How do we define Constructive on this site?

Question

Asking Constructive questions (and defining what that means for us) is a big issue I think we really need solved. We need it solved to help us define the site and help people ask questions, assured that they at least have a reasonable idea of what's constructive and how they need to ask their question.

This issue has come up before:

• Is "not constructive" really applicable at workplace.SE?
• Are questions in the format "Is doing/behavior X considered acceptable/professional" considered non-constructive?
• Is this a constructive question by strict definition?
• How can we encourage people to find the middle ground?

An example of a problematic question is Are constant changes to a projects requirements a sufficient reason for terminating a contract? though I and others have decided it's Not a real Question (as it's rhetorical). The discussion was whether there's a constructive question in there at all; the root problem to me is: when does a Workplace question stop asking for opinions and start requiring expertise?

What are some guidelines for what makes a question constructive for us? Basically I want some guidelines we can point a new user to so that they can read and understand how to phrase their question so that it's constructive; the FAQ as it is doesn't cut it. Eventually we'll probably have a short description of Constructive in our FAQ with a link to a Meta post for this purpose.

You don't have to answer with some firm guidelines, I want us to brainstorm; answer, comment, improve. We can squabble over the exact wording later, but I think this is something we need to have.

Answer 1

The million dollar question here is:

How do we define workplace expertise?

One might argue that nobody goes through special training to navigate the workplace like you were training for electrical engineering. Effectively navigating life and issues in the workplace is something that most of us office workers either know intrinsically, fail at consistently, or learn eventually.

So what this means is that we can all be split into three groups, Those of us that intuitively understand how to deal with and answer workplace issues, Those of us that are incapable of understanding the unique social dynamics and issues in the workplace, and those of us that are slowly learning from our collective mistakes.

What inevitably happens in a site for Experts is that group consensus forms around the "experts" opinion, so eventually input from users who not experts or those that are hopelessly lost and need the most help get snubbed out. The experts lose relation and understanding of those that have a legitimate problem that MANY people face, but perhaps they didn't know how to word their questions in a way that would encourage only perfect answers.

These users get downvoted and closed and eventually leave. The experts remain and lack of questions and stagnation set it.

Problem 1:

We are too afraid of the possibility of low quality answers. Remember, this is why we have the voting system. Good answers should be voted up, bad answers should be voted down. They don't pose the same risk to the site as demonstrably bad questions because bad answers don't affect good questions. There is legitimate helpful advice to be had in a LOT of the questions being closed as NC, but I feel we close these because we are too afraid of people posting personal anecdotes, one line answers that could have been comments, links, highly opinionated responses, and web comics.

My opinion, Focus on swift Answer moderation instead of NC Question moderation.

Problem 2:

Navigating the workplace is not a science, yet we treat it as such. Why?

How many peer reviewed journals are we citing in our answers? Not many. Many of the best answers are completely uncited yet most people tend to accept them if they ring true to them. If I were to make a competing observation that goes against conventional wisdom but did not cite references or sources then ultimately my answer will be deemed "Merely an opinion, and an incorrect one at that!"

Imagine for a second a StackExchange site that discusses Stock picks and day trading. The parallels are staggering. Stock picks come naturally to some, never at all to others, and others learn and get better through mistakes. A clique of exceptional day traders will form the vast majority of activity and they will all have a like minded interpretation of correctness of question quality. Anything at all that appears too simplistic a question will be NARQ, even if never asked before. Anything that isn't worded absolutely perfect will be downvoted and closed NC mercilessly. All questions will be taken literally without variance. Occasional stock traders will not relate to the site anymore and leave. People who contribute answers but do not share popular opinion will be downvoted.

Perhaps popular opinion is wrong and somebody was given bad trading advice and loses a lot of money? Who is to say that those answers and questions are any less constructive?

This can happen naturally with a diversity of mods, but more than likely because most people will just give their opinion, doesn't mean that there isn't an excellent and correct answer for the question.

Answer 2

Three problematic ideas seem to be common here:

1. "Workplace expertise" is different than other expertise
2. Question wording isn't important
3. Answers should be moderated more harshly than questions

Workplace Expertise

Having Workplace Expertise isn't really as unrealistic as some seem to think. When I ask a question about hiring process A which recruiters deal with day in day out, recruiters are my experts. They are people actively involved in the problem space of my question. Experts are people with experience in the specific problem domain.

Just because you didn't get a degree in firing employees doesn't mean that you, the HR person who's terminated 50 employees, do not have valuable expertise in that space.

Questions need to be focused to solicit expertise. This means they need to be focused around solving a problem and give some indication (implied or explicit) as to what sort of expertise is required. Generally it's someone who's solved this problem before (How do I bring up this issue to a coworker?) or someone at the "the other side of the table" (what do recruiters look for in an X?).

Opinions as in "What do you think" aren't answers. The problem with opinion isn't that it's subjective, it's that it doesn't solve a problem. If instead of saying "I think doing X would be a good move" you can say "Doing X has worked for me because..." or "I do X because in my experience..." you're moving into solving problems, not sharing opinions.

Question Wording

If the real problem in a question is only implicit, or some poor wording makes a question look bad but you think it really isn't, the question is worded poorly. If the question calls for opinion but you have a really great, constructive answer, the question is worded poorly.

Bad questions beget bad answers, and just because a question can get a good answer in it's current state doesn't mean it's good; a good question renders bad subjective answers as not answers to the actual question. If you see an asker is asking a great question but they've worded it in a non-constructive way, edit the question.

Bonus points; if your question's wording renders bad answers as non answers, they can appropriately be deleted by moderators (and users should flag such answers). But moderators aren't technically supposed to just delete bad, good faith answers to the question at hand.

Questions are people's first impression of the site, so it's very important that they be worded well. This is absolutely not a case where we can accept poor questions and focus on answers, especially given that the Stack Exchange system has great tools for moderation of questions but not answers. We can close, fix and reopen a question, but there's little the community can do about answers beyond editing, downvoting and commenting.

Answer Moderation

This isn't as easy as most people seem to think. Praying that people downvote isn't an effective solution; unless an answer is really terrible, people are reluctant to downvote due to our system. And I'm not very comfortable wholesale deleting good faith answers, even if they're not great or largely repeat other answers; unless there's a firm, community created policy on which answers we should delete, I'm extremely reluctant to delete other people's work. Closing a question is much less significant than shooting down answers.

If you have an idea for a stricter, community enforceable answer moderation policy, bring it up on this meta question.

Answer 3

Constructive: Adjective:
Serving a useful purpose; tending to build up. Derived by inference; implied by operation of law; not obvious or explicit.

Before thinking of Constructive questions, we should think of what constructive answer should be.

1. Constructive answer is something which consist of a definitive (not vague, not hypothetical) and useful (something from which practical benefit can be derived.

2. Constructive answer can have opinion. We all tend to jump and press the buzzer way soon when we see opnion. As long as the opinion is backed by reasoning as to why it the opinion is such, and has meaningful insight is definitely constructive.

3. Constructive answers has finite scope to deal with. When you can write a book (and may be even a white paper) about a subject - it is not answer. This may be useful and insightful in all respect here, but it is impossible that we can be definitive while the scope is arbitrarily large -

One of my own questions - "How do you balance short term vs. long term goals" is a classic example, i can now imagine either only a book can be written here or anyone speaking about it in 100 words will not be definitive about it.

4. Constructive answers are unbiased. Yes, opinions are quite openly divided quite often. However, personal bias (i never like Europeans or white racists) or filled with emotions (not being objective) will tend to get a more misleading and uselss answer.

So what makes a Constructive Questions?

Any question, which is reasonably worded based on a real problem at hand, which allows to write Constructive answer will be constructive.

• Just because too many people jump to write me too answer doesn't really make them bad - but mostly this happens when questions are too trivial.

• You must judge the question by it's intention than words to be focused on being constructive. Yes, may be you should improve upon the question itself, but that doesn't always stop you from writing a constructive answer.

• Finally even if there is so called constructiviness imposed in question by wording (using How and why, using please provide citations), we can never give constructive answers if it is actually filled with emotion outburst or serious biases (aka rants) - e.g. this or this.

See also: Is "not constructive" really applicable at workplace.SE?

Answer 4

Probably you who've closed down question with "Not Constructive" should provide an answer. Surely you should know what is in a constructive question so that you can determine what is NOT constructive, right?

Don't give the responsibility to new user and don't blame them because they are not involved in the Area 51 section designing this beta site. Only you pioneers know what kind of question are welcomed here. Didn't you go through the process of giving example questions?

If this site are not ready to guide the new users, this site should be send back to Area 51 right now.