Post History

That's a lot of questions all lumped together in one, and as I don't have an hour or two to write up good answers for each of them, short ones will have to do for now.

> 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?

If a tag doesn't apply to a question, for whatever reason, just propose an edit to remove that tag from that question. If, based on the questions that have a particular tag, you can write up something about the scope of that tag, go ahead and propose a tag wiki edit.


> 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?")

Yes, we got much of the current tag set with the questions imported from Worldbuilding SE. There have been some efforts to cull inappropriate tags, close questions that don't fit within SciSpec's scope, and so on, but since it's a manual task and there aren't a whole lot of active users here, progress has been slow. "science-based" is one we've basically been editing out wholesale; Worldbuilding SE's "hard-science" tag maps pretty much directly to the Rigorous Science category and otherwise serves no purpose here past the initial import; "magic" was used more or less as a catch-all, so such questions might either be off topic, or be on topic and the tag should just be removed; and so on. It might even be possible to come up with questions *about* magic that fit within the site's scope, but my experience is that that's not how the "magic" tag has been used on Worldbuilding SE.

> 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.)

If you come across questions that are blatantly off topic, then yes, flagging is appropriate. Please note that on Codidact, not all flag types are directed at the moderators, and flag queues for the community aren't implemented (yet), so take a moment to consider the *type* of flag you are raising so that it reaches someone who can actually do something about it.

Note that the Tour doesn't necessarily capture the full nuance of the scope; in general, how the scope is presented is something that probably needs work. In the meantime, be sure to check out at least [the "FAQ"](https://scientific-speculation.codidact.com/help/faq), [Where does this differ from a regular Science Q&A?](https://scientific-speculation.codidact.com/posts/283016) and [Which sciences are welcome?](https://scientific-speculation.codidact.com/posts/281854) In general, this is what the [scope](https://scientific-speculation.codidact.com/categories/16/tags/2788) meta tag is about.

As for imported content, there has been some clean-up made; see for example [Do we want to consider removing (most) mass-imported questions](https://scientific-speculation.codidact.com/posts/280633). If there is a case to be made for further cleanup, feel free to propose it (separately, please).


> 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."

Actually, if you specify something about your particular centaurs' digestive system, there's a good chance such a question would be on topic. Again, [Where does this differ from a regular Science Q&A?](https://scientific-speculation.codidact.com/posts/283016) applies. There has been some discussion about having a less-scientific worldbuilding community on Codidact, but reception has been mixed; see [How's the interest for a Worldbuilding site?](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/75053)

> 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).

That sounds like a good idea that should probably be discussed separately, ideally on [Codidact Meta](https://meta.codidact.com/) since it would likely affect all communities.

> 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.

I do agree that calling it "FAQ" is unfortunate given its content. There's probably historical context for that, and it's one of the things that we just haven't got around to changing, perhaps in part because no one has actually brought it up. The titles and order of the articles within each help category is adjustable, so that's something we could fix pretty easily; I'm not sure about the titles and ordering of the help categories (the "boxes") themselves, but if those aren't adjustable now, new features have been implemented pretty quickly so if that's made as a feature request there's good chance we could get that functionality.

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

The usual term for what is hosted on codidact.com is *communities*, but *sites* is also seen (largely interchangably) from time to time.