Fwd: Ask Fedora

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

Forwarding with permission for discussions

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From: Stefano Palazzo 
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:21:39 +0100
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Subject: Ask Fedora
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Dear Rahul,

I'm a community moderator at Ask Ubuntu. And I was talking to some people
about what mistakes we think Ask Fedora and Ask Debian have made, so I
thought I'd give you some feedback.

You should take it for what it's worth. It's just my opinion, but it's
worked for us. I will also be blunt, excuse me if it sounds a bit preachy.

- First things first: elect moderators. This is essential if you're going
to have any rules at all. The vast majority of closed questions on Ask
Ubuntu required moderator intervention at some point.

We are quite busy, mostly doing things the community can't do.

- Set up a meta site. You're going to need it eventually, and it will
encourage a discussion among the community about how this site ought to be
run. Without that discussion, you have no idea whether people are happy or
not, and you'll miss a great deal of good ideas.

- Get rid of the country's flag next to the username. It's a distraction,
and there's no reason to have it. Some users *will* have prejudice, the
rest won't care.

- Be *very* strict about enforcing these rules:

- Close questions that are duplicates
   - " off topic
   - " not a good fit for the Q&A format (discussions)
   - " overly broad (including anything starting with "Why..")
   - " too localised (most of these will be bug reports)

And prominently include them in your FAQ.

- Encourage (even enforce) titles that are indeed questions, not 'forum
topics':

"ATI/INTEL Switchable Graphics issue" → "How can I
enable switchable graphics?"

- Be very strict about tags. Delete as many tags as you can. In particular:

- Delete tags that don't make sense if used alone
   - Delete tags that are superfluous (such as "fedora", "error")
   - Discourage tags that can be described in terms of other tags (grub2 →
grub → boot)

You have far too many different tags for the number of questions and
users.

- Get the full fedora branding. It helps getting new users to stay on the
site.

- Encourage users to vote (up *and* down). The Q&A format fails without
proper peer-review.

- Discourage use of signatures and taglines. It's needless clutter,
obfuscating the content. Posts are already signed with "user cards".

- Discourage (i.e. close) questions about the next, unreleased version of
Fedora. They are typically about issues that will be fixed within a week,
and they don't help to *build a resource on the internet*, even if they
help someone short term.

- Who is this site for?

Ideally, your site should be for people searching on Google. 95% of
readers will never create an account, and every decision should be made
with them in mind.

If you think I can help you in any way, just send an email. If you think
I'm just talking nonsense, send an email anyway. ;-) By the way: It's
fantastic to see a Q&A site for Fedora users. And long overdue.

Thanks,
Stefano.

PS: I understand you run Ask Fedora. I'm sending this email directly to you
because the feedback form seems to be broken. My apologies if you got three
of them. If somehow I've reached the wrong person altogether, please let me
know whom I should contact, or simply forward this email to them. Thank you.

PPS: I neither represent Canonical nor Stack Exchange.