Were the "Bikeshed Effect" and "Gorilla vs. Shark" Blog Entries Considered When Workplace.SE was formed?

Question

Preface: I submit myself as a super-enthusiastic Stackexchange user.

My Question: Were two key Jeff Atwood blog entries considered when Workplace.SE was formed?

1. Bikeshed Effect

   Although discussion can meander in any topic, the probability of meandering goes up as the technical difficulty of the topic goes down. After all, the greater the technical difficulty, the fewer participants can really follow what's going on. Those who can are likely to be the most experienced developers, who have already taken part in such discussions thousands of times before, and know what sort of behavior is likely to lead to a consensus everyone can live with. Thus, consensus is hardest to achieve in technical questions that are simple to understand and easy to have an opinion about, and in "soft" topics such as organization, publicity, funding, etc. People can participate in those arguments forever, because there are no qualifications necessary for doing so, no clear ways to decide (even afterward) if a decision was right or wrong, and because simply outwaiting other discussants is sometimes a successful tactic. The principle that the amount of discussion is inversely proportional to the complexity of the topic has been around for a long time, and is known informally as the Bikeshed Effect.

2. Gorilla vs. Shark

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If the consensus is something akin to:

No, these blog entries were not considered. In fact Workplace.SE is a different bird. We actually encourage these types of questions.

...Then I don't think that there's really a place for me on this site. I'll just continue to consume the other amazing properties on the Stackexchange network.

But if the consensus is closer to:

Yes, these blog entries were considered, and we're trying our best to uphold the spirit of Jeff Atwood's guidance.

...Then maybe we have something to talk about.

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• @Anna Lear explained why my one and only question was closed as 'Not Constructive', and I appreciate that.
• Now I'm trying to understand why other questions on this site are "considered" more constructive, and if in fact, Jeff Atwood's blog entries were considered.
• I think we all need to be mindful of the Programmers.SE reboot.

Answer 1

My response is to your comment:

When I look at the Workplace.SE front page, I feel that most questions violate the 'Gorilla vs. Shark' test.

My question to you is, how do you interpret Gorilla vs. Shark?

Because I just don't see what you are seeing.

Let's review Jeff's list of problems with Gorilla vs. Shark:

• Nobody needs to know the answer to this question.

  Of course questions on the Workplace don't fail this test, because all the questions I see were asked because someone had a specific problem, upvoted because others had that problem, and answered because others had experienced that problem and knew how to address it.

• It’s not nearly specific enough.

  We deal with this all the time, but generally questions that remain open (or are reopened) have been made specific enough to actually answer. If you browse comments from the other moderators and I, you'll see this as a pattern.

• It is difficult to learn from these questions. — "But even under ideal circumstances there really can be no absolute answer to this question other than 'it depends; both animals are adapted to their particular environment and have certain strengths and weaknesses.'"

  Are "it depends" answers a sign of a bad question? - We've addressed this specifically. Yes, it can be a problem, and some questions will be closed because of it. Others could use edits to make them better.

• It drives away experts.

  This is the only indictment that I think rings true in too many cases at the Workplace. It's just too easy for people to say "Me too" and add their two cents. However, we're constantly trying to improve:

  (Warning, many of the links are the same as Rarity's but I've added a few new ones)

  • Should we add a "Back It Up" rule to the FAQ now?
  • What can we do about one line answers?

  • Do we need expertise other than opinion?

  • How can we enforce quality standards without adding to the FAQ?

  • What can we do about me-too answers?
  • Do we have a Quality control issue?
  • The Workplace self-evaluation: let's get critical!
  • Does this site need a "back it up" rule?

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I think if you'll take a look at Gorilla vs. Shark again, Jeff posts an example of how a non-constructive:

• "Google+ vs. Facebook"

could become the non-quite-there-but-salvageable:

• "Are Google+ Circles better UX for sharing among friends than Facebook Groups?"

You'll notice that a few of our questions are like the last one, and a lot started out that way. And you should also notice efforts by the moderators to post notices on those questions that they need to be improved.

But I see very few on the page asking "what's better" abstractly, even in this case. I see many asking how to accomplish something, or how to understand and deal with a certain situation.

Jeff concludes:

Perhaps this is a red herring. I honestly feel a lot of the “this v. that” questions would be better expressed as examinations of the underlying concepts without all the mock conflict.

I 100% agree with this. And I feel we've actually done a fairly good job of transforming versus questions into "examinations of the underlying concepts". I would welcome any discussion regarding examples to the contrary.

Answer 2

We have had a great deal of discussion on this topic, and I'm almost insulted to find you both failed to look for previous meta discussions on the topic and assumed this site was somehow designed outside the Stack Exchange ecosystem or without Stack Exchange policies.

I in particular offered to be a pro temp moderator because I was afraid this site would devolve into what Programmers.SE started out as; low standards, a dumping ground for questions other sites wouldn't take for quality reasons rather than topic reasons. Many other members of this site, such as Yannis Rizos, came from Programmers.SE hoping to make this site work where Programmers had initially failed.

As such we have had the following meta discussions on this and related topics:

• Is Workplace going to follow the same life cycle as other SE sites for subjective questions?
• Do we need expertise other than opinion?
• How do we define Constructive on this site?
• Is "not constructive" really applicable at workplace.SE?
• How specific does a "tools" recommendation question have to be to become constructive?
• What can we do about one line answers?
• How can we enforce quality standards without adding to the FAQ?
• How can we encourage people to find the middle ground?
• Should we add a "Back It Up" rule to the FAQ now?
• Common-Sense questions
• Are "it depends" answers a sign of a bad question?
• Judge a question by what is being asked, not how its being asked
• FAQ Proposal: Off topic areas

There are also 35 results for searching "Not Constructive" on Meta (that's one in three questions).

Note I didn't have to look far to find these because they're all in my profile, as I've either answered or asked all of these questions personally. There are surely more I haven't taken a part in. We have also substantially added to the FAQ to carve out some areas that are consistently Not Constructive to clarify this policy to new users and make their closure simpler and by the books.

All of these questions debate Good Subjective, Bad Subjective or "Bikeshed" issues and how that applies to this site. It is blatantly false to say we "haven't considered" SE policy or the SE blog posts on what makes constructive questions/answers.