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06:41

Welcome to chat for: Motor Vehicle Maintenance and Repair

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9 hours later…

Pearsonartphoto

15:25

Can you tell from my posts that I've had a few problems with my Jeep Grand Cherokee recently... Most of them have been fixed as of now, but they still make decent questions.

Iszi

@Pearsonartphoto I've got one a few years older than yours. Will be interesting to see if/when our issues cross paths.

Pearsonartphoto

Well, luckily it's running pretty good right now. When I committed to this site, I had about a half dozen problems with the car that I was trying to diagnose, so I figure I'll use them to get my commitment back. Some of them I could fix on my own, others, well, it was just cheaper to take it to a shop.

BTW, if you want to know why they are closing so many beginner questions, I can give you a few clues.

Stack Overflow Blog: No Artificial Intelligence in Area 51

Posted by Robert Cartaino on December 22nd, 2010

On Monday afternoon, we unceremoniously closed down a Stack Exchange site: Artificial Intelligence.

Not that many would have noticed. It had an laggardly 83 questions in its 12 days of existence. It wasn’t so much the lack of questions that was of concern — a site can stay in beta as long as it takes — but the conspicuous lack of expert-level questions. This was also the emerging opinion amongst the users:

I committed to this proposal some time ago, hoping that this might become a site for researchers or knowledgeable academics asking serious technical questions about artificial intelligence here. It seems I was dearly mistaken … Most of the questions are those asked by the merely curious. …

Also, look at the older meta posts at meta.scifi.stackexchange.com

Iszi

AI is a very niche group, in terms of experts. I think that one was inevitable. As for Sci-Fi, I think a Q&A site based purely on fictitious works isn't quite exactly what this system was made for.

Our issues (IMHO) are way different.

Pearsonartphoto

True. And the site did say it was for enthusiasts, so...

Iszi

@Pearsonartphoto Precisely

Also, as I've mentioned in comments, some of the things being shut down are either the same as or very similar to questions which were voted as "on topic" during the "definition" phase of the site.

While I agree that it is best for us to bring out our real head-scratchers during private beta, that in itself should not render otherwise still-relevant issues as off-topic.

Pearsonartphoto

15:40

Q: What can be done with Area 51?

I'm going to argue that Area 51 is not the optimal solution for Stack Exchange. Right now, as it stands, the following occurs: Someone, probably an expert or at least a strong enthusiast, proposes a site. People randomly follow this site. These people aren't committed to the proposal at all. Th...