Meta Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for meta-discussion of the Stack Exchange family of Q&A websites. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Particularly with a site like Bicycles, where regional issues are more important than they are with programming, cooking, web applications, et cetera.
The community on Bicycles obviously wants to permit them, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus just yet on where the line should be drawn.
Has this come up before on any of the other SE sites? Are there any pitfalls we should be aware of?
I think new sites should start of allowing most questions then if the home pages starts to get filled up with “bad” questions, then the site should become more “picky” on the questions that are allowed.
If you close a “bad” question the user may never come back to the site, however if they remain using the site, it is likely the will see the other questions on the site and learn to write better questions.
The only “bad” questions I am keen to see closed on a new site, are of-topic questions where the question or answer gets lots of votes – otherwise people will learn to ask that type of questions to get rep.
I would say that most importantly, the community should decide as a whole. If we try to set up the bounds artificially instead of organically, we run a much greater risk of destroying the site.
That said, the general rule on Stack Overflow has been as follows:
Country-specific: e.g. What is the best conference in the United States for Software Developers - Generally OK (although these questions are likely to have other pitfalls i.e. not programming related, etc.)
City/county specific: e.g.
Are developers in Orange County, CA treated as second-class citizens? - Closed as too localized - At the county level, the community will be too split.
