As a mini little Meta preamble: This is your opportunity to make your voice heard about the gamification system on SE, similar to when they asked for feedback regarding the Reputation system. Please consider participating in the research opportunities. It's important to ensure SE gets this attempt at improving the new user experience right, because we all know how previous attempts have gone.
Let us know below if you’d like to see other content types on Stack Overflow?
I really, really don't think so. To solidify why I think this way, let's look at the other content types we've tried recently:
- Articles: Well, sometimes they convey meaningful info, but many other times they're either puff pieces or uninteresting content.
- Discussions: Discussions haven't been iterated on recently, and the changes that have been made don't make users feel like it's a useful part of the site. We can't downvote, which means that there's no way to meaningfully signal to the site what content is not worth looking at. Every 0 score discussion is a toss-up between whether it's cool (not likely nowadays), uninteresting (most likely), or not worth keeping (spam/off-topic).
The Stack Exchange network built its popularity off of being the largest library of question and answer content on the Internet. Iterate on what got you here in the first place instead of exploring outside of what makes SE great. Creating new content types hasn't gone well in the past, and I can promise you it won't go well in the future without some very clear definition about what you want to do, and support from the community about the vision. We've tried telling you when you're stepping in the wrong direction, but it feels like it doesn't turn you around. Like Makoto said:
My feedback doesn't seem to count. That's the energy that I'm getting from this.
What motivates you to engage with Stack Overflow?
When I see an interesting question that I can meaningfully answer, I feel really good if it lead to helping someone. Ideally, if I can help multiple people (and many more after, for as long as my content is visible and accessible), then that's a big bonus. Upvotes on my content indicate that it was useful in some capacity, and getting "paid" via reputation feels good.
Further, the privileges system dangles some interesting carrots on a stick. While I've made my position on the reputation and privilege system clear before, I do still want to be able to vote to close stuff as I browse a given SE site. I want to be able to vote to delete things that don't belong. Creating useful content on a site is the way that's done, and while that can take awhile nowadays on Stack Overflow, that motivates me in some way.
Boiling that feedback on the reputation system down to a simple few statements, I'd say: Reputation is a measure of the good content you've contributed to the site that others found useful. Good use of moderation privileges is contributing a similar amount of time to curating content as you would creating content, and that should be rewarded in some capacity. Badges, for privilege hunters, are a poor measure of this, because with the exception of gold tag badges, they don't let you do anything. Expand the user level moderation privileges to let users do more if they're proving they can use them correctly and let the site manage itself. Stack Overflow in particular seems to rely a bit too much on its moderators, who are meant to be exception handlers. There seem to be quite a few exceptions for them to handle!
When it comes to Meta, my participation in large part nowadays is to try and meaningfully contribute to the network as a whole, typically in policy conversations or on questions like these. I'm just trying to add another voice to the chorus. Sometimes we harmonize, and sometimes we're a bit discordant. All of that singing is to try and make the network the best it can be, though.
Is it the same thing that motivated you when you first started on the site?
Sorta. On Meta, rep doesn't mean anything to me anymore. On other sites, sure, more privileges on more sites lets me help those sites a bit more. But if the site doesn't interest me at all, or it's a low-activity site, I really don't feel interested in contributing the content necessary to try and get more privileges and thus give back to the site.
From the blog:
Is there a need for varying levels of permanence for our questions and answers [..]?
Questions? Not really. Answers? ... Maybe? We had an outdated answers project that resulted in a trending sort, but... Not much else, if memory serves? We were supposed to get version labels for answers but that didn't really get anywhere.
I'm not sure. I'd hesitantly say "No" because content posted on the SE network that doesn't violate our rules is usually here to stay for conceivably forever. We shouldn't consider changing that without some serious thought.
We’ve heard from previous research that there doesn’t feel like there is a space for developers and technologists to commune—could Stack Overflow be that space?
Like I said before, I really think Stack Overflow can't be that place without some very serious vision in place that the community is interested in backing. If you explore this, reading our feedback is critical, otherwise you'll just end up with Discussions 2.0.
On the blog, there's also this bit:
Jobs-to-be-Done being researched: “Find my people when I am looking to connect so that I can socialize with like-minded people in a positive environment.”
We're not a social media site. I can see why folks may think that, but we're not. We're really, really not. Let's not try to be. We're not built for that, and building us for that would be an incredible undertaking.
We do have Chat, though, AKA "Bonfire". One could argue that's a form of social media. It's undiscoverable, hasn't had features built for it in awhile, and deserves more recognition than it gets. Also, you need rep to be able to use it in the first place. Not saying that should change (think of the abuse vector if everyone could make an account and chat...), just throwing it out there.
“Identify gaps of knowledge when I find that knowledge that doesn’t exist so that I can complete the body of knowledge without it taking up a large amount of time”
Does providing it as a question and answer pair not fit here? We're not thinking of spinning up Documentation again are we?
