What are your "wishes" for the site?

I'd like to take a moment and reach out to our userbase and find out if there is anything that you think is missing from the site.

As to not bias any responses, I want to leave this open-ended, and encourage you to answer this question with any constructive (please) and preferably concrete wishes or suggestions as to how we can spur activity on the site.

One suggestion/wish per answer, please.

jonsca

• discussion

Comments

• 1. Alan Thomas II: My bias towards allowing a wider variety of question because we're in a discipline that depends more on case studies and subjectivity than authority and demonstrable fact is no secret. Virtually no questions that I actually have can be asked here and no questions that are asked here are useful or interesting to me; that's why I stopped contributing to our 0.8 questions per day &c. Thus, my wish is that we find some categories or styles of question that people actually want to ask and let them ask them. (Not a concrete suggestion; that's why it's a comment.)
• jonsca: @M.AlanThomasII I appreciate your opinion, and I *would* like to see you active on the site again. It's tricky to write questions that fit the framework, but once you do, the answers are more useful to both you and future users. I will bear your observations in mind for the future of the site and see if we can work with them, but in the meantime, if you have questions, ask them!
• 1. Alan Thomas II: I'm sorry, but your second sentence seems to imply that I just need to practice more or work harder or something and then I'll get the hang of it. I have to say, that feels just a little insulting and possibly condescending ("There there, I know it's tricky, but you have to try.") You also state that it's for my own good, which feels paternalistic. I have to disagree that re-writing my questions in terms that don't reflect my needs will always help me. Indeed, many questions cannot possibly be re-worded to meet the standards, but I am not better off for not knowing the answers.
• 1. Alan Thomas II: I asked my question. It got immediately closed. Not revised, closed. This is not a matter of effort, and it does not help me or anyone else. Indeed, it was closed under a standard by which I'm fairly sure the most popular question I've written here, which is in the site's top 10 questions, should also be closed. That will make 20% of our top-10 list closed, which strikes me as possibly being indicative of a problem.
• jonsca: @M.AlanThomasII Actually, I had written the comment *before* I had seen your question closed on the main site, so I do apologize for speaking in the abstract when there was a situation going on. I certainly didn't mean for anything to be condescending. My purpose for initiating this discussion on Meta was to see if there was a way for all of us to meet in the middle somewhere.
• jonsca: The thing about closed questions is, they can and should be revised. Closing is not the end of the line for a question. I would encourage you to rework it a bit into more general characteristics for selecting a piece of software instead of asking for a recommendation. In light of this and other similar situations, Ashley is going to write a Meta post about these recommendation questions and how they can be rewritten. We're not setting out to trash your ideas or your question, and I think we want to try to find ways to make the ideas and the questions blend together smoothly.
• jonsca: It's for that reason that I started this question, not to pick a fight or to call anyone out on anything. Again, if you felt that way, I apologize.
• 1. Alan Thomas II: No, no, you started the question before I asked mine in Main, and the fact that the issue I then brought up here was later reinforced by an example on Main is an (un)happy coincidence. That's all it is; an example. This isn't supposed to be a back-channel attack on a decision by a moderator I greatly respect, and I didn't think that you were trying to do anything of the sort in the opposite direction.
• Jeni: Has Ashley written that Meta post yet about how to revise and get reopened a closed question?
• jonsca: @Jeni This is the one to which I was referring. It's more directed at questions that have been closed as "shopping recommendations", though. To nominate a question to be reopened, simply flag it after it has been edited and one of us can take a look at it. Was there a specific post you were looking at?

Answer by Mary Jo Finch

The question asks for input in spurring activity here. I am beginning to agree with @M. Alan Thomas II that this site is just not a good fit for librarians.

Librarians are unlike any other group on StackExchange. First, we don't need canonical answers because we can find those on our own. Second, we appreciate that a good library is full of information, sometimes contradictory, and as librarians we would rather see an assortment of answers and choose the best for ourselves than see a bunch of questions for which some other person identified what is the true and accepted answer.

Third, and perhaps most significant, we have all been educated at the feet of Ranganathan - every book its user, every user his book. Librarians don't care that the answer to a question is only useful to a few people, or even one person. That person has an information need; we try to meet it. If we have room for it in our collection (and web-space is pretty limitless), we should make it available. As it stands, we have a paltry 276 questions here - room is clearly not an issue. If we open up the site to a wider variety of question types, we might have a site that is useful to librarians. What if it blossomed and we had thousands of questions to sort through - how would people find the information that is helpful? We are librarians - we might have to develop a better system of tags.

And fourth, a related point, the process of closing questions and asking people to make the questions better before they are worthy of answering is insulting, and it drives people away. As librarians, we should instead be asking the questioner clarifying questions to improve the question if the question is not clear. If it is clear but perhaps not within preset guidelines, consider just letting it stand to see whether it gets answers that might be helpful to someone. Over time, the "library" can be weeded of questions that never got upticked answers.

So those are my suggestions.

Comments

• Jeni: I agree with your first three paragraphs. However as someone who has had questions closed I just think the information about how to edit and then flag it needs to be better understood.
• Mary Jo Finch: Couldn't we help people edit without closing their questions first? When a question is closed, no one can answer it until the user asks it better. It feels punitive. I understand the desire to have "smart" questions in a Q&A database, but when you have to train people before they can use your site, that user experience will not engender as many return visits as a more open policy. We are creating a library here that is very small and getting very little use. Current library management literature would suggest our policies need revision.
• jonsca: @MaryJoFinch I'm not ignoring your comments. I have been busy this week. I am glad you are expressing what you think needs to be changed. We will try to process everything so we can discuss it at a later date.
• Melissa: I agree that the majority of our questions are not the one-answer kind. The questions on the board are for the most part extremely technical and not applicable in the least to my job as Public Services Librarian. Honest? I find them boring and have basically stopped visiting the site regularly.
• jonsca: @Melissa Well, not everyone will find every question to be useful or interesting, but that's part of the reason why there are previews of the title and beginning of every question. You can also add any tags to the favorite and ignore boxes on the front page. Also, if the questions aren't applicable to you, ask some that are! :)
• jonsca: @MaryJoFinch In response to your fourth point, I'm not sure why this is insulting. It may be startling at first, but is definitely covered in the FAQ, which everyone should read before using the site anyway, honestly. I grant you, as a practice it takes some getting used to, but having an optimal, specific, well-structured question benefits everyone. The asker, those who are answering, and those who will appreciate the completeness of the answer in the future. You're right, we should be asking the questioner to clairfy, and we do. And we can after the question is closed.
• jonsca: I think people misunderstand the reason for closing a question. It's not punishment (unless the question is in flagrant violation of tact or spam), it's meant to stave off people answering a bad question before it can be improved. Closing is not the end of the line for a question at all.
• jonsca: Yes, it is technically a step towards deletion, but a highly reversible one. `consider just letting it stand to see whether it gets answers that might be helpful to someone` - well, I understand where you are coming from, but why not let it be gently corrected and get answers that might be helpful to a lot of someones? That being said, is there a middle ground here somewhere? I think so, but I'm not sure exactly where it is.
• jonsca: I don't think that any viable question has been deleted thusfar, so if you see a closed question that needs improvement, give it an edit and flag it to be reopened, or I would even invite you to flag it with a custom reason and tell us why it should be reopened as is. Even better would be to start a Meta post on that particular question and outline your reasons there. We will certainly take anyone's input into consideration.