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Welcome to the staging ground for new communities! Each proposal has a description in the "Descriptions" category and a body of questions and answers in "Incubator Q&A". You can ask questions (and get answers, we hope!) right away, and start new proposals.

Are you here to participate in a specific proposal? Click on the proposal tag (with the dark outline) to see only posts about that proposal and not all of the others that are in progress. Tags are at the bottom of each post.

Comments on Why can we not vote for community proposals?

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Why can we not vote for community proposals?

+2
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Codidact is rather strongly centered around the idea of voting on content. Personally, I am open to revisit the manner in which we rank and asses content on the network, but for the time being, that is part of the core of Codidact. Then why can we not vote for proposed communities?

The now defunct and superseded proposals category on Meta had voting on the proposals, but there must have been a conscious decision not to carry it over here. What was the rationale for removing it?

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What was the rationale for removing it?

This wasn't my decision so I'll answer the discussion side rather than the support side. I'll leave the rationale to be answered by someone who knows.


I like the new approach

Instead of votes up and down, we now have reactions so people can indicate whether they will join the community as:

  • Active user
  • Casual browser
  • Subject matter expert

This gives more fine grained data than upvotes, giving a better idea of how ready a proposed community is.

What's lost is the ability to downvote, but I see this as an improvement too. If someone thinks part of the scope or the wording should be changed, they can start a discussion on Meta, where there are upvotes and downvotes to reach consensus.

This leaves no reason to downvote other than objecting to the proposal existing. If anyone has an objection beyond just disinterest, there is a separate discussion of How do I object to a community proposal? Apart from that, the group of people who are interested in a proposed community shouldn't have to contend with downvotes from people who are not interested.

Real questions and answers

More importantly than the small change from votes to reactions, the bigger reason I much prefer the new Proposals community is that it has real questions and answers. This gives a much better idea of whether a group is ready for their own Codidact community, because you can see it happening in real time and see activity go up and down. This is even more meaningful than the reactions (which is a list of people who said at some point in the past that they would join a community at some point in the future - better than just votes but less dynamic than questions and answers).

These questions and answers do have upvotes and downvotes. This allows steering the scope of the proposed community, rather than just downvoting the idea of the community existing at all.

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Scale (5 comments)
Scale
Andreas witnessed the end of the world today‭ wrote 3 months ago · edited 3 months ago

Does the lack of downvoting really scale? The strain would be massive if I'd have to go through this much heavier process, in case I see a long stream of bad proposals here.

Apart from that, the group of people who are interested in a proposed community shouldn't have to contend with downvotes from people who are not interested.

I would honestly be surprised if people interpreted the downvotes for that purpose. I'd rather see them as an indicator for low quality (not primarily the descriptive text, but the idea/concept of the community).

trichoplax‭ wrote 3 months ago

As the number of proposals scales up, I'd expect the number of people viewing them to scale similarly. It isn't your job to assess them all. The community can raise concerns, suggest edits, and discuss scope - it's not all on you. If that process happens slowly, that's OK.

trichoplax‭ wrote 3 months ago

With the previous approach, there were some proposals with many downvotes, leaving me to guess at people's objections. Now specific concerns can be raised on Meta and I can add my vote or discussion, which seems more useful.

I'd expect the number of people viewing them to scale similarly.

I don't have experience from Area51.SE, but I do have experience from SO, and I do know it doesn't scale at all there. If you have experience from Area51, you can draw from those, but my impression is that Proposals.CD is more accessible.

I am not convinced that scaling won't become an issue. But it's possible we should just revisit it, then.

trichoplax‭ wrote 3 months ago

I haven't been back there in a few years, but I helped take a few new communities through Area 51 in the past. Back then it was separated by proposed community, so each one wouldn't necessarily get many viewers. That's a major difference with Codidact Proposals, where everyone sees every question regardless of proposed community.

Codidact has a community of people who view Proposals, whereas Area 51 was more modular, several specific communities, each working to get a proposed idea working. I can see the advantage of a modular approach when the number of proposed communities is very large, but I'm not sure that number will ever be reached (here or on Area 51).

For now, I much prefer Codidact's approach. If hundreds of new proposals arrive things could get difficult, but I'd be very surprised if that happens, and I don't think it's worth preparing for it just in case. We can adapt as the need arises.