Change of Heart

11:35 AM

@Hamlet Do you have like a tool that notifies you whenever "Hamlet" is typed in any of the SE's chat rooms?

@DoctorWhom Apart from that, what will we do with old questions that don't apply to the new scope? I vote for closing all questions without an accepted answer (or an answer with a score >2) and leaving the other ones.

Hamlet

12:16 PM

@Narusan oh, no, someone linked me to your post on the health meta.

DoctorWhom

2:28 PM

Interesting! I said "Hamlet is my fav" in regards to your quote from it (as in the play), Narusan. Well thanks for your input @Hamlet even though that was unintentional :)

@Narusan yes old questions that are unanswered or barely answered should be removed. Can we remove them? Or do we have to close them only? Because the [on hold] still clutters everything up

from the perspective of trying to do a major overhaul to a new scope.

2:41 PM

Are you there?

Never done "meta" thing before

*the "meta"

6:24 PM

@Mike-DHSc This is chat. Basically, it works the same way as Facebook Messenger, Skype, WhatsApp or any other chatroom but it is tied to StackExchange (so we don't have to share personal details).

We will be discussing "Reshaping Health" here because it's easier to get everyone's opinion here than on Meta. (Meta is a site about this site where you can ask questions about how Health works, discuss the scope or problems you have with the site).

There are quite a few posts here and at the related Meta post (Defibrillating Health), so I'd recommend reading them. I'll also give you an outline of what we've come up so far as soon as I find more time.

In 1 hour and 50 minutes, we've scheduled another "chat" (both DoctorWhom and LangLangC have tried to adjust their schedule so they are free). You're invited to join if you have time.

8:51 PM

@DoctorWhom meta.stackexchange.com/help/roomba

Downvoting and VTC will be sufficient so that the question get's deleted after somewhat 30 days. But in the beginning, mods could also delete closed question so that the front page isn't full with them

Guten Abend @LangLangC. Ich würde vorschlagen, dass wir noch auf DoctorWhom warten, ehe wir die Diskussion beginnen (davon ausgehend, dass sie noch Zeit findet)

Gut. & Guten Abend zurück.

Welcome @Mike-DHSc

@LangLangC Never mind, let's start now if we're 3 users already. If that's fine with you all.

Did I finally find the right place...?

Yeah

Sorry if that lead to some confusion: there is the Main site (Q&A), there is Meta (Questions about the Main Site) and there is Chat (where you can just ramble)

I need to get up to speed but was reading some meta stuff earlier...

No problem

9:01 PM

The basic question is that Health.SE is a site for everybody. Everybody has a health. But we can't give medical advice, and that's what most new users want. For them, it's a one-time only. SO we've thought about reshaping the site to make it more manageable

The new site is a site directed at professionals in medical and allied health fields, related academics, and others with a sound understanding of health-related sciences.

The name we came up with is MedicalSciences.SE. That should make it clear that we don't encourage questions about one's Health

How many questions do higher ranked users tend to ask though?

I think cutting out your average user would be a mistake

It going to be hard to make that work as it's cross discipline

@Mike-DHSc 25% of posts are garbage. Literally garbage. (Conducted a data query with the stats from the site) The goal would be to get rid of the diagnose-me-posts. The 6 months I've been active on the site, I've only met somewhat 6 recurrent members: Lucky, Carey, Kate, DoctorWhom, You and LangLangC. This is the user base we have right now. Which is a huge problem

True I 100% agree with that...

Hmmmmmm

@Mike-DHSc Well, your question from today was great. So was DoctorWhom's question regarding the leg discrepancy. I as an example are wondering why remifentanyl is used more commonly than fentanyl.

I am also intersted in cross-discipline questions. The huge advantage is that we could lower our bar of sources: Most things would be common knowledge. And we'd filter out the annoying new users.

High rep users tend to not ask that many questions I found in my superficial analysis. But looking at the statistics at Area51 the daily visit count is well above the threshold for Excellence. Further digging through the posts with data.stackexchange does indeed reveal some reasons for concern.

9:08 PM

@LangLangC Because the site's current target is newbies, not experts.

If I'd ask that fentanyl question, It'd got lost in the amount of garbage

Sure. But even those newbies seem to mainly look around, not sign up, not post.

@LangLangC Yes, and they never return (58% accepted answers to questions)

Why not some kind of forced compliance..

No one reads the rules -- that's just how it is. However.....

@Mike-DHSc Because SE doesn't care too much about us so that we could get automated checks and everything just for this site. We're a failing beta site with almost no active high-rep users, and they have 147 other sites to worry about

If instead of closing posts we had 10 threads that showed something similar to "poorly worded questions require a small donation to the Red Cross etc..."

So the rules find them

I know this is random ideas btw - but I see so many people who can't afford healthcare

*these are

9:12 PM

The ideas are great and I've tried to start something similar two months ago, but the fact that we are having this discussion right now tells you a lot about what's changed.

Every successful StackExchange site has a solid base of users who are revisiting the site on a daily basis.

Puzzling, PCG, they're in for the fun. SFF because they can talk about books/movies they really enjoyed with other people who really enjoyed them. SO because the site's just so helpful to programmers, on so many different occasions.

Health is a one-time hit only. You've just visited your doctor and have a question about something she told you? You visit Health.SE. But that's not the case every second day. This is why we have a low rate of accepted answers: Most users never return. T…

so cutting them out isn't ideal as they don't know where to turn and can't afford or won't pay for treatment

Yeah I read that....... definitely isn't an easy answer

@Mike-DHSc But we can't help them. Only an appointment with doctors can.

But the daily visits number tell one thing for sure: the name has traction! (Not our benefit, alas) -#- Making up a new rule to EULA like this: You acknowledge to stay around for a while, if you asked a Q, because you are the only one who can accept an answer? (Or comment on why none of those given satisfies you)

We can at the very least make them an "informed patient" -- depending what the issue is

@Mike-DHSc Yes, with a few. With the vast majority, it's just not possible.

9:16 PM

True.........

Wish there was a simple solution obviously not

@Mike-DHSc For an "informed patient" most of those troubling users would need to become patients first. And giving info on treatments needs a very sharp demarcation from giving advice.

This is a screen shot of our front site today (which doesn't look bad compared to the todays). Red are questions I believe are not salvageable where we can't help at all, orange are questions that would have to be edited heavily so that we understand what the user wants and the user understands where we can help them and where we can't, and green questions are questions that I consider good.

This is pretty bad for a good dayt

I'm not saying treating them -- I'm thinking more of the what is wrong with me type of questions. However there are issue with those also people tend to leave out necessary information

Let me see

@Mike-DHSc Exactly. And usually it's very difficult to find out what's wrong with them because their information is just way too general.

Welcome @aduckinthewinter

Yes you're both right

9:21 PM

In my opinion, the reshape of the site is necessary. It will take a lot of effort and we might lose some users, but that's the only way I see this site surviving. And I really do want it to survive

Wish there was an easy answer....

What do you think of the new scope? Is there anything we should add?
*removed*

ups

wrong text

Questions regarding medical treatments and practices, administration and prescription of drugs, body functions, medical conditions, intersectionality and cross-disciplinary of medical fields are on-topic here.

it sure sounds awful, but that's the best I could come up with

Yes in theory it sounds great -- how do you qualify a new user though?

There's no need for that.

So basically this would be attracting the right crowd

9:26 PM

@Mike-DHSc Yes. And users without background experience who are just here to ask a one-time question we can't answer wouldn't be attracted (in theory) because the answer would be too complicated, the site name clearly tells them they are at a wrong place and we can still delete questions

On the plus side, us higher-rep users would be able to actually answer good questions and ask good questions without having to deal with the flood of garbage

It's a bit idealistic, but that's the way I think Health should be.

true that does make sense

I like it in theory

It's already long and yet I still miss "research" in that scope.

lol

So how would we start the change...

@LangLangC Yes, that should definitely get in there!

phone call brb

9:33 PM

@Mike-DHSc Well, JohnP has contacted the Community Managers (basically the super super admins of the sites) to ask whether we can change that. We'd just have to have a proposal ready to go.

We've decided on a new name, target audience, are discussing the scope right now, we'd have to address close-reasons, the tour, the howtoask page and then we'd basically be ready to go

I found that the words "research" and "science" tend to be just the right kind of divisive. Usually. But would that be still as attractive as "Health" (and its current scope) currently is? This is just about the numerical momentum.

I hope that we'd get roughly 10+ active members who can answer quite a few questions, and maybe 30+ regular users who pass by a few times in a week. Apart form that, maybe 2 questions from "foreigners" per day. That'd be really great.
We'd lose quite a substantial amount of users that come here once. But I'd definitely retire out of my comatose state and be a lot more active on the new site.

The site won't be huge, but the active user base should be larger than the current one by a lot. I can see that it might be a problem getting enough new questions per day. But in the end, I can just spam the site with the multitude of things I want to learn about medical sciences :P

Are there any news on that or input/feedback from the mods here. I mean, a bunch of glowing Young Turks spinning crazy ideas that might lead to substantial changes to the site and possibly a higher load on the mods? (If I understand the mechanics correctly: closing so much off-topics and such…)

aduckinthewinter

Apologies for interrupting the current train of thought. So from what I've read, the plan is to start MedicalSciencesSE. What is the current thinking behind the fate of HealthSE?

(nuke or otherwise)

9:49 PM

@LangLangC JohnP (a mod) actually brought up the idea of reshaping the site (although stating this was his opinion as a user, not as a mod), and he said he'd support this both as a user and a mod. michaelpri also seems to support this case.

@aduckinthewinter Right now, we want to reshape Health.SE and turn it into MedicalSciences.SE. Something similar has happened to physical fitness (although that only changed its scope to remove nutrition). So basically the site would be somewhat nuked because a new site different in a few aspects would be built on top of it.

@aduckinthewinter Here :40033365 As far as I understand it, it is renaming the thing, changing/"refining" the descriptions and policies (scope how-to-ask, ontopic etc) and a great culling of posts.

@LangLangC yup, that's also what I understood. Although we wouldn't cull the posts in retro perspective (no need to go through thousands of questions right now) but close them if they should bump up to the front page again. This wouldn't be all too much work. Also, closing questions is done by users with more than 500 rep, and not solely mods

Is that change on physical fitness somehow transparent, to what went on there, from quite a global perspective, granted.

@LangLangC I can't find the relevant meta threads. Basically, we'd need a Community Manager telling us what we can do and what we can't do...

How the posts are ordered is a complete mystery to me. On the homepage or otherwise. Whenever I try to wade through something systematically that spreads across multiple pages I feel like running in circles. -#- Wouldn't that "lazy initialising" require constant attention? From "someone"?

10:04 PM

@LangLangC Yes, but that's how the site works anyway.

Once you hit 500 reputation, you can access review, where attention will be drawn to new posts. You usually get somewhere between 7 and 13 per day. Apart from that, I often tried to read the top-20 posts on the site every day when I wasn't in coma yet.

The problem is that you need 5 users who do that daily to close and delete questions (that's a measurement to prevent system abuse: peer validation)

Anyway, I ought to go now. It was fun chatting with you all, please continue this discussion without me, I'll read up on it afterwards. See you some time soon!

OK, bye (and wake up soon) ;)

Sorry had a call - back now

@Narusan I meant the culling of content bumped to HP. Diamond-community seems to be programmed to be unpredictable.

@Mike-DHSc Can't link my own question, but can you give any info on: "Is that change on physical fitness somehow transparent, to what went on there, from quite a global perspective, granted."

10:24 PM

I'm not seeing this..

Too bad. I thought that would make us the 'informed patient': seeing an example of possible effects to those actions. Even if the actions Narusan described were on a much smaller scale.

Not sure why -- but gotta go at least we have a direction. Take care!!