different and very formal and clinical field, which is a very different environment from many of us that use psychological insights in our day to day jobs but wouldn't feel comfortable in an academic enviornment
@ArtemKaznatcheev "without drawing so much attention to them", exactly. You shouldn't. Bad questions on SO are posted, and answered, and not too much fuzz is made about them either. Just give a simple answer and move on. After a while you will even be able to close as duplicate. Then everybody is happy, the OP has his answer, and you've got your closed question.
@StevenJeuris this is why I'm generally quite happy to answer "easy' questions; you answer them, you're done, if someone asks again you close as a dupe. You help people and you become a good resource for what's likely a common question, but they're easily dealt with when they're duplicates
@JoshGitlin I know that cstheory had a 'town-hall' meeting once or twice that was schedule ahead of time and used to resolve various issue.
I think doing something like that might be useful, but I doubt we would be able to lure many non-regulars... and a lot of the regulars already participate in chat.
Well my goal is to find out why we don't have more regulars, so... :-)
Welcome @Jeff. We were havinga discussion about some of the issues you and Catharsis raised on Meta. If you feel like chiming in, that's great! If not, no problem
@BenBrocka here's what I mean by 'changing the target audience doesn't fix the problem': your suggestion seems to be that we need to stop recruiting experts and be happy with recruiting the general public, i.e. those who don't consider themselves cognitive scientists. but you point out someone who's afraid to post on cogsci.SE because of long revisions and frequent question closures how exactly does catering to the 'general public' help fix those problems? it doesn't help improve the quality of the questions that were closed, and in fact will probably increase the prevalence of them, unless…
@Jeff that's exactly what I'm hoping for. Quality comes from moderation, voting and edits, but we need the actual content there to have a viable site, then we can worry about attracting niche, highly sought after demographics
@Jeff I recall somebody else stating that about somebody else's post. Don't know whether the OP had any problems with it. In general I feel edits are well received.
@BenBrocka agreed, the only thing i would say is that i do think we should try to attract experts wherever possible, in parallel with moderation, voting, and edits
@JoshGitlin I don't feel that's true. We have one really good user @ArtemKaznatcheev who wants to see the site differently, and I feel it's our job to try to understand why.
One 'misunderstanding' I found out about is he wants a community where you can fully 'trust' the community. As Ben replied to that, we can't start out like that.
We can strive towards a clear divide between professional questions which get professional answers, and non-professional questions which get simple short answers which redirect the OP to the relevant resource.
For example Artem doesn't like my question about color synthasia because it's based in popular media. However he agreed that I put enough effort into it for it to be rtolerable
Also when he and I last discussed that he did understand my POV that activly asking questions that are relevant in popular media can draw more users
Currently the only unique part of our FAQ is as follows:
Cognitive Sciences - Stack Exchange is for practitioners and research professionals of the cognitive sciences.
The rest is boilerplate that applies to all SE sites, but we can edit and expand on the above all we want.
My concern is t...
The Axon Terminal
The Axon Terminal