[META] Many unwanted, low quality Questions published to UA. Moderators need to be checked?

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I would like to reach out to @SaraCecilia especially, but also to the other alpha males and females of UA.

In the last few hours I browsed through the new questions and many of them are:

HowToDoThis questions
Very poor formatted and additionally not Unity-relevant and when reminded of this fact, ignoring it and continuing to discuss the questions.
ImToLazyToGoogleSoGiveMeAnswer questions.
Duplicate questions by the same user.

It almost feels as if every question submitted is published automatically.

I became more active a few weeks ago, because

I want to become a moderator that contributes to the quality of UA and to get rid of destructive, "unwilling to learn" users and the "mess" they create.
I naturally gained experience since I first joined so I can give more detailed and accurate answers. Life is a learning process.

I read a few meta posts and one user suggested to make being a moderator a choice, rather than giving everyone that amount of power. I believe this would be an improvement.

I also suggest to implement the status non-moderator, former moderators who did not take the task of organizing UA and processing new questions seriuosly. They can still gain reputation, post questions, answers and comments, but are never able to edit any content created by others and therefore of no harm to UA anymore.
Will be suspended when acting inappropriate again after becoming non-moderator.

Is there some way to get the name of the moderator who approved a question so this can be looked into?

Have a nice day guys!

Answer 1

Answer by SaraCecilia · Nov 19, 2015 at 10:41 AM

Hey! Super awesome that you are so engaged :) We are several who do agree with you on these points, because it makes discoverability of good answers more difficult. We did start the Help Room space to sort of filter over those types of questions, and the thought is to also move content from the default space over there. But right now we are still figuring out what type of guidelines to set in the Help Room, and what we need to change for the default space.

Are you mainly referring to the default space or are you concerned about the Help Room as well? At the moment there is no real moderation guidelines for the Help Room, so it's not super obvious what belongs there and what belongs in the default site. This is something we should set together with the mods now that we have seen the Help Space live for a couple of months and what we could possibly change in order to improve the overall filtering of content.

Regarding seeing what moderator does what...not really possible to have an overview of it at the moment even for me. Usually what I would suggest is if a post is in the mod queue and it still seems okay for the site (assuming code formatting is there etc), is to publish it then move over to the Help Room space to give new users a chance to get into and learn how to use the site. This may not be ideal, however, and is something we should all discuss if it's adding value to the site and the users, or simply doing the opposite.

Having Moderator status be appointed rather than automatic is something I have been thinking about, because then I can manually set the permissions for individual users. We would then need to have very clear rules on what a moderator needs to engage in to retain the various permissions and group cooperation between the most active moderators. Also something worthy of discussion!

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Le-Pampelmuse · Nov 20, 2015 at 05:08 AM 2

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I was initially concerned about the Default space, because I didn't completely understand the sole purpose of the Help Room. Your Answer cleared this up a little to me ;)

Before that my view on UA was:

Reject Do$$anonymous$$yWork, HowToDo and ImTLazyToGoogle questions because they clog up the mod queue and quality questions might take a few days before even noticed
If above types were posted, then inform OP they don't belog here and link to Unity Forums and re$$anonymous$$d of FAQ and User Guide

The Help Room now seems to be inbetween approval and rejection. Wouldn't it be better to send those people and their Q's to the Forums?
I don't know the inner workings of UA and UF, but are they linked in a way that this would be even remotely possible?

Usually what I would suggest is[...], is to publish it then move over to the Help Room
This may not be ideal,[..] we should all discuss if it's adding value to the site and the users, or simply doing the opposite.

Having all questions published to UA (meaning all users with expertise settings get them emailed) and then having to move them over to Help, to sort of store them out of sight, seems like doing twice the work for moderators while we could easily reject them with a template reason like:

 Your question is not suitable for Unity Answers. Please read the FAQ to find out why.
 If you are a beginner, visit Documentation, Tutorials and Unity Forums,
 you might find your question answered there.

And as reason text the moderator could point out hings like:

 Duplicate, Has already been answered, Not Unity relevant, Description not detailed enough, etc.

Just an idea that would take the load off moderators and slowly reduce the amount of unwated questions.

Additionally it would mean we no longer need a Help Room, which would make browsing for users and maintaining for moderators more efficient on a long term.

These are just some thoughts on how to improve the site.

Having $$anonymous$$oderator status be appointed [..] is something I have been thinking about, [...]. We would then need to have very clear rules on what a moderator needs to engage in to retain the various permissions [...].

$$anonymous$$y guess would be:

Filter new questions
Prevent destructive behaviour
$$anonymous$$eep site organized
Regularily have meetings (quarterly, monthly) about how the situation is in "their area".
For example if there are 1000 similar "how to audio" questions submitted per month, we need to investigate why people can't find the answer before resorting to posting a new question.

I don't think it would be a problem for the "quality" moderators who are already doing all they can to "keep the order" to comply with the rules. Once they are set, we would see who wants to continue moderating and who "Opts-Out" and becomes a normal user again.

It would also be an idea to always reset the user RP to 1000 when they decide they want to moderate. So it's obvious who takes the role serious and who just wants to be "superior".

meat5000 ♦ Le-Pampelmuse · Nov 20, 2015 at 11:59 AM 0

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Wouldn't it be better to send those people and their Q's to the Forums

Passing the buck :P Them it becomes a large problem on the forum and they become quickly bogged down, telling users: please post these types of questions on UA :D

Discussion an opinion Qs are sent to the forum but Help-$$anonymous$$e stuff goes to the help-room or is rejected if a simple search can find many answers.

Le-Pampelmuse meat5000 ♦ · Nov 20, 2015 at 09:50 PM 2

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What I meant by that was to reject all questions that are obviously unwanted on both forums (ToLazyToGoogle, AlreadyBeenAnswered, etc) and then publish the remaining questions (that are a new because they have not been asked/solved yet) to the respective Forum, UF for simple HowToDoThis or Discussion Q's and the rest of that to UA.

Assu$$anonymous$$g this works, UA theoretically should have less questions posted per month and they would all be an addition to the knowledge base.

UF would also have less questions posted per month but the tutorial and discussion posts would be of better help to anyone else.

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HarshadK Le-Pampelmuse · Nov 20, 2015 at 12:32 PM 0

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We actually had some of the refined guidelines before UA upgraded and Help Room came into picture. We might need to revisit those since they can be better fit for default space. And new guidelines can be put together for Help Room. As to demoting moderators from their status seems a bit tricky since the rules for this needs to be very clear and precise.

SaraCecilia HarshadK · Nov 20, 2015 at 04:02 PM 0

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I agree, those mod guidelines were our first iteration and we've been working with them for a bit now to get an idea of what is working and what isn't.

Le-Pampelmuse · Nov 20, 2015 at 10:59 PM 1

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Arrgh.. I just found a perfect example of the type of unwanted Question + destructive User behaviour

Why did this question got published in the first place?
It has also not been moved over to Help since it was posted half an hour ago.

While typing this comment, he insulted me again and posted it as an answer to his question. Do we need this?

I reported it because I don't want to argue with this kind of people.

AaronC Le-Pampelmuse · Nov 20, 2015 at 11:16 PM 1

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Then maybe offer something helpful ins$$anonymous$$d of just trying to be condescending to users that genuinely come here to seek help. Your response was no help whatsoever. You assume I hadn't searched the docs, etc. Your demeanor stinks.

FYI I'm still trying to get the script working. It appears Input.Get$$anonymous$$eyDown("escape") inst working, so yes, thanks for nothing, but making this an undesirable place for seeking assistance.

meat5000 ♦ Le-Pampelmuse · Nov 21, 2015 at 11:22 AM 1

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I have to disagree with your example choice there. I think that is a reasonable question that simply needs a bit of clarification. Looking at the answer makes it obvious that it is something that is common amongst new coders. Perhaps the question has been cleaned up since but I dont see any frakkas going on.

The biggest problem with publishing questions is that New moderators dont really know what they are doing yet and tend to $$anonymous$$ass-Publish the whole list ins$$anonymous$$d of being a bit judgmental of what is allowed on-site.

You want an example? Try this one for size

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/1101434/can-bulid-for-psp.html

Now how did that get there? $$anonymous$$ovie magic? I think not. AND in the $$anonymous$$ETA space. I mean CO$$anonymous$$E ON.

Now we used to have a handy link called "Send to $$anonymous$$oderation" which allowed us to simply send this stuff back but dZone stripped it from the software in the latest iteration of the site in order that they could 'solve' a bug that they simply couldnt get their heads around so unfortunately its all building up like scar-tissue.

It doesnt matter what we do and what's in place, the ugly truth is that people are just frikkin lazy man. People should do this and that but they dont live here so they dont care if they wipe their feet before they come in. They waltz in leaving mud all over the nice carpet, take the precious ornament and promptly ferk orf while the host is mid sentence.

I expect this of new users but I cant contain myself when two-year veteran users do it.

If voting were possible I'd probably be #1 arsehole moderator on the site, its been said (Ive caused plenty of friction and noise for support), so tone it down to slightly less than me and you'll be fine ;)

Le-Pampelmuse meat5000 ♦ · Nov 22, 2015 at 02:46 AM 2

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Thank you, this actually helps me very much! :) You speak to me on so many levels!

It doesnt matter what we do and what's in place, the ugly truth is that people are just frikkin lazy man

Oh my god, yes they are.

unfortunately its all building up like scar-tissue.

Ouch, hope those scares get removed someday that can get very ugly. ;)

I expect this of new users but I cant contain myself when two-year veteran users do it.

That's exactly why I didn't treat the example question with "welcome, don't be afraid, ..." silk-gloves.
Its very interesting that everyone seems to disagree on that one.
Reading all your veteran's replies helps me alot in general, but I still would react the same way to a two year user that posts questions that can be googled in 2 seconds.

However, I will certainly think not twice, but three times before answering to any questions I think don't belong here.

I might pass some along to other moderators using private comments, would that be good?

[META] Many unwanted, low quality Questions published to UA. Moderators need to be checked?

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