A number of people seem to treat the GQ message board as their first choice any time they need help with something (fixing a car, fixing a computer, “how do I do xyz in porgram abc?”).
There are several great sites and forums for these sorts of issues, but not very many for the sort of questions that GQ has traditionally contained (i.e. “what’s up with …”, “how can I find out about …”, “how would such-and-such a myth/legend work in real life or could it really happen”, “explain this lega/physics/other-specialized-field theory/principle”, and the like).
What does the staff think of these “help me”-type posts (i.e. is this really a problem? is it GQ becoming too bloated?)? I went to yahoo answers a few times in the past (before I discovered The Straight Dope) and it’s a mess. GQ is starting to get the same juvenile feel.
My issue is that even when there’s a factual answer to be had, the first posts are all guesses, jokes, opinions etc. Very few responses are actually knowledgable answers with or even without cites.
As in all forums, if you feel someone is posting in a manner inappropriate for the forum, there’s a little Report Post button you can avail yourself of. Otherwise, if someone is asking a question which has a specific answer, regardless of how trivial, that’s kind of what GQ is for…
I don’t see a problem, provided 48 hours of GQ posting stays on page 1. With existing settings that means there are less than 150 active threads. We are usually under 100.
That said, I went to page 2 and did see a lot of threads of the sort that the OP describes. What we need (I think) is a locked, stickied and annotated thread of ignorance fighting web forums. Components would be assembled in a separate thread.
Most of the material would be devoted to computer issues, I imagine. True, we have unlocked and thumbtacked threads on the top of GQ, but I was thinking we could up the ante. How does bleepingcomputer.com compare with tomshardware? What about lifehacker vs. Consumer Reports?
My reply wasn’t that the questions have been worse (like the OP was suggestion). I was commenting that the initial replies seem to more and more un-GQish, like I described.
We get this kind of complaint every few months or so, but I haven’t noticed any particular trend in the 13 years I’ve been here. People have always posted speculation and opinion in GQ threads. If anything, to my perception it might have been worse in terms of percentage when I first joined the board. (Since we have so many more members now, the absolute number of posts of this kind may have gone up.)
We, as moderators, don’t in general vet GQ answers for accuracy. We leave it to other posters to challenge and correct incorrect information. If an OP is asking for advice, we generally move the thread to IMHO. We may issue a mod note if a poster is persistently posting wrong information. But we have neither the time nor the expertise to evaluate every answer.
GQ :: is becoming like Yahoo Answers is kind of like saying the government shutdown is making the country like Somalia. Yes, there is a grain of analogy there, but the difference between the temporary lack of services and whatnot (however serious) is akin to a wholesale lack of government is patently absurd.
GQ could become like Yahoo Answers, but unlikely anytime soon.
I thought the culture of GQ was to wait for speculative/opinion answers or joke answers until at least a few posts in and some factual answers (with or w/out cites) have been posted. It seems to me, and I fully agree that my perception could be wrong, that posters aren’t waiting for a knowledgable answer but jump right in with straight opinion or speculation from the start.
Again, it could just be my POV. If it was a bigger deal I’d report it, but I took this thread as a chance to bring it up. If it’s just me that’s ok. I’ll certainly report any that seem particularly egregious.
I don’t know whether it happens more than in the past, but it does sometimes bother me when the first few responses to a GQ thread aren’t really GQ-appropriate.
Any studies showing that atheists and theists tend to behave differently from one another? Perhaps inevitably, too many of the responses, starting with post #5, are irrelevant to the factual question posed by the thread title and engage in the sort of discussion that would be appropriate in GD or IMHO.
That said, I don’t think speculations or guesses are inappropriate in GQ as long as they’re clearly labeled as such; they sometimes provoke a response of “Oh, I never thought of that. I’ll bet you’re right.”
That is part of the GQ rules, and sometimes we mod note or even warn such responses. It just depends on how heavily we want to moderate. We could take a very heavy handed approach and clamp down on such responses. This would, however, take a lot more time and effort and never really eradicate such posts, especially from newbies. In my opinion, although it’s annoying the cost/benefit of coming down hard on such responses isn’t worth it.
As I said, I don’t perceive that there has been a significant increase in such responses. It’s fine to report responses that seem inappropriate. However, speaking personally, I usually only moderate such responses when they are particularly inappropriate or a particular poster makes a habit of them.
The jokers and the punsters do perhaps serve a minor useful function in that they bump the subject up and perhaps, just perhaps, maybe, someone with a useful answer will respond.
I’m going to run this up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.
Picture this: A whole new forum called Stupid Questions. Loads of sticky threads on general topics like 9/11, vaccinations, and assassinations. And no rules or moderation. Somebody posts a stupid question about Flight 800 and the only Mod action required is to merge it into the ongoing Air Disaster Conspiracies thread, where the wolves await to tear apart the original poster, no holds barred. Those posts are usually by One Trick Ponies with no interest outside their fetish, so there is no loss of worthwhile newbies.
And don’t forget that Google interprets searches more as “I know what you want to search for more than you do.” so perhaps people are trying to search and getting crappy results.
There are always a few posters who jump in to legal or police procedure questions with opinions. Sometimes opinions not based anywhere close to being fact. A couple of posters seem to not be able help themselves and jump in with bad information on every one of those threads. I sometimes report those posts. I would never report it outside of GQ. Most of the time they are not acted on so I guess the Mods think we are doing an adequate job of policing ourselves. Its a matter of personal mod style and I don’t have a problem with that. I personally would not mind if GQ was a little more jackbooty but it is a fine line. Its good to cut down on the speculation and wait for someone with knowledge to come along. However I wouldn’t want all the fun to be stomped out. So I just report those posts I think may break the rules and let the high paid professionals handle it.
They’d go to a car-specific forum. a quick web search with your make, model, year, and a couple of terms describing the symptoms should contain some forum postings asking about a vaguely similar problem. Asking about the problem there gets a faster answer, and, almost certainly, will include a response from somebody that had that exact same problem and a description of how they solved it.
The problem is that there are lots of forums for “how do I fix (whatever)”, and very few forums for “how do I find more about …” and “what are the facts behind this common (mis)perception”.
I have nothing against asking for help online (I’ve done it quite a few times myself), I just don’t think GQ is the place for “help me …” type posts.
According to the mods comments upthread, it seems this trend is nothing new and just part of a cycle GQ goes through every now and then. So, I’ll just be patient and wait till it swings back around to just being an alternative to writing Cecil.
