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Two ideas, prompted by a question I submitted recently. (About the chemistry of PVA glue.) Firstly, the topics are too narrow and exclude many, quite possibility the majority, of likely questions....
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#2: Post edited
by
chris-barry
·
2022-10-05T16:09:59Z (about 2 years ago)
- Two ideas, prompted by a question I submitted recently. (About the chemistry of PVA glue.)
- Firstly, the topics are too narrow and exclude many, quite possibility the majority, of likely questions. In the case of my glue question there was no topic that seemed even remotely appropriate and I came very close to not asking rather than risk misapprobation for being off topic.
- Secondly, a week has passed without my question getting any response.
- To improve the situation I think that every possible question should be acceptable somewhere. At first I thought that a catch-all topic should be created, but on consideration I wondered whether it might not make sense to abandon the concept of topics entirely and instead to rely on tags or text filters so that classification becomes the responsibility of the person searching, either for answers to questions or questions to answer.
- I don't know what the relationship between Top Answers and CoDidact is, but it seems to me that they should be combined, on the premise that a single, maximally inclusive, knowledge base will be more useful than one made of several isolated categories. It would also look less like a pale imitation of Stack Overflow.
- With regard to getting answers, I would be a bit surprised if there is no one in the community who could answer my glue question, but somewhat less surprised that such a person would not be watching a topic which exists mainly for authors of speculative fiction to explore plausible scenarios.
- Again, I think that dividing questions into topics works against you. The multidimensional nature of tags should make it easier for experts to extract the questions that they are able to answer. If you have the resources you might even look at the possibility of automatically identifying people who might be able to answer a new question based on their passed answers.
- Two ideas, prompted by a question I submitted recently. (About the chemistry of PVA glue.)
- Firstly, the topics are too narrow and exclude many, quite possibility the majority, of likely questions. In the case of my glue question there was no topic that seemed even remotely appropriate and I came very close to not asking rather than risk misapprobation for being off topic.
- Secondly, a week has passed without my question getting any response.
- To improve the situation I think that every possible question should be acceptable somewhere. At first I thought that a catch-all topic should be created, but on consideration I wondered whether it might not make sense to abandon the concept of topics entirely and instead to rely on tags or text filters so that classification becomes the responsibility of the person searching, either for answers to questions or questions to answer.
- I don't know what the relationship between Top Answers and CoDidact is, but it seems to me that they should be combined, on the premise that a single, maximally inclusive, knowledge base will be more useful than one made of several isolated categories. It would also look less like a pale imitation of Stack Overflow.
- With regard to getting answers, I would be a bit surprised if there is no one in the community who could answer my glue question, but somewhat less surprised that such a person would not be watching a topic which exists mainly for authors of speculative fiction to explore plausible scenarios.
- Again, I think that dividing questions into topics works against you. The multidimensional nature of tags should make it easier for experts to extract the questions that they are able to answer. If you have the resources you might even look at the possibility of automatically identifying people who might be able to answer a new question based on their passed answers.
- **Later addition**
- Because the "How can we grow this community?" link was in a separate panel and I had seen (apparently) the same link in another community, I assumed that I was commenting on Codidact as a whole, not just a single community. Where I have used the word "topic" above I have been referring to a "community".
- To give my opinion clearly, I think that Codidact as a whole would be better if the communities (and I think the term itself is inappropriate, the purpose of Codidact is to collect knowledge, not foster interpersonal relationships) were replaced by a single "Life, the universe and everything" community with tags (have you considered allowing tags to be given a weight?) to indicate the nature of each question.
- As an example, it is quite easy to imagine a question that involves aspects of mathematics, music and physics. Forcing such a question into a single category increses the probability of it not being seen by a person who could have answered it.
#1: Initial revision
by
chris-barry
·
2022-10-05T13:23:42Z (about 2 years ago)
Two ideas, prompted by a question I submitted recently. (About the chemistry of PVA glue.) Firstly, the topics are too narrow and exclude many, quite possibility the majority, of likely questions. In the case of my glue question there was no topic that seemed even remotely appropriate and I came very close to not asking rather than risk misapprobation for being off topic. Secondly, a week has passed without my question getting any response. To improve the situation I think that every possible question should be acceptable somewhere. At first I thought that a catch-all topic should be created, but on consideration I wondered whether it might not make sense to abandon the concept of topics entirely and instead to rely on tags or text filters so that classification becomes the responsibility of the person searching, either for answers to questions or questions to answer. I don't know what the relationship between Top Answers and CoDidact is, but it seems to me that they should be combined, on the premise that a single, maximally inclusive, knowledge base will be more useful than one made of several isolated categories. It would also look less like a pale imitation of Stack Overflow. With regard to getting answers, I would be a bit surprised if there is no one in the community who could answer my glue question, but somewhat less surprised that such a person would not be watching a topic which exists mainly for authors of speculative fiction to explore plausible scenarios. Again, I think that dividing questions into topics works against you. The multidimensional nature of tags should make it easier for experts to extract the questions that they are able to answer. If you have the resources you might even look at the possibility of automatically identifying people who might be able to answer a new question based on their passed answers.