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Allowed types of questions for Worldbuilding
I like the proposal text and have actually very little to add. Should be a solid starting ground.
One concern I have is the general thing with "malformed questions".
I strongly advocate for not having a strict policy of "ask your question correctly or it gets closed". I would like to emphasize to focus on the "intent" of a question and ask back if there is something unclear. Also of course, creative questions, brainstorming etc. are welcomed (maybe with some focus recommendations like in Creative Challenges).
Thus, either such questions are handled directly inside the input queue or there should definitely be a sandbox for it.
Also see my posting on Proposals:Meta "Can I ask Worldbuilding questions here?", where I have laid out that thought in more detail (especially in the answer to that question).
2 answers
When a question is open, people can post answers. If the question is not clear, and then gets adjusted during several rounds of discussion while people are answering, it's awfully hard to sort out what happened. You end up with a question asking how to do X with answers about doing Y and Z, about the relative merits of X, Y, and Z, and suggesting that X is the solution to your problem.
Closing a question while it's unclear and reopening it when the question has been clarified reduces the effort people spend on writing answers that are not, in the end, wanted. The value of a Q&A platform such as Codidact is that you see the question and its answers, as opposed to a forum where you see the original question, several threads discussing and tweaking it, and finally an answer to the revised question 200 comments down if you bothered to read that far.
not having a strict policy of "ask your question correctly or it gets closed"
This doesn't work well in a Q&A format, as opposed to a more traditional threaded discussion. These sites and the Codidact software are for the former.
Experience here and Elsewhere has shown that attempting to community-fix bad questions in a Q&A format creates a lot of noise that most users don't want to see.
Quality is important. A site with 1000 questions of which 200 the users actually want to see is far worse than a site with just 200 good questions. To get there, noise-generators need to be culled and dispensed with quickly and ruthlessly.
1 comment thread