I took the tour and was told that questions about magic wouldn't find a place here. That's when I started looking around.

1. There are 500+ tags, apparently not a single one of them has a summary or a wiki. They're obviously copied from worldbuilding.se. What is the process for defining those tags? Do we need a meta discussion for all 500+ of them? Do I just begin editing away and hope everybody agrees? What happens if a wiki is created and questions linked to the tag are then off-topic for the tag?

2. Since the tags appear to have been imported with a bunch of questions to prime the proverbial pump, tags came across that make little sense. What's the purpose of a "science-based" tag on a site that only allows science-based questions? Of course the "magic" tag is there, as is "fantasy creatures," etc. There are a lot of tags that are apparently outside of the scope of this site. BTW, since the site has a dedicated landing page for rigorous science questions, I'm also suggesting the "hard-science" tag is useless. (To be fair, I can imagine a difference between a "hard-science" answer to a fictional worldbuilding question and an actual science question as would be found on physics.SE, but wouldn't it make more sense to have a physics.codidact than to compound the issue on a site that has as its lead title, "Scientific Speculation?")

3. There are a couple of meta questions discussing the import of questions from Stack Exchange back in the beginning and what to do about them. Obviously, a chunk of them are entirely outside the scope defined by the Tour. Do I simply flag those for moderator attention? (An argument could be made that they, and all the tags not used by organic questions, be deleted, allowing the site to grow organically to meet the community's needs rather than starting out with what worldbuilding.se is.)

4. What's the proposed future for worldbuilding on codidact? The current focus is too strict for a question asking what would happen to a centaur if it ate food poisonous to humans but not to horses (actual question on this site...)? I assume that question should have been closed because centaurs are scientifically impossible, or because their magical, or something, or what? As defined, the site embraces about 50% of what worldbuilding.SE (or any other worldbuilding effort) embraces. Are we planning a codidact site for the fantasy/magical side of worldbuilding? I ask because one of my motivations for leaping from worldbuilding.se is that the Stack is trending more and more to ultrarealistic "science-only-answer" behavior — and the tour sounds like this site is 75% there already. "Creative, so long as you don't vary from some aspect of real science."

5. BTW, when I took the tour, it referred to the FAQ. That should be amended to something like the "FAQ in the Help Center" because I took a while searching the landing page looking for a link called FAQ and finally found it after clicking "Help." I'd like to think it was just my cold getting in the way, but I don't believe it was obvious. I'd suggest that all references to the FAQ be changed to "Help" or "Help Center." Indeed, it would be nice if the tour actually pointed out the value of the "Help" button at the top of the page (since all us ex-StackExchangers will be looking to the bottom of the page).

6. Also, I'd recommend shifting the "Guidance" section of the Help Center to the top of the column and move the "Site Information" chunk below it. Then I'd shift the "How to write a great question" link to the top of the "Guidance" section. Yes, the FAQ contains the basic scope of the site, and maybe that's more important, but how to ask a great question is enormously important. Finally, "FAQ" should be changed to something more meaningful like, "Site rules." In the long run, the Help Center should be reorganized to better help new users gather the important rules and behaviors to start using the site quickly, and then allow them to find the more advanced stuff later.

7. What is a fundamental component of Codidact, anyway? "Site" is too generic, but that's just my opinion.

posted over 3 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

JBH‭

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