I'm writing a post about a book which revolves around a sexual assault.
Do we need/want any kind of content warning for questions that deal with difficult or triggering topics?
I do not want to put "rape" in the title, as it will show up on the main page. I also don't want to surprise readers w...
@steelersquirrel I like poking fun at sparkling vampires as much as the next UNfan, but i'm really unsure having snarky heavily starred comments like that is a good tone to set for the site, sorry.
@steelersquirrel I know, and I know you generally are not mean in the least. I just want to establish the tone limits off the start, and you unluked out to be what I saw
This is largely extracurricular to the answers already posted, but this is important to provide a bit of context…
This site is essentially "done" — released. This is a a fully functional, launched site. It is not "in beta" as you've come to understand it the traditional software development mode...
Just consider this very recent post of Robert on IoT.meta
There are currently several different types of author tags.
First letters and last name:
j-r-r-tolkien, j-d-salinger, j-k-rowling
First name, middle name, last name:
edgar-allan-poe, arthur-conan-doyle
First name and last name:
mark-twain, jane-austen
Is this a problem?
On on...
"There's no need to force "rules discussions" where there is no actual problem. Folks are more than willing to point out problems where they show up in actual practice, so tackle the problems when/if they become prominent in actual use" - from said answer
@Mithrandir I know, I leave for a few hours and come back and wonder if I accidentally failed to go back into the right room.
@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ We are in private Beta. Shouldn't we as a community TRY to raise the standards a bit and concentrate on rewarding actually difficult and professionally interesting content?
@DForck42 thank you, i was hoping so. :) i was fearing that i wouldn't come up with a good question throughout the whole beta and be able to meaningfully participate on mainsite.
According to The Register, lots of Amazon Echo devices were accidentally triggered by a presenter saying 'Alexa ordered me a dollhouse'.
Telly station CW-6 said the blunder happened during a Thursday morning news package about a Texan six-year-old who racked up big charges while talking to an...
@Helmar But are those valuable users? Do they stick around to meaningfully participate in the site as opposed to drive-by upvote HNQ (which is more likely low quality than not) and disappear again? Stats are required.
(interviews with people who have been dead for two centuries at the time of the interview are not generally known to make for very trustworthy citations)
@Shog9 Not so much discussion as aimless venting. you have to accept that HNQ isn't universally liked, usually for rather objective reasons (and partly, because SE didn't yet decide to tweak it to eliminate the worst of the negative side effects).
@NapoleonWilson most badges are awarded by tasks that run periodically. Some run more often than others, most are throttled based on server load to prevent bringing down a site when a bunch of badges need to be awarded at once.
Also sometimes SO uses Programmers as a garbage bin, pushing bad questions there, at least according to the accusations some people on Programmers say.
If I ever get time, I'm gonna try & put together a report on the nature of the traffic that HNQ sends to various sites network-wide, and the after effects.
@BeastlyGerbil Puzzling is horrible because it keeps taking all the HNQ with the funny clickbait question titles. We Sci Fiers have a lot to learn from how they compose titles. It's not clearly the least serious though. Code Golf, Worldbuilding are also not very serious.
Folks tend to fixate on the handful of posts that get a LOT of traffic, but... The list changes every few minutes. Tremendous number of questions and sites just get a little bit of extra exposure
@b_jonas The site doesn't try and get questions to HNQ. I think the fact it is a fun site, people are mor einclined to click on it and to sort of relax a bit more
@Catija Pirates are the chosen people of the FSM, according to their holy scripture. There's a story behind that with some badly labelled chart with the number of pirates on one axis.
This recent question deals with a sexual topic, and I'm wondering whether these (embarrassing?) questions should even be allowed. Of course Literature is full of this sort of topic, but should we let questions like these on the site?
@Shog9 One thing i'm really curious about is, did anyone ever study whether the questions HNQ algorithm chooses actually match up to what the site's community would want to see as questions which the site should be represented with in HNQ?
@DVK-in-Florida for my part that's a non-starter because i don't expect HNQ to display what my community wants to present to the outside. it just displays things people have paid a lot of attention to.
(i don't think we even have a "what our community wants to present.")
rpg.se HNQs are frequently absurd situations or real-world cases of abuse (or near-abuse), but i'm proud of our site being able to demonstrate we can help people handle the latter cases well.
@Shog9 I was thinking something objective. A site poll (remember site self-evaluations that happened on Meta a couple of years back?). Or Review type queue where people can mark HNQ questions as "should be / shouldn't be" - no functional effect of that but sends you data.
so, yeah... ...if by "community" you mean "the folks hanging around the site and answering and voting", then yes HNQ does represent. ...if by "community" you mean "the folks on meta", less representative ...if by "community" you mean "moderators", probably never
HNQ should never be taken as a representative sample of a site's content. That's not their design goal, and it certainly isn't what happens in practice.
@DVK-in-Florida self-evals failed because, on balance, barely anyone participated in a significant way. The plan for curation failed in the same manner. Also the previous attempt at encouraging self-promotion via badges. Most folks don't want to spend a lot of time find and promoting good questions on their sites; if they did, none of this would be needed.
@Emrakul It's less about "should" and more about "actual impressions people get". if all I see of a site is HNQ questions, that WILL be the site's public face for me and what I judge the site on, for lack of any other data points.