The Water Cooler - 2013-04-08

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5:46 AM

Last update to the Workplace.SE stats - numbers for beta day 360. Nearly a year! karmanebula.com/wpc-blog/2013/2/7/…

2

Happy (slightly early) anniversary, Workplace.SE!

6:00 AM

10

Q: My new boss was junior to me, what do I do?

Recently I was in competition for a promotion to manager which I did not get. The promotion went to someone with less experience than I have and someone who, I believe, is less qualified than I am and who got the promotion by playing politics which I refused to do because I believe organizational...

career-development promotion politics

7 hours later…

12:40 PM

@JimG. Please go troll somewhere else. Maybe Reddit would be more your speed

If you have problems with questions the place to address them is meta. Which if you looked you would see there are already questions there about them.

1:20 PM

-1

Q: Web Developer Scope in Hong Kong

I am planing to move to Hong Kong, a lot of my relatives are already there but none of them are technical and have knowledge about software engineering feild. I just want to know is there any scope of web development in Hong Kong, If yes then please guide me about sources, I mean what are possibl...

Am I wrong in thinking this is off topic?

-1

Q: Can bad working experience really hurt your career?

Can one hurt his career, by bad working experience. By bad experience I mean a job with little challenges skill wise, bad work practices within the company and things like that. Lets say you have this sort of job for 2-5 years. I am in a similar position and I am having hard time finding a ano...

career-development

This question is attracting close votes but I think it is a good question for the site. Any suggestions on improving it so it stops attracting down/close votes?

@JimG. you need to be more active on this site, read meta, and follow things before making ridiculous comments about things which were discussed at length (and btw, "he" is actually a "her")

@Chad no

@Chad just put a comment saying "this is a good question, not sure why it's getting close votes"

@JimG. Perhaps this would not be necessary if 99% of the answers here were not given with an American/Western perspective and no indication this is the case.

@enderland All my answers are from a "I'm a bit drunk right now, don't mind me" perspective. (just saying...)

@YannisRizos I am disappoint why no qs about drinkin' at work r here!

Wasn't one of the slapping questions also about drinking at work?

@YannisRizos no that was drinking after work and the boss hit on the wife or something

2:02 PM

it's always nice when you get a DV which evens our your rep :)

2:26 PM

@enderland I had a few days where I was getting enough up votes that all my downvotes were free :p

POLL TIME:

I know we are not ready for graduation. But is there any value in asking the SE Overlords for an evaluation on what it will take to get us there?

No.

Personally if I got a vote I would vote no because our signal to noise ratio is not even close to what I would consider acceptable. But maybe I am being to critical and SE has a viewpoint that would focus our improvement efforts elsewhere that would be more constructive

@YannisRizos care to elaborate?

If we graduated today, we'd have 31 close voters and 4 delete voters. While it's more than obvious that the site has a solid core group of users, the userbase is (still) just too damn small to even start discussing graduation or talks on where to focus. We're still in the "we need to do everything better" category - imho.

I'm still in the first page of users per rep and I haven't actively participated on the site in months. That's a problem.

Other than that I think we really need more diverse content. The site is starting to get a "same crap every day" feeling...

2:51 PM

@YannisRizos I think that we are stuck in a catch 22. We need more good users to get good content, but we need good content to get good users. And our poor content drives away users.

@enderland did you seriously suggest that he get "MORE" active on the site?

@Chad wow. I was literally about to ask that same question

@Chad sorry!

@enderland SOK :)

@YannisRizos I think the problem is only a few people are actively in teh "close bad questions" category

since @Rachel has been less active, way fewer on the "willing to edit bad questions" category too

I really hate when people pile on downvotes to 1 rep users

3:07 PM

like?

workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/10943/… ?

yeah sure its off topic, but its not a horrible question that deserves down votes to a new user that will probably never come back now

One downvote there is automatic (off topic closure). The other two... yeah, don't make much sense.

I didn't DV or vote to close but added the comment since it was otherwise closed with no explanation

4

Q: Are there potential consequences of letting your employer know about your personal projects?

Yesterday, while talking with my boss, I mentioned I am working on a personal project in my free time at home. A senior was sitting nearby and he advised me not to tell the boss such things. What consequences could there be? My senior says while scolding boss will use the personal project agai...

professionalism work-environment management projects time-off

I think there is a good question in there but I am afraid it is too bordering on a list question

@Chad ... or legal

3:16 PM

@enderland I do not think this question would require legal advice to say that the company could make a claim against his personal project

i'm curiosus what documents I signed with my current company from severl years ago

4 answers already so hard to do a signifigant rewrite to save it... I think it is going to go down as too broad

I am tempted to edit the question to start out with I am a plumber... jsut to see if any of the people who assume it is a developer question pull out

@Chad LOL

I'd support it

1 hour later…

4:26 PM

@enderland Its demoralizing to have to fight to reopen so many good questions just because they don't match someone's view of an "ideal" question, and users can't get past some specific wording used to see the actual good question hidden beneath the rant. It's even more demoralizing to try to hard and fail anyways, or to have the post deleted because there's a reopen attempt going on

And honestly I think the FAQ could use an update to clarify we want questions "about the workplace", and we don't want questions "about your situation at the workplace"

I've noticed lately that it's not really clear about the difference between Q&Answer and Q&Advice, and that we don't welcome Q&Advice questions here.

Our site is described as "The Workplace - Stack Exchange is for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting", and perhaps this needs to be revisited and clarified so our tag line (which is used everywhere) specifies this site is about a specific topic, and doesn't sound quite so much like this site is for a specific type of user (Programmers has a similar problem)

4:47 PM

@Rachel I hear you on that. my time is increasingly limited and it takes a fair bit of effort (a ton) to salvage a "help me plz" type question

@Rachel I really have a hard time with this too - everyone shows up and thinks "oh I can ask and get advice about how I should do this since I'm undecided" rather than a Q/A type thing

@enderland I think we need to provide better documentation about what we consider an acceptable question. To me, asking "here's my situation, what should I do" is perfectly acceptable, and is exactly what I'd think is OK for a Q&A site for "members of the workforce navigating the professional setting"

I guess I really struggle to see the line between Q/A and forum at that point

I mean, so many of our questions get TONs of comments because they need clarification or need "well what about?" types of questions

But that's not acceptable for Stack Exchange, where they want to be Q&A sites about a specific subject only, not a Q&A site for a community

0

Q: Doing an interview after having already sign a contract

After more than one month of interviews, I accepted a job offer and I signed a contract for a new job which is gonna start from the first of May. After I signed the contract, a big company, which answered my application very slowly, contacted me. I did two technical phone interviews and I passed...

interviewing careers

I mean this is a good example of a "hard to evaluate" type question

blatantly an "advice" question

but still a problem a lot of people will have

I think for an extremely subjective site scope such a the Workplace, these kinds of questions should be welcome. It's very hard to tell the "right" answer because cultures and laws are so different everywhere, and the lines between a "right" answer and a "wrong" answer are often blurry

and personally, like these "here's my situation, what should I do" questions. When seeking answers, I prefer to have multiple options available so I can find one that exactly matches my situation, rather than have only one option available that addresses some slightly different situation than mine

4:56 PM

hmm

But I understand SE's stance about wanting Q&A sites about a specific topic only

I'm really torn on this, because those questions are not strictly speaking answerable

at least "there is no definitive answer"

though then again so is programmers

I think they just need to do a better job at making that clear to the end user, that this site is a Q&A site about a specific topic only, not a Q&A site for a specific type of person seeking answers about a topic

The Tag line in our FAQ (The Workplace - Stack Exchange is for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting.) is used everywhere this site is advertise. Google searches, migration links, welcome messages, etc. It needs to be clarified that this isn't a site for a type of user to come get an answer, it's a site to get answers about a specific topic

hmmmm. I think I agree with that a fair bit

I never thought about that either

@enderland Programmers has a close, deleted, and downvoted below 0 rate of over 50%. We don't want to use them as an example for anything :)

5:00 PM

@Rachel well they have similar problems though

@enderland Yes, because they were created to be a site for programmers to ask questions to each other that were not related to programming.

I think they'd have a lot less problems if they were called "Programming" instead of "Programmers", and if their tag line specified a topic instead of an audience (it's currently for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.)

At first I thought the Workplace would be the same thing - a place to go to get answers related to the workplace from other "expert" users. But it isn't really.... it's a place to go to get answers about the workplace, not about my situation at the workplace.

If you have a question about the workplace, it's OK. If you have a question about you at your workplace, it's off-topic. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I understand it. The problem is this isn't clear to a new user at all. I only understand because I've been around the SE networks for a while.

well its also because 99% of other internet stuff is discussion based and not q/a

I think that's the greater problem

people don't read FAQs or descriptions

they see "oh workplace I can ask about anything I want related to workplace!"

@enderland That's part of it too. That's probably why the first assumption is this is a Q&A site for a specific community, and not for a topic

@enderland To be fair, our description on Google and on the site is "The Workplace - Stack Exchange is for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting."

like, for example

-3

Q: Web Developer Scope in Hong Kong

I am planing to move to Hong Kong, a lot of my relatives are already there but none of them are technical and have knowledge about software engineering feild. I just want to know is there any scope of web development in Hong Kong, If yes then please guide me about sources, I mean what are possibl...

What about it? The OP is a member of the workplace who navigates the professional setting, and that is a valid question (it ends in a question mark)

5:10 PM

ugh, this is true I guess techhnically

@enderland That's one of the biggest problems I see with the site :)

I think the tag line should be primarily focused on the site's topic, and not on the target audience

I tried getting the Programmers tag line changed, and got a reply from Tim Post about how the tag line is typically created using the template of "This is a site for [acceptable skill level of audience] about [topic]"

oh, really?

laaaaaaaaaaaaaaame

But in such a broad setting like the workplace, it should at very least be "This is a site about [topic] for [acceptable skill level of audience]", so the first impression people are left with is the sites topic

@enderland Yeah, Tim's reply is deleted so you need 10k rep to view it, but the meta post is meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/1130

"for people to ask well structured and answerable questions about the workplace environment"

@enderland Personally I'd prefer it to read "about the workplace environment" first instead of beginning with "for people"

5:20 PM

I guess I wasn't suggesting that as final text :-)

Yeah, I can't think of good text for it really

"The Workplace - Stack Exchange is a Q&A site about the workplace environment. We are here to answer your workplace questions providing you are asking about a workplace in general, and not about your workplace or your specific situation at the workplace. But wait! We need more details about your specific situation at the workplace to provide you with an answer, so don't forget to include the details about your situation in your question!

Remember, we provide answers, not advice (and no, we do not count advice as an answer)

2

5:54 PM

yeah something like that would probably be good

who is "responsible" for guiding a beta site?

@enderland Probably the community, with the Community Managers stepping in if needed. A tag line switch would probably be something decided by the community on meta, and implemented by moderators (and they'd probably run it by a SE employee first)

@enderland And that wasn't a serious answer... more sarcasm than answer there :)

yeah but it sure would be nice

@enderland lol I was just thinking it's contradictory and confusing. It says this site is not about your specific situation at the workplace, but in order to answer your question we need details about your specific situation at your workplace

I just want people to see wha ta question vs advice is

6:34 PM

@Rachel "here's my situation, what should I do" is a bad question imo. "here's my situation, what are my options" is slightly better. "here's my situation, I want to achieve X, how do I do that" is good.

We can salvage most "here's my situation, what should I do" questions by turning them into "here's my situation, what are my options" but I dislike that it is too close to a list question.

But we need feedback from the OP to get them to "here's my situation, I want to achieve X, how do I do that"

@Rachel But I agree I disliked it when they changed the tag line in A51 - For the same reasons

And I think your idea on programmers was a good one

7:10 PM

@Chad Yeah, but if the only thing wrong with the question is "What should I do" should be "What are my options", then you're nit-picking at minor details and just looking for an excuse to close the question :p

@Rachel My point is that while that is better it is far short of good. I do not think they should be allowed and definately do not think we should be editing questions just to limp them over the bar

And it is not nit picking. One is pick an option and tell me what to do so I do not have to understand why i made that choice... that is the anti SE Question

The other is I do not even know where to go explain my options so I can choose. But that is a list question and potentially never ending for some questions

And invites ohh or you could do Y answers

7:32 PM

@Rachel 100% correct.

7:57 PM

@Rachel The reason SE is different is that the rules do a decent job of keeping the signal to noise ratio fairly high. When you relax the rules you allow in more noise.

8:12 PM

@Chad Perhaps someone should bring the tag line up on meta again. I definitely think it could use an update to make it clear that this site is about a specific topic, and this is not a Q&A site for a specific type of user.

I understand the rules, however I don't think we're doing a very good job at educating new users about the fact that there are rules for acceptable questions, and what those rules are

@Rachel Ask it in a meta question.

@Chad Don't have time too, life's been a bit busy lately

Hrrrmmm apparently someone started an awful lot of my comments ^_^

Yes i did... I thought they were worth saving.

@Chad Thanks :)

I suspect that we have a real problem with driving away new users

8:16 PM

@Chad Yeah... it's starting to be a repeat of what happened on Programmers

A bunch of rules get implemented, but a poor job is done at educating the general community about the rules, so they don't understand and just get frustrated and leave

Its fine to implement rules, but you need to be able to clearly communicate those rules to the rest of the community to avoid having a huge mess on your hands, and our FAQ and tag line doesn't do a very good job at that

I agree

I think it'd be a great idea to create a page like Skeptics has, and add a line to the very top of the FAQ that very clearly states New users (even users familiar with the StackExchange format) should read our [introduction to the site] before posting

2

I was going to do one at some point, but ultimately I just don't have the time

I tried getting SE to do it, but they decided the new /about page was good enough so marked it as status-completed once that rolled out. I still think a meta post specifically aimed at new users would be better though.

20

Q: Creating a page specifically designed for new users, and link to it at the top of the faq?

I was recently reading the Skeptics.SE FAQ, and one of the top lines of their faq is: New users (even users familiar with the StackExchange format) should read our introduction to the site before posting The link listed goes to a very newbie-friendly meta post which explains what SE is, h...

discussion feature-request status-completed new-users faq-proposed

@Rachel I was going to upvote that but I already had :)

@Chad If we want something like that, it'd probably something the Workplace community will have to do themselves. Would need to get the moderators to OK the idea since they'd need to update the FAQ, then create a community-wiki meta post and start writing it

There's a bunch of good writers on this site who might be willing to help

I think it would be relatively trivial to implement a walk though check list for new questions to help avoid the most common mistakes.

8:23 PM

@Chad Yeah, its easy to come up with ideas on how to communicate the site's purpose better to new users, but we need people to actually implement the ideas :)

Anyways, I got to go, going to be late :)

@Rachel Bye :)

If someone does start some cw post on meta for newbies, I'd be happy to proof-read and offer suggestions, but I'm not creating one :)

9:15 PM

I think that might be good to have

@Rachel I really dislike the new "about" pages because it is marketting eye candy and not really helpful

9:51 PM

0

Q: Doing an interview after having already sign a contract

After more than one month of interviews, I accepted a job offer and I signed a contract for a new job which is gonna start from the first of May. After I signed the contract, a big company, which answered my application very slowly, contacted me. I did two technical phone interviews and I passed...

interviewing careers

this questino isn't a duplicate

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Apr '138

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