I was actually going to say the same about you. We really appreciate you diving in and helping us solve all of the tough problems we have on our plates.
I asked the Stack Exchange community managers in our last meeting what they thought about what we're doing, and one of them said they'd rather see a small community with great quality than a mediocre large one.
So that sounds promising!
I was also going through some of those tags, like the recommendation tag, and the books tag. Are there any others you've found that we should add to the list?
I honestly haven't made a real focus of the tags. I've been a little more interested in the issues around scope and quality. The other things are important too, they just haven't made it onto my personal radar.
The only real benefit I see from going through bad tags right now is to go through some old questions that should be edited, closed, merged, and retagged.
@jmort253 Sorry, was in the middle of writing pm.stackexchange.com/a/6238/4271, and I needed to give it my full attention. You have mine again.
Honestly, I like the site a lot. I have my own set of opinions about what should be on topic or not, and I'm not really sure that I'm in the majority on that particular issue, but I think the core participants are solid and the general quality of the unclosed questions is high.
My only real concern is that I think there's a bit too much focus on what I call "ivory tower" questions--probably because it's easy to ask bad questions about the day-to-day stuff, and many of those questions fall into the category of tool-related questions.
I think those issues are being properly addressed in meta, but I think the community is still too small to have really reached a quorum consensus on the issues. Just my $0.02, though.
@CodeGnome - I'd like to increase the size of the community. It brings more dynamics to the site to have different viewpoints and people from different professional backgrounds. With that, I'm going to get off the computer for awhile. Stack Exchange can be a bit addictive.
For any PM's who are interested, I am attempting to revive the Motorcycling proposal here:
Meta is a little less awesome. I post there a lot, but I dislike the echo chamber effect it creates. I've taken my lumps for pointing that out on occasion. :)
I've always wondered by beta sites don't allow rep for site meta participation. Participation is participation, after all.
@jmort253 Did you see this comment? pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6235/… I'm not sure if it's an attempt to ask a separate-but-related question, or just a rehash or extension of the OPs original question. What do you think?
Yeh, Meta SO has a very solid, core community that supports the Stack Exchange platform, and it's perhaps the harshest of all to some degree.
Depending on how the person approaches it.
I've seen new users have the community help them improve their questions when they approach with positive intentions, and I've seen rants get downvoted into oblivion.
Hmmm...
This is the problem with these types of questions.
When they're broad and basic, they tend to lead to more and more and more and more follow up questions.... sort of like a discussion, so to speak.
On SO, this happens to me a lot in the JQuery tags.
I generally will answer 1 or 2 follow up questions briefly in the comments, and then wish them luck ;)
@jmort253 Sometimes that's FGITW syndrome, but sometimes it's just bike-shedding or rep-mining. Even bad answers eventually get the odd upvote; the only real solution I've found is to downvote those sorts of answers--but lower rep users are often reluctant to downvote (as opposed to upvote) for a variety of reasons.
Also, I often don't downvote answers where I'm offering a competing answer. I'll make an exception if I see something that is egregiously wrong technically, but won't downvote because I disagree or think some other answer is better.
How do you calculate schedule compression ratio? When and why would you do it and what does it tell you? Are there heuristics with the the ratio that are to be generally followed?
While the question itself is NaRQ or NC in my opinion, Mark said pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6191/…, but that still seems to make it "not a real-world problem someone is facing today."
Not sure it's the best example of the genre, but asking something abstract without a concrete use case seems a poor fit for Q&A. --I'm not disputing that the answer is interesting; I'm just saying I think it's out of scope based on our faq and our criteria for asking questions about real problems people are facing.
What do you think David should include in an edit to get a better response (and to make it a better Q&A question)? I was thinking that he could talk about how it would solve a problem he's facing?
I suspect that it is kind of abstract though. David has said before that the more abstract theoretical part of project management is where the real learning begins, and I agree with that, as long as the questions aren't so abstract to where we can't come up with a few viable answers.
@jmort253 Actually, I think most people need to start with practices and move onto underlying theory later. Most of the really bad project management in the world is a result of using theory without sufficient empirical data or real-world practice to back it up. Again, my opinion, but I'd be interested in seeing any statistical study that disputes it. :)
David says he's been in project management for 20+ years I believe. He's no spring chicken when it comes to this.
But I can relate to what you're saying.
Same thing happens to software developers
New dev's tend to over-architect their software projects because of what they learned in their software development theory classes. I'm sure that happens with any field.
I'm not saying David lacks experience. What I was saying is that abstract questions are rarely of value to newly-minted professionals. That was my point; sorry if I wasn't clearer about that.
Hmmm. I didn't say harmful. My point in pointing them out is because there's been a lot of discussion on meta about closing out the low-hanging fruit questions. I'm not advocating keeping dreck; I'm just saying there's a wider audience for practical questions than for abstract questions, and I just don't want the air to get too rarefied as a matter of policy.
"wider audience for practical questions than abstract questions" This would make a great meta question.
I personally don't think we should exclude the more abstract, as long as they can be worded or asked in a way that leads to answers.
It sounds like you don't think these questions should get excluded though, the abstract, thoughtful ones (not the NARQ's of course :) ). I might not be following 100%...
If the questions would scare away potential visitors who may join PMSE, that could be a concern.
I certainly think theoretical questions have a place. I just don't want to see that be PMSE's core content, because that won't attract practitioners, just theoreticians and academics in my opinion.
I noticed a lot of questions get closed because they ask questions that may become obsolete in the future.
One thing this site is lacking (from that stats at http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10947/project-management) is questions being asked.
I've personally started typing several ques...
I'm not sure he's saying quite the same thing, but I think he's reacting to the ambiguity around what a "good question" looks like. I'm going to stick with my "What's the project management problem you're personally facing?" criteria as the prime consideration.
Ultimately, my post yesterday was really more about the fact that routine PM tasks don't have concrete answers. Frameworks provide guidance, but are generally short on practical, testable solutions.
BTW, thanks for not taking our exchange personally the other day. It wasn't meant that way, but I can see how it might have been a little more bombastic than usual. :)
I think the key, from a PM perspective, is that good questions lead to answers that could provide measurable results. The answers themselves may not be measurable, but their efficacy certainly should be empirically measurable by the practitioner.
@CodeGnome No worries. I can see where you were coming from. Actually, I should have just found my own reference and added it as a comment, looking back on it. I appreciate you bringing that to meta.
"Based on X, I think you should try Y" is not measurable, but the efficacy of Y once it's applied to X should be measurable by the OP. Does that make sense?
@jmort253 Would have closed it as NaRQ, but I would have closed all the same. --I something disagree with the phrasing of the close reasons, since sometimes things are technically questions; they just aren't good questions.
@jmort253 Contrived examples always stink...but let me invent one as an example. Q: "My kanban board always has kanbans stuck in QA. How can I fix that?" A: "Find the process bottleneck that prevents QA from completing the work element, or determine why the kanban is being pulled into QA before it's actionable."
I noticed a lot of questions get closed because they ask questions that may become obsolete in the future.
One thing this site is lacking (from that stats at http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10947/project-management) is questions being asked.
I've personally started typing several ques...
The question is reasonable, the advice is sound...but you can't measure it until you implement it. It's not provably correct on its face; it's only measurable by the OP once they try it.
@CodeGnome In a way, that's sort of true with every question. In fact, the "accept" feature has been questioned by a few skeptics as to whether or not the OP is qualified to determine the best answer.
Except that it's the "Best answer that solved the problem". Like other things, it too is subjective :)
The main point that Jason is getting at though is in regards to the Kanban question and tool recommendation questions.
Well, the check mark means it's an answer that the OP found acceptable. The upvotes are for the community to identify the answers that are most widely-applicable. Different metrics.
Check marks are localized metrics. Upvotes (and downvotes) are looking at a larger statistical pool. Both are valid for their use cases; the problem is when people use them as proxies for one another.
I tend not to upvote much, unless: 1) I think a question is insightful or well-researched; and 2) An answer helps me personally, not just "looks good" in the abstract. Not sure how other people use their votes; that's just how I apply mine.
The general guidance is to upvote material that's helpful, and downvote material that's not helpful.... it's really pretty much up to each person.
The main advantage of voting on a beta site is it puts more power in the hands of the community for moderation activities
Which is why it's so encouraged.
Self regulation is one of the things Stack Exchange looks at before a site graduates. 1) Are questions primarily closed by diamond moderators or is the community involved.
2) Does editing happen naturally and with the participation of users that hold that privilege.
Well, it's going to be a looooong, loooooong time before I get close vote capabilities, so mostly I just flag when necessary. That means it still ends up being a moderator action, from that point of view.
Um...yes. But that's partly because it's so hard to gain rep on a low-volume beta. I just got vote-to-close yesterday, but I still think I'm several months away from full editing and moderator tools. Not kicking about it...I'm just doing the math to project out how quickly folks can participate enough to qualify the site as "self-sustaining."
@Zsolt Not sure we have enough higher-rep users for it to be self-sustaining outside of beta. I think that's what we're discussing here. :)
@jmort253 On an unrelated note, I think short, pithy answers get more upvotes even though they convey less information. I tend to write War and Peace answers; I think that occasionally holds me back from zipping up through the ranks.
@jmort253 I know...but that's only 28 users total above 1k. --If we're just talking about me, then at 17 days for 500 rep, I'll have edit in 2-3 weeks, and moderation tools around 8 weeks after that. It isn't necessarily a linear progression, of course...I'm just projecting out the numbers.
Which is sort of awesome because it helps bump them to the top of the list, so other users will tend to get more votes as well, and any passerby's hitting the main page will also see the questions. Not sure how useful that last part is though...
Not everyone is active.
Zsolt, Pawel, DavidEspina. I'm not going to try to list everyone because I don't want to leave anyone out :)
But the main problem is that a majority of the closed posts only have a single closer.
Well, I cant find stats on how many users have close-vote capability. if you don't have a pool of ~10 active closers, moderators will still be the straw bosses there.
The community managers (The SE diamond mods) do sort of have something that tells them if someone has been away for awhile, but word on the street is it's not really all that easy to use... or useful, from what I've heard.
Well, then I guess we just wait for organic growth. But I'd be surprised if we get to "self-sustaining" in that specific regard in less than 6 months as a rough guesstimate.
I think moderators should have the ability to cast a normal, non binding vote like if they were a normal user (while of course retaining their ability to cast a binding vote where necessary).
This can be used in "grey areas" where a moderator can choose to give his or her opinion but not make a ...
This can be used in "grey areas" where a moderator can choose to give his or her opinion but not make a decision alone.
I don't see the point. Moderators can already leave comments, thus making their opinions known, just like normal users. Moderators can edit poorly-worded questions, just li...
Sorry, got off track.
With most of the traffic coming from search engines, it means that most of the views on questions/answers comes from people that don't have user accounts.
Well, this is another echo chamber example. It boils down to the current moderators not seeing the point in driving community participation. They have some valid points in those threads, but missed the original point IMHO.
Maybe hit a middle ground? Comment that you think a question should be closed unless there's enough editing/comments/answers/meta to warrant otherwise, and encourage voters to vote? Not saying it's a GOOD idea...just an option to consider.
What say we get some of the higher-rep users to put some bounties on a few questions? That might drive some interest...and it will certainly help increase the rep pool in a legitimate way.
But building up a list of possible questions would be helpful IMHO. I'm sure there are people who would want to help in this manner but haven't thought about it.
How do you calculate schedule compression ratio? When and why would you do it and what does it tell you? Are there heuristics with the the ratio that are to be generally followed?
I noticed a lot of questions get closed because they ask questions that may become obsolete in the future.
One thing this site is lacking (from that stats at http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10947/project-management) is questions being asked.
I've personally started typing several ques...
Looking for something that provides a good introduction into the topic as well as how to introduce it to an organization and how to apply it.
This can be used in "grey areas" where a moderator can choose to give his or her opinion but not make a decision alone.
I don't see the point. Moderators can already leave comments, thus making their opinions known, just like normal users. Moderators can edit poorly-worded questions, just li...
