Do we have a Quality control issue?

Question

We have a few questions that while not off topic I do not think are high quality questions as asked but have been upvoted:

Workplace gossip makes me uncomfortable - how do I deal with it?

How can I find a better work-life balance in an internet company which is "always on"?

How important is a grade point average on a resume?

Handling Credit-takers

Dealing with someone who thinks he's "divinely right"

These questions are broad and generic enough that they hit alot of peoples buttons. But I think they are too general to be good questions. They get up votes because people can relate not because they are good questions.

We have great participation and the one question that was clearly a rant as a question was closed off quickly. But these questions being voted up during private beta scream "DANGER WILL ROBINSON" to me.

Is there anything we can do about this? Should we do anything about this?

Answer 1

Thank you for asking.

My biggest concern for this site is that these overly-broad "how can I be more awesome?" questions will become the mainstay of this site. It's not that they're inherently off-topic — but you don't stand a chance at making the Internet a better place by asking generalized, generic questions that have been asked 100's of times on every other site on the topic… and the trite, hackneyed answers they attract aren't going to be all that interesting, either.

That's a death knell to this site.

It takes a bit of re-training and forethought to get the hang of asking unambiguous questions about very specific problems you have encountered in your day-to-day work. For example, if you want to ask about improving your work-life balance, ask instead about a specific situation you encounter recently. Describe it. What did you try? Why couldn't you solve the problem on your own? -- Those are the types of specific day-to-day questions that users have a chance of answering. The "damn the man, go home" answers aren't really helping anyone. That's just an example — and it applies equally well to all the "how do I get that raise," "how do I improve my resume," and "how do I work better with my co-workers?" -style questions that are going to get asked in endless variations.

If the answers do not address a very specific problem, you might be taking the wrong, scatter-shot approach to your questions — You're just throwing out a basic premise to start a discussion. Users are left only guessing what might actually help you. That's a good use of a support group or discussion forum, but not a Q&A site.

The remediation is to stay vigilant. Guard jealously the core purpose of this site. If a question can be improved, improve it. If you have concerns, leave a comment or start a meta post. If a question is not a good fit, close it.

But don't be rude or overly curt. You can be a bit more strict early in the beta, because these earliest days are more about setting the right path than getting everyone's questions answered. But take every opportunity you have to discuss why you took an action or feel a post or behavior might need consideration. Leave lots of signposts to help guide users who might not "get" what this site is about.

Answer 2

This site is inherently different from lots of other SE sites, in that the central theme of the site deals directly with people and the interactions between them.

As people don't have manuals, there are going to be far fewer hard and fast answers and a lot more questions that, in order not to be overly localised, are broader than those allowed on something like SO or ServerFault.

There is also the fact that answers on this site tend to be broader - even if the question is more localised. That's because part of the goal of the site is to be a repository of searchable knowledge. If we try to force questions to be more specific than they naturally are, we're going to end up seeing 5 different but related questions, all of which have largely the same answers.

Having said all of this, some of these questions are at the upper limit of broadness I would set personally, but they are still valid questions to me.

Answer 3

My concern is that, by requiring these questions to be much more specific, they either become too localized or there's really no net difference as this is a little softer topic than some of the other sites in the network.

These questions have seemingly originated from a specific experience by the poster and been generalized to be more broadly appropriate.

For example, let's make the "Handling Credit Takers" question more specific:

"Last week, at work, my senior co-worker presented the innovative approach to designing Widget X in our project at a status meeting as his own. I believe that I should've received the credit for it. This happens a lot with my senior co-worker. How should I handle it?"

Does the question stand when written in this way? Is it really any different than the original? I don't think so.

Now, let's make the "How can I prevent gossip?" question more specific:

"At work yesterday, I overheard two of my colleagues speaking negatively about the weight of another coworker who is known to be going through some tough times. I was uncomfortable with this situation. What should I do?"

Does this question stand when written this way? While it may be different than the original, is it "better?" Do answers to this question provide more value to discoverers and searchers than answers to the original?

Answer 4

I would recommend using the tools at our disposal - comment to suggest revisions, guide OPs with specific advice, edit or suggested edits to questions, down vote, vote to close, and flag as appropriate, etc. Basically, keep using the tools at your disposal as the first mode of handling things. We have to first trust that the tools will help us lead the community in the right direction.

I see you've made comments on at least one of these questions. I think continuing to use the tools on the questions themselves is probably the most effective way of providing feedback to the question, and if you keep saying what you believe, a community opinion will start to form around the issues that you bring up. So, keep saying something if you feel there are issues, and be prepared to argue your point.

Answer 5

Downvoting is a very powerful tool. They have a much more immediate psychological impact on a poster than close votes do. Something about seeing that minus sign really gets people's attention.

All of us in this private beta read the same facts. We know not to ask generic or textbook questions here. We know that this is the most critical time for the fledgling site. We know we're supposed to ask really detailed, great questions.

Therefore, if you see someone asking very general questions, in addition to voting to close, also give it a downvote.

Leaving a constructive comment is also helpful. We can also remind the question-asker that we will gladly remove the downvote once they've revised the question to meet the Q&A criteria that was explained to them in the welcome email.

Again, every user on this site at this point should be familiar with the expectations. Here is an important paragraph from that welcome email:

The first questions set the tone for the site. If you ask high quality, expert-level questions, you'll build a site that attracts the experts and pros who will make it really successful. But if you ask beginner questions, survey questions, or social-conversation questions, experts and pros will not be interested.

I don't think it can be made any clearer than that. Now, let's build a great list of expert, private beta questions and answers so we can make this really successful!

Answer 6

One of my questions is in there, I try to keep to the FaQ. Maybe there should be examples of good questions and bad questions like we have on serverfault.