The really subtle thing about Stack Exchange

[bryant]

There are no private messages; what's more, your profile does not have anyplace to put your email address, IM address, Twitter account, or other information about directed communication. You can put in a URL, and that could be anything at all, but that still puts direct communication at a remove from the site proper.

So if I want to ask someone to change a tag or edit a question, I have got to do it in public. I would have guessed that was a recipe for disaster: it's harder to back down from a position in public, after all. But it seems to work out really well. I think perhaps that the perception of transparency is really important? If everything's public, it's harder to believe that people are conspiring behind your back.

I believe the moderators get a private chat. I'm curious how that will change the dynamic.

Comments

[head58.livejournal.com]

I've taken a look but I think I need to really dig into it more to find it useful for me. I don't get the organization, if there really is any, or how I might browse/find questions similar to ones I might hypothetically have.

If everything's public, it's harder to believe that people are conspiring behind your back.

[chaoticmoth.livejournal.com]

But not impossible!

*glances around worriedly*

[bryant]

Purely organized by tags. Voting is useful a) to see hot questions and b) to choose among answers, but to find out if your question has already been asked, you need to search. So if you had a D&D 4e question, you could hit the dd4 tag or just search on (say) fighter.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Search works okay, I find myself using it now that there are more questions.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I however am going to remove the indie tag everytime I see it when its a system specific question, no matter how many times those annoying burning whell people re-add it!

[head58.livejournal.com]

I think I was looking for a more rigid forum-esque structure where one doesn't exist and isn't needed. It will just take me a while to adjust to the tag based structure.

Oh and hey, search box I didn't see before. How you doing?

[bryant]

Yeah, I don't bother asking people to do stuff by gentle hints if the people don't read the meta site. It bugs the hell out of me that I can't make people read the meta site. I am trying to take this as an opportunity to learn to be Zen.

[kodi]

Oops.

I'll just go read the meta site, now.

But - from a user perspective - labeling something "meta" is, uh, several shades south of "please read this now."

[bryant]

Yeah, the UI is really crappy there. The FAQ will be better, and there are many discussions about what to include in the FAQ, but in this stage we don't get a customized FAQ. I think this whole beta site process has only been running for a couple of months now, and I don't think our SO overlords have quite nailed the process yet.

[drunkencarp.livejournal.com]

Is there a way to see when someone has commented on something you've written, or to scan threads for comments?

[bryant]

Mais oui. Once you're logged in, if you click on the little envelope to the left of your name in the header, you get a view of your recent activity. The Responses tab shows responses to your stuff.

[kodi]

Hm. And now, after the third time the same user has told me "You are wrong" without bothering to explain the reasoning, I'm wishing I hadn't gone to the meta site after all.

[bryant]

I'm not sure meta is proving highly useful for us.

[kodi]

Plus, it doesn't generate any sweet, sweet points.

Precious points...

[bryant]

The moderator instructions are intensely, intentionally vague -- they really want you to make it work or not work on your own, and they mostly want the community as a whole to do so. Which I respect as an experiment. The sausage-making itself, however, is interesting.

[kodi]

Which I respect as an experiment.

The really brilliant thing about the internet is the thousands and thousands of ways it allows us to recreate The Lord of the Flies.