How can Meta be made more conducive to discussions?

Question

_{Disclaimer: This post is quite lenghty. To prevent out of context interpretations I kindly request either reading it in its entirety or not reading it at all. Thank you.}

Why am I writing this?

I've been active on the Stack Exchange (SE) network for over a year on a wide variety of different sites. The best way to sum up my experience of SE is: "I love it! It's the best there is." I believe strongly in the network and it's goal of "making the internet a better place", borrowing a catchphrase of Jeff Atwood. Judging from my first SE account I have visited the network 340 days at this time, making me believe I sufficiently grasp what it is about, and know about its weaknesses and strengths. Apparently others seem to agree as I've recently been appointed Pro-Tem moderator. Surely I've still got much to learn, especially with those newly added responsibilities.

I am giving you this background since I find when similar discussions arise all too often people reach to the easy conclusion that a user must not grasp what a site (or meta) is about. I implore you not to place me in that category. If a user befitting my profile isn't able to understand and participate in meta, we have worse problems than the points I'll be making in this post.

This post is intended to point out what I find to be a big problem of the network, which is actively hurting the site. I want to address this problem not because I am being anarchistic, but because I strongly value the network as mentioned earlier.

What is a discussion?

Prior to explaining why I feel meta is extremely ill-fit to host discussions, let me first define what a discussion is. Taken from dictionary.com.

an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., especially to explore solutions; informal debate.

The meta tag labels it as:

A tag for questions that may not necessarily have a clear-cut right or wrong answer and are often subjective. If it's not a bug or feature-request, it is probably a discussion.

In order to have a rational discussion, I find the following seemingly popular infographic particularly informing.

What's wrong with discussion on meta?

The discussion tag is one of the tags between which you have to choose. The other three possible tags all suit the Q&A format very nicely, with the possible exception of feature-request which can often also lead to extensive discussions.

discussion is a bit of an oddball, and the SE network was never designed with discussion in mind, as Shog9 kindly summarized.

...

But there are two aspects that are... Just plain hard to understand for those unfamiliar with the site because of how it was shoehorned into the SE format: discussion and voting.

Discussion, with two-level threading, is handled by answers and comments. It's not perfect - if you end up going back and forth with someone for more than a few rounds, it falls apart badly. Fortunately, we have chat to serve the need for lengthy conversations.

The problem with voting is more subtle though. See, the engine already supported voting. It just didn't mean quite the same thing:

...

• Discussion is anarchy. Maybe it's a feature-request where the details haven't quite been hashed out yet. Maybe it's a rant, or a straw-poll, or a short article or announcement. Voting is done according to whatever arbitrary criteria the voter feels appropriate.

...

There is no denying discussion on meta is somewhat broken. If you acknowledge the intentions behind the "don't ask" faq on main sites, it's easy to see how the same problems apply to discussions on meta.

Why isn't chat an alternative?

Often it is mentioned chat is an alternative to construct discussions, as in Shog9's summary above. While it's perfectly possible to have detailed discussions in chat between open-minded people, it entails all the problems which the Q&A format of SE is actually trying to solve. It doesn't leave behind a valuable (easily accessible) resource. Starring highlights of a discussion and providing a log of them somewhat attempts to alleviate this problem, but contrasted to the artifacts the Q&A format produces this is a rather weak solution. Neither can you easily pick up on an old discussion, have an overview of what has been discussed, and what some of the conclusions were.

What do we have now?

Right now we have a complex/unclear system which everybody tries to use to their best knowledge. It's an environment which many interpret as hostile, where many actions are interpreted ambiguously. These actions however have actual consequences, regardless of how you interpret them. Discussions with the best of intentions get down voted, sometimes burying them never to be seen again.

As far as I'm concerned we don't have discussions by the definition I gave. The voting system linked to discussions encourages many people to already opt-out at the first step of the diagram: "Can you envision anything that will change your mind?" To demonstrate this attitude it suffices to link to a comment by Tim Post on the latest meta discussion I started.

Voting on Meta has worked quite well, I don't see how this could improve it. I see what you're getting at, and the hour+ it would take me to go through an entire list without simply saying 'No, oh no, please no!" would basically prevent me from participating at all.

Why isn't the possibility of influencing moderators and staff enough?

Robert Harvey's answer gave very valuable feedback on this post, which I find important to incorporate at this point:

Regardless of the polarization you sometimes see here on Meta, the discussion that takes place here does have an influence over the moderators and staff. We do listen. Meta is the primary vehicle by which the mods assess the temperature of the community, and it is the primary mechanism by which they get detailed feedback about their decisions.

Or by example as per Conrad Frix's comment, sometimes controversial ideas do get implemented.

Unfortunately, that is not enough, of which his next paragraph is a nice example:

The real tragedy are those people who stop participating in the discussion process because they feel that SE is ruled by elitists, and then raise a stink here a year later when things change in a way that they don't like.

I don't know whether it was intended as such, but I interpret that as an argument for my cause. The entire premise is we should allow discussions to take place in a more constructive format, making Meta a more hospitable environment, preventing the discourse from becoming inflammatory and uncivil. An attitude as "That's an inherent problem with any type of discussion or meeting, though, probably not something that we can solve over at SE." doesn't get us anywhere towards this goal. Give SE some credit, take a look back and see what you've been able to establish!

Whether or not influence is possible is besides the point. (although highly appreciated, thank you!) Wouldn't it be nice to have a bigger community which feels they can contribute, so that more good (constructive) stuff can reach the moderators and staff?

What should we do?

The discussion tag has been used 12,143 times at the time of writing. It's an important part of the ecosystem of meta.

1. First of all I want to raise awareness (as by this post), that there is a problem. We are driving people away who only have the best intentions for the network.
2. A discussion isn't a feature-request, and there should be a clear difference. All too often a discussion is down voted as if it were a feature request.
3. Ideally you can't vote on discussions. You can't agree or disagree on a discussion in any way, you agree or disagree with a certain part of a discussion, preferably motivating why.
4. Stay open minded. A discussion is meant to raise questions. Don't let the first question you raise shade your judgement in the rest of the discussion.

Answer 1

How can Meta be made more conducive to discussions?

This is simple: stop pretending Stack Exchange's Q&A system is a good format for discussion.

The founding idea behind SE was something really quite simple: recognition that web forums are not a good medium for Q&A. They don't solve the problems Q&A needs, and they interfere a great deal in the Q&A process. By understand the problem they wanted to solve (Q&A), they could create a system that solved exactly that specific problem.

And they were obviously very successful at this.

The problem is that with success comes idolatry and zealotry. The belief that SE's methodology is the best way for people to interact outside of e-mail. Many people look at SE as the pinnacle of human communication in some way, that this is the perfect system to interact with people online.

Discussion is a fundamentally different problem than Q&A. The needs of Q&A define how SE works. It's designed to make real, actual discussion as difficult as humanly possible, because discussion usually serves as a distraction from Q&A. But if the purpose actually is discussion... well, there's not much that can be done.

In order to solve this problem, we have to agree to design a system completely outside the boundaries of the SE model. Such a system would be designed to have intelligent discussions, where people can put forth their ideas and defenses/attacks of those idea.

To do that, we have to stop using the SE model.

Answer 2

Regardless of the polarization you sometimes see here on Meta, the discussion that takes place here does have an influence over the moderators and staff. We do listen. Meta is the primary vehicle by which the mods assess the temperature of the community, and it is the primary mechanism by which they get detailed feedback about their decisions.

The real tragedy are those people who stop participating in the discussion process because they feel that SE is ruled by elitists, and then raise a stink here a year later when things change in a way that they don't like.

Meta is a gauntlet, a crucible for ideas. If your idea can withstand the pounding, it might be a good one. Like many other sites on the network, Meta attracts a few really good ideas, and many bad ones. That's why there are more questions tagged [status-declined] than [status-completed]. But the [status-completed] decisions are well worth the effort of getting through all the [status-declined].

See Also
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/listen-to-your-community-but-dont-let-them-tell-you-what-to-do.html

Answer 3

It's not at all clear what the problem is you are trying to "fix" here.

Can you explain what the problem is in a few sentences?

As the system (community) works now, I am no longer inclined to participate in any "discussions". I'll stick to the part of SE that does work, Q&A, and will sheepishly uphold the established values. Not because I'm hurt, but because I feel it's futile and a waste of time for me and you to continue discussing controversial ideas in its current form.

Best I can tell, this is the underlying request, which boils down to "some of my 'controversial' suggestions have not been well received, therefore I don't want to make any more suggestions."

If you are being turned away by rudeness or incivility that is a serious problem and that is what you should have said. It is specifically disallowed by the FAQ and if there are identifiable patterns of rudeness or incivility we will ban users for it without the slightest hesitation. Please, flag rudeness or incivility anywhere you see it so that we can take action.

But if you are being turned away by the community collectively not supporting your suggestions... I'm sorry, how is this a problem? Either make different suggestions, improve the ones you already made, or decide that conceptually we've created a "car" and you've made too many "hey, this car should be more like a truck!" suggestions. If you want to drive a truck, that's not what we do here.

Answer 4

I disagree with you that Meta is a platform ill used for discussion.

Comments are a great mechanism for this, as evidenced by the "please move to chat" messages. If people wouldn't find comments useful for cluttering StackExchange sites with conversation exchanges, which you might call "discussions", then there would be no need to encourage people to the chat rooms.

As far as votes go, they are simply a generic sign of general agreement or disagreement. In the context of questions on StackOverflow, votes show appreciation for technical expertise, or disagreement with poor grammar or formulation. (You seem to recognize this here and here.) A downvote can mean a million things. Ever seen the comment "Why the downvote?" Those guys are a result of ambiguity of votes. "Gee, someone downvoted me, but I'm not sure why. I'm open to improving my post (discussion) but what did I do wrong?" Although reputation is important, it's a byproduct of voting. Nothing more.

Bearing that in mind, when I see such a long winded post complaining about the system, it makes me doubt the seriousness of the OP. A disclaimer at the beginning of a post offers it a new level of illegitimacy.

Looking through your profile, I see that you have raised some good ideas through critical thinking. It also seems that many of those ideas have been downvoted into oblivion. Perhaps you're just frustrated with StackExchange's resistance to change?

^{Also, can I have your "backing up facts" badge, since I quoted you several times?}

However, there is some merit to what you are saying. As you correctly state, StackExchange is designed to resist discussion. Tagging content as "discussion" invites exactly that. One size fits all doesn't work when the two positions under consideration are polar opposites and inherently exclusive.

However, realize that most forums are terrible conversation platforms as it is. It's rare, in my opinion, to see well designed "conversation software". There's not much to be improved, and so StackExchange is likely going to stick with what the community has shown to work for itself. Q&A with a little bit of votes.

Stick around meta, it would be a shame to see you go. Perhaps you can have a positive influence in the future. I say, cut the trolling and start polling!

Answer 5

The premise of your question is the graphic, and the graphic strikes me as a bit of a self-parody. It pretends that there are universal, objective, criteria for facts and behaviors. And in very limited, artificial, arenas of discourse, that might be true.

However, meta is all about human behavior, and 'reasonable' is not an objective predicate. Neither is 'faulty.'

The whole premise of the graphic is that some superior intellect (the 'me' of the graphic), in a position of power, is laying out the rules of audience. If he/she deigns to talk to a mere worm, the worm has to follow the rules, and the superior mortal judges compliance.

If anyone tried to pull that shit on me I'd just walk away. In a large, amorphous, group of peers, there isn't even anyone who can claim the place of that omniscient, asinine, narrator.

I'm sure you meant well, but is that voice really a point of view you want to be associated with?

Answer 6

There is no denying discussion on meta is somewhat broken.

To the extent that, when a discussion goes off the rails (takes any rightward branch in your flowchart) Meta's discussion format tends to fall apart, yes.

Of course, there isn't a bit of software yet written that solves that problem. Pure discussion-focused systems (various forums and newsgroups) attempt to mitigate these failures in various ways, but since the failures occur on the part of one or more participants in the discussion, they cannot be solved completely by technical measures (most of which amount to some form of auto-silencing those who appear to participate in bad faith).

Meta discussion doesn't really even try. There's very little value to us in keeping a detailed historical record of every discussion that falls apart because of an unwillingness on the part of participants to stick to that left-hand flow. So when a discussion falls apart, it tends to get down-voted, closed, and eventually deleted. We're not even looking to maintain a chronological record of discussions that do work; maintaining just the arguments and counter-arguments is enough.

Because we're all human, and therefore terrible at conducting calm, rationale discussion, this often fails - and here, Chat becomes the mitigating factor. But chat is not intended to be a historical record. Once you've worked out whatever factors led to problems in chat, you must take the results back to Meta.

Does this confuse people? Drive them away? Heck yeah! So does the pure Q&A format of Stack Overflow - by nature, most people are as unwilling or unable to formulate a good question as they are to kick off and participate in productive discussion, and by requiring them to do so we absolutely alienate quite a few potential participants.

But for those that are willing to learn and participate in our weird little system, the payoff is huge: instead of the traditional "dozens of messages each containing a small piece of the answer", there's a clear path from specific question to specific answer, a useful artifact on The Internet for the education of future readers.

And the same is true for meta discussions. There's no pretense here that every potential participant's input is valuable. But if you can present a persuasive argument, defend it against reasoned criticism, and move on when you're unable to persuade others, then you'll be welcome here.