They aren't inherently doomed, but it's very hard to write an example question where any quality issue that comes up is definitely because of the example being made.

@BESW Sample questions to prove a point need to be suitable on everything except possibly topicality.

Aye. And that's hard for most of us to do.

We've closed a number of them here.

At worst, it would get four or five bad answers, and then fade into obscurity.

Indeed, sample questions where people deliberately write bad questions to then be able to say that the type of question is bad are detrimental.

which is why I can't actually ask about growing tomatoes: I don't know the first thing about growing tomatoes

@Hamlet And that'd tell us something about the subject, hopefully, by seeing what kind of bad answers they are.

What this site knows about literature is an extremely small subset of literature.

Test questions are important, but they aren't the only way to determine topicality.

It took six months for a few people to learn what close reading is.

In fact, for topicality, test questions are often not such a good idea.

Test questions are more important for question types. Things like “do we want recommendation questions?”, “do we want story identification questions?”

I'm an expert in literature--or rather, in very specific parts of the experience of creating, studying, and enjoying literature. I can't say if totem poles are literature because I don't know anything about them except what I've read on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia's laughable about that kind of subject. I DO know folks who study oral traditions and consider forms of oral tradition to be literary, so I can speak on that with some second-hand authority.

But again, "literature" is a loaded word.

Whether (or often, rather, how) a type of question is suitable is often best determined by example.

It carries implications of value, of culture, of lasting impact and high quality.

On the other hand, for scope, consistency is important.

@Gilles why?

@BESW No matter how much you despise Wikipedia, you can't ignore it. It's where a lot of people get their definitions.

@Gilles BESW doesn't despise Wikipedia.

@Gilles I don't despise Wikipedia, nor do I ignore it. Never said either.

jinx

Using the Wikipedia definition of the site name is a default definition of topicality, and we should only depart from it if we have a good reason to.

“let's throw stuff onto the wall and see if it bounces back onto our face” is not a good reason.

I don't consider it sufficient for making authoritative statements, regardless of whether it's a popular action.

I do find Wikipedia frustrating because of how people use it for things it's not designed to be used for.

@BESW “Wikipedia's laughable about that kind of subject”

@Gilles why?

@Gilles That's neither despising nor ignoring. It's saying that Wikipedia's bad at some things.

@Hamlet This site is a resource where people should be able to find reliable information about a topic.

It isn't a sociologist's playground.

This is why I've usually got you on ignore, btw: derailing conversations with inflammatory personal call-outs that are obviously unsupportable.

@Gilles I wish

@BESW WTF???

I haven't made any personal call-out.

I'm stopping here for today, I don't think this conversation can be productive anymore.

I need to get some sleep anyway.

Scope is one component of what makes sites "expert Q&A"

Yeah, after four or five Stacksworth of seeing significant meta conversations turn into arguments because you show up, fan the flames to make it personal instead of about the site's function, and then peace out without offering any solutions because everyone's too dramatic for you, I started tuning you out in the early parts of this beta.

I was hopeful about this conversation and it seemed productive, so I gave it another shot.

@BESW do you have me on mute out of curiosity?

@Hamlet Nope. It takes more years of consistent spoon-wasting than I've known you for me to put someone ignore.

But scope isn't nearly the most important thing that makes sites "expert Q&A", not by a long shot

And if a site relies solely on scope to enforce expertise, particularly in the early days, you'll get something like Mythology where the only questions consistently asked and answered properly are about greek mythology.

A beta site either expands into new topics or it stagnates.

Scope is a tool that established sites can rely on. Not beta sites, who don't have enough members to ensure coverage of every topic.

@Hamlet This is important, I think. The early days of lit.se were filled with paranoid "OMG MUST GET IT PERFECT" attempts to fix the problems of other Stacks, and to lock in the Stack's culture and scope before it could be "ruined by new users" or because it'd be "too much work to fix later." It's a beta. It's not a full site, it's an experiment even more than the entire Stack Exchange has always been.

I remember there was actually panic in the chat when we went from closed beta to open beta because all the hard work to make the Stack perfect would be trashed by.... um.... the people who are creating new content for us.

I dunno, I may not join a beta after this one. They're all just squirrely.

This one's better than some I've participated in, but that's a low bar.

6 Diverse Graphic Novel Must Reads.

@BESW I've only heard of two of those, and only read one!

@Gilles I'm sorry, that was harsh and dramatic of me. I don't have the emotional energy to deal constructively with this, so I should've bowed out before it got that far.

@BESW the Interpersonal Skills beta is going better than Lit's beta in several aspects

That... seems reasonable.

@Zyera oh, there were/are plenty of bitter arguments.

Of course, all of the problems facing that site have already been solved.

@Zyera Between Workplace and RPG yeah.

@Zyera maybe you'll like this

@Zyera Reassembling the Social

and of course Playing in the Dark

Summa Technologiae

@Zyera any chance you could share this list with me

@Hamlet on the site itself, of course.

Also the solution to the Palestine conflict

@Zyera it's not really philosophy to be honest.

Although I read it and didn't understand a word.

Still got a lot out of it.

@Zyera well, it probably is, it's just that it's unlike most philisophical works in some important respects

@Zyera Not really sure I can articulate it tbh

@Zyera yeah of course

@Ash If they overcame beta blindness and actually learned from previous sites' experiences... he could be very close to accurate.

@Ash He...he's actually not. No, he's really not (not trying to be facetious that is).

Remember that debate about whether fan-fic was literature?

I'm in the middle of A Grain of Wheat. I hope I'll be able to finish it this month

I've already borrowed Neverwhere and The Name of the Wind.

@BESW OK, that's awesome. I actually laughed, and that's hard to get me to do from the internet.

@Zyera Those parts about Mugo's feelings (or lack thereof) about going home reminded me of some Russian literature.

The superfluous man stereotype.

Didn't read Dostoyevski (only White Nights). It was mostly Turgenev.

And now I'm also reading The Satan's Diary by Leonid Andreyev, which also uses that stereotype to some extent.

What the heck is wrong with Russian writers?

#sale_strategies

@Gallifreyan that's not really a backpack, it's a shoe bag

@Hamlet Trouble with that is, my meta answer has more in it than just the suggestion to remove that one sentence, so I dunno how accurate an indication votes on it will be.

Actually, I'm surprised more people haven't voted on it, given how much discussion it's generated in here.

2 upvotes and 1 downvote so far. There must have been more than 4 of us discussing?

@Hamlet These issues of cultures and mediums are clearly way too complex for us to hope to unravel in a few conversations in chat. But that whole debate came out of my proposed replacement sentence, and is kind of orthogonal to the issue of (what I see as) unnecessary hostility.

@Gilles I haven't read the whole transcript, so not sure if anyone already raised this, but what about cave paintings? The cultures that produced them didn't have any form of writing (that we know of). Could it be reasonable to count cave paintings as literature? If not, is that the kind of example you were looking for?