There are a significant amount of questions here that do not follow the criteria in the sidebar, especially “1. Open-ended question” and “5. An actual topic of discussion”. It seems some folks want others to do research for them, or to troubleshoot some random issue.

This bugs me. Of course, I can ignore and/or downvote those posts, and I do. However, I’m wondering if anyone else feels the same way. I’m don’t want to stifle content and discussion on such a burgeoning platform, but could we do something about this?

Perhaps we could “tag” posts in some way (I know tags aren’t officially supported yet) or maybe we could redirect folks to a sister community for non-discussion questions. Or something else?

Just throwin’ it out there. If I’m alone in this, I’ll take my lumps and quietly sit back down.

EDIT: Already seeing good points in the replies! makes sense- probably a bit too early to be sticklers about topics.

EDIT 2: Really appreciate the responses and discussion! I appreciate the discourse and also not being downvoted to oblivion 😄

FINAL EDIT: Thanks to all who commented. It’s nice to know I’m not alone, but I do accept what most (including mods) have said- cracking down on the types of questions is not a priority when the community is still growing.

  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    13·
    5 months ago

    The way I see it is the rules exist to improve the experience of the community. They set guidelines to help us achieve that. The rules aren’t the final source of truth though, the quality of the community is.

    So, if you see something that breaks the rules and is pulling the community down in doing so, use the report function, and highlight it.

    If it’s breaking a rule, but not harming the community, then just let it fly.

    I have no interest in enforcing rules for the sake of rules. I see them more as guidelines for fostering a better community, and that’s the lens through which I moderate.

    • tmpodMA
      2·
      5 months ago

      That is my opinion as well, though I think we could be a bit less lenient on “lazy” posts further down the road, when the community is bigger. I’m talking about not having a question in the title at all (like the recent vaping post) or just asking technical stuff that doesn’t spark discussion (like the recent FLOSS PDF reader post).

      What are your thoughts on that?

      • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        2·
        5 months ago

        I’ll generally remove posts without questions if someone reports them, but if they aren’t bothering anyone enough to report it and I don’t notice that they’re in this community, then IMO, they’re not doing much harm.

        But if and when the community gets bigger, signal to noise ratio becomes a lot more important when it’s harder to keep up with everything. But we can cross that bridge if and when we get to it IMO