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Comments on Loosen quality standards without losing our power users
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Loosen quality standards without losing our power users Question
Our website relies heavily on user generated content and power users that edit, curate, and moderate that content. Recently the amount of content contributed to our site has taken a nose dive.
Looking at the data, we're finding that a significant portion of our new content is getting deleted by our power users. Our moderators are even banning enough new users for posting poor quality content that it looks like we won't be able to sustain the growth of the community on our site.
How do we convince our power users to allow more content, even if it is somewhat lesser quality, without alienating our power users?
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I created my account a few days ago; this is my very first post here. IRC I have participated in online forums as an active member since 2008. One of the things that I have learned is that each online community is different, and b/c of this, a new community member should spend some time learning the community ropes before posting... but I also learned that "you can't have the cake and eat it too".
If this platform has the same premises as SO, like not having an entry barrier for new users and is promoted as a platform where anyone can participate, then their sites will be deemed to suffer the same problems as SO and Stack Exchange sites.
You should find a way to keep posts from new users while the post quality is uncertain away from the eyes of the power users and only allow that posts that meet the quality standards go to them to be reviewed.
A quality standard is a baseline, the minimal requirements that a post should meet not to be deleted, like being on-topic, according to the site scope, complete, well written, among other things defined in the site proposal. "Power users" might be looking for questions beyond the baseline and for challenging questions that will help attract subject matter experts, new users able to answer questions the reviewer can't answer. "Power users" might be looking for answers beyond the baseline, answers that show originality and something interesting to the reviewer.
Stack Overflow (SO) has been dealing with the same problem for years. Recently they have been working on something called "staging ground". Posts from people who do not have experience posting questions pass through a special workflow instead of the regular one. In this special workflow, the tools to curate posts are designed to improve them before releasing them to the public. So, new users that never understand the site topic, scope and quality standards are saved from suffering "the effects of post deletion by power users". New users that can write a good enough post have a high chance of being better received by power users.
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