@Seanny123 I think that's a topic for another day.

@Seanny123 I agree! We get a lot of uninformed questions, and it's a lot of work to shape those questions into something well-phrased or interesting to the expert who would need to answer it.

@Krysta I generally agree, but the flipside is that substantial amount of those questions are motivated by a genuine desire to understand.

In my experience: There are bad bad questions, which are usually either lazy or loaded, but also good bad questions which are simply difficult to answer because the cognitive sciences are just ill suited to giving sufficient negative answers.

Definitely true @ChristianHummeluhr--but often not motivated enough to do some initial research themselves (which really irritates me) or to listen to the refining advice of the experts. So the consequence is that there are bunch of unformed questions that aren't quite off-topic but are unlikely to get answers gumming up the site.

@Krysta Yeah, I would do bad things for a minimal research requirement.

ME TOO

I can sympathize with taking the bigger perspective and that in the grand scheme of things, it won't ruin the site, but it just subjectively annoys me and makes me want to participate less.

@Krysta Well I guess that is part of the cleanup we can do tomorrow.

Old abandoned questions can either be edited into shape when anyone is interested, or be deleted.

That's why it would be useful to have @JeromyAnglim on board for the chat event, to get a more balanced discussion about which questions to keep and which to ditch. I recall he seems to prefer to keep them given heavy modifications.

Yeah that will be great. And I do think it decreases the utility of the site having so many poorly-formed questions.

@ChristianHummeluhr I'd agree. Perhaps an off-topic reason. You could attempt posting a feature request on meta.

Jeromy is the editor in chief. :v

The topic has been discussed plenty of times, perhaps it is time to make a decision on specifics.

I did propose a answer warning message, but it was not well received (-1). Just idle complaining on my part.

@ChristianHummeluhr 'answer warning message'? Link please?

To be fair, I'm a relatively terrible writer.

Well I like it.

And I'd like a similar message for questions.

Since to me, poor questions are more of a problem than poor answers.

@Krysta Agreed. Maybe this (or something broader which covers this) can be the second chat event topic?

Maybe something along the lines of "How can we change the site flavortext to generate better questions and stronger answers?"

Another thing I am wondering lately is why we close questions for being off-topic, but don't have any analogous response to off-topic answers to on-topic questions.

-1?

To my mind, that's not analogous to closing questions--it's analogous to down-voting questions. We don't have a "next level" censure for poor answers like we do to poor questions.

I think the difference is that downvoted questions just sit there, but downvoted answers get greyed out.

To me that actually seems better than deletion, because it vividly conveys information about what kind of answers the community doesn't like.

Oh, also, that could be a good topic. We can vote on it at the end of the event tomorrow?

Yeah. It may seem like more of a structural problem than it actually is because CogSci.SE doesn't downvote much.

We're getting better.

@ChristianHummeluhr This would be an additional closing reason, ... thus questions, not answers.

@StevenJeuris Hm?

@Krysta Don't know by heart whether that is possible: meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/426/…

@ChristianHummeluhr The meta topic you linked to, talks about a warning message for answers.

What I was referring to is an additional off-topic reason "insufficient research".

Don't think that has been suggested on meta, ... but it has been discussed in great length.

Hence my suggestion that it is about time to maybe act on it.

We could e.g. include at a minimum one reference supporting motivation behind the question.

(any type of reference, e.g. web blog as well, .. but at least to enforce some type of initial research)

Would upvote.

Same here.

meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/search?q=initial+research

I'd be willing to write up a concrete suggestion tomorrow during the meeting if you guys don't beat me to it.

No time now, ... might call it an early day to enjoy the sun, and still want to finish something. :)

I think it would be best if someone less abrasive than I wrote it. :v

My only concern would be that we establish that one blog reference is sufficient to avoid being voted off-topic. . . but that it's ok to ask for stronger sources too.

You and your sun. All I have is grey and more grey!

@ChristianHummeluhr That's your fault, .. you left your beautiful 'sunny' Denmark.

I'll write it up so that we can shoo people towards voting on it tomorrow.

Stop rubbing it in.

It is grey as dammit here too--and my current pet peeve is that it's still light when I'm going to bed.

@Krysta You've got to start somewhere ... the point being that at least we do not constantly need to leave comments, we just can close and provide specific guidelines which once followed, already results in a more informed question.

I have to run to visit a friend in the hospital, but if anyone has the time, I would really appreciate a comment on this answer: cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/9825/2868 (I'm trying to get a good format down for negative answers.)

YES! I get so tired of writing the same comment.

@Krysta Thanks.

@ChristianHummeluhr I think your current answer is quite good.

Someone should invent a hospital that isn't depressing.

There's a children's hospital in Boston that is pretty nice--but if you're there for a depressing reason, it's still depressing.

It's not so depressing, my friend just messed up his hand. "Should I get that infected wound checked out? Nah, let's wait and see."

Ooh. The old wait-and-see strategy.

The very same. They seriously had to cut out a good inch of flesh, it was a mess. How I resisted laying on the "I told you so," we may never find out.

Ouch.

That's what you get when you play the wait-and-see strategy, I guess.

Those search options @JeromyAnglim found are terrific.

cogsci.stackexchange.com/…

^(dubious questions)

Newest answers without votes: cogsci.stackexchange.com/…

Nice!

Finally found the relevant help page: cogsci.stackexchange.com/help/searching