@bjb568 I think the gist of that blog post was 'Sure, the stats show it worked well but the stats also show the new question thing works even better'? I did not read very critically though.
@Tinkeringbell don't remember for sure, it worked well "live", with few dozens of questions asked after being "mentored". I do believe they could find enough users, and tweak the system so that if there aren't enough available, the ordinary Ask Question procedure will take place.
Moving the step forward might still save someone that's thinking of posting some frustration though. It takes away the argument of 'I spent time on this, so you should too'.
the bigger benefit of the mentoring bit was that these questions were put in front of people willing to help, which is certainly a useful feature that we (SE staff, not us regular users) may be able to create without the bits that don't scale
In July 2014 Shog9 proposed Stack Overflow Academy on Area 51. I was skeptical and thought it was sort of a joke. The idea that anyone would go to yet another Q&A site in order to ask a question on Stack Overflow seemed crazy. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the proposal. Over t...
Check out SO Podcast 117 to hear Kristina talk about the mentorship experiment.
First, if you havenβt read the original announcement post about the Stack Overflow Mentorship Research Project, you should go and do that now. If you donβt, the rest of this probably wonβt make a ton of sense.
From ...
@user400654 the satisfaction of seeing a question you mentored posted and getting upvotes, or at least not closed on spot, where you know for sure that would have been its fate is great. Many will surely be happy to do it.
@ShadowWizardisVaccinating "... seeing a question you mentored posted and getting upvotes ..." - much like the joy of seeing a well researched and written question, where you and others have contributed a helpful comment or edit, receiving upvotes; and eventually becoming a canonical (where you are also neither credited, nor made to be a polisher).
And even so, very different. When someone see their question nuked out of orbit, even having helpful edits and super friendly comments will never bring them back.
Not everyone is a negative receiver of helpful and polite comments or quality edits by an expert in the field; while others make their post to prove that you agree with it, and if you don't they are never coming back - except to remind you that they are leaving.
> "Non-mainstream physics, including pitches for personal theories We deal with mainstream physics here. Anything that couldn't be published in a reputable journal is not appropriate on this site.".
Too many first timers rewriting the way it works, to support their questions or answers.
No, the old question flow was just writing a thing and posting it, then came the wizard... now it's write something, press 'review your question', then post it, IIRC?
Actually, there seems to be a bit more to the new question asking than just the review step ;) I just opened up a question asking window on SO, and this is what I see:
(Ignore the stuff that asks me to confirm that I want to post a public Q/A, that's because I'm also on a Team ;) )
But it has steps on the side!
On IPS, where I have more rep, I only see:
I think the most important thing though:
> As of today, the new question workflow performs better in terms of task success (people who intend to ask a question successfully posting their question) and the same in terms of question quality. From a technical perspective, the new workflow is easier to maintain and build on moving forward.
If it does basically the same as the wizard but is way easier to iterate on and maintain, that's a fair decision. I do think this data comparison was between the old flow and the new flow, and not the wizard and the new flow.... but I'm not sure.
I said it before and I'll say it one more time (for now): Trump is the biggest mistake USA has ever made in its entire history. He says the right things sometimes and most of the times has the right goals in mind (he's not evil), but the way he's doing it, the way he doesn't listen to anyone, leads to very dark future. That financial crisis is only the beginning. </rant>
@user400654 True. The local news site had a good comment on that though: These people are kinda busy and prolly not looking at their Twitter anyways XD
That's also true. Still, getting people out without getting shot and dismantling all the other messes seems to me to be a bit more important than the art at this time.