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One of the most important aspects of being a Stack Exchange site is quality. Yes, there are lots of metrics that one can use to "measure" a site, but we don't really care about those as much as we care about a site providing expert answers to good questions. To that end, we're encouraging self-evaluations on our sites!

We're experimenting with different sites and formats. Gaming is the largest site we're going to try one of these on so far. You already discuss question quality here pretty regularly - that's awesome! We'd like to offer you a few randomly selected questions to review and see how Gaming stacks up (ha!) against other sites.

Here's a rough guide:

  • Below, you'll find ten questions randomly selected from your site.
  • For each question, search the internet for the question as if you were the asker!
  • If our answer is good (complete, well-written, answers the question, found in search results, etc) then vote it up!
  • If our answer is bad (incomplete, poorly-written, off-topic, unfindable, etc) then vote it down!

Comment with anything you feel is worth noting, or to explain your voting choice. We have a rough guide to better/par/worse right here. If your result is par, make a choice to vote up or down.

Remember that our goal is to make the internet a better place. If you find yourself unable to decide how to vote, ask yourself: does this question and/or answer make the internet better? How you answer that question should determine your vote.

Talk to your fellow community members about how your site is doing and what you all can improve. Above all else, remember: this is a team effort!

Please note: this evaluation will close on April 12th, 2012! Get your thoughts in by then!

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Vote which answer up/down - the answer here on this meta question, or the answer on the question? – Oak♦ Apr 3 '12 at 4:58
@Oak The answer here on meta. :) – Anna Lear♦ Apr 3 '12 at 5:01
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Interesting, the sample seems to have picked pretty bad ones, because this isn't the kind of questions I show to friends when I talk about the site. So while its valuable that its completely random, its a bit too obscure for my taste. – Ivo Flipse Apr 3 '12 at 10:50
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@IvoFlipse That's a fair point. This is also a tiny sample compared to the number of questions on the site. But keep in mind that while you can cherrypick excellent questions to show your friends, these might be the questions they see when they actually use the site. If they are good, well-answered questions... awesome! If not, what can we as a community do to improve them? – Anna Lear♦ Apr 3 '12 at 14:27
Well what can we as a community do? I mean if the question is a piece of crap, you'll have a hard time motivating me to improve it, just so it doesn't ruin the site. If we can't or don't want to improve a post, then we should delete it, because its not helping us with our mission – Ivo Flipse Apr 3 '12 at 14:47
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@IvoFlipse I mean if the question is a piece of crap, you'll have a hard time motivating me to improve it, just so it doesn't ruin the site. - maybe you won't edit it, but someone else will. We have different incentives (such as rep for suggested edits) for editing, but the biggest of all is knowing that you're making the site better. If that doesn't motivate you, that's cool; it's your choice. Beyond that, a community can discuss and/or VTC/VTD questions that can't be improved. – Anna Lear♦ Apr 3 '12 at 15:20
And maybe it's just an average question that doesn't have much room for improvement but also isn't bad enough to be removed... that's okay. No harm in that. The point here is really to come together as a community to take a critical look at some questions, talk about them, and have fun with it. :) – Anna Lear♦ Apr 3 '12 at 15:24

closed as too localized by Anna Lear♦ Apr 13 '12 at 3:09

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

10 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

What are the benefits of alchemers?

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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up vote 4 down vote

Are all projectiles affected by gravity in BF3?

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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up vote 4 down vote

Is there a Book within Skyrim that translates the Dragon Tongue?

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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up vote 4 down vote

Can I lose content from gamesharing if I deactivate the other person's account?

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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up vote 1 down vote

PS Vita Import / purchase overseas

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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If you use "overseas", we're #1, but without that, we're midway down on the 2nd page if you use "import" but nowhere to be found when using "importing". Odd. – FAE Apr 3 '12 at 16:00
up vote 0 down vote

Can I safely complete all assignments after the final mission?

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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This one seems difficult to match when searching, especially if you use the word "mission" to search instead of "assignment". – DMA57361 Apr 3 '12 at 7:41
up vote -2 down vote

Why are some public squads "locked?"

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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up vote -2 down vote

How long would it take to beat Mass Effect 1 & 2

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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Note that it's my answer on this question, and while I'd argue this is better quality than most search matches (which are mostly unsupported forum discussions and noisy) it does seem to be pretty hard to match when searching, you have to get just the right combination of search terms. For example time beat mass effect 1 and 2 puts us 3rd, and that's the best I could find with many similar attempts missing completely. – DMA57361 Apr 3 '12 at 7:31
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This is a question type that we've been considering ruling off topic because it's pretty fundamentally difficult to get a 'good' answer. They end up being polls, discussions, or links to howlongtobeat.com, none of which make us a particularly good use of the internet. – LessPop_MoreFizz Apr 3 '12 at 12:26
@LessPop_MoreFizz But that's not a metric we're being asked to judge against as part of this particular exercise. – DMA57361 Apr 3 '12 at 13:28
@DMA57361 it isn't, but it reduces the value of the excercise as a whole. – LessPop_MoreFizz Apr 3 '12 at 13:47
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@LessPop_MoreFizz If there's a pattern that emerges in an evaluation like this or you find a question that is a bad fit for the site in general, it's a great excuse to start a discussion about it or clean up/edit/whatever. We thought of a few guidelines to get started, but the ultimate goal is to improve quality on all sites and to get communities involved in talking more about themselves. :) – Anna Lear♦ Apr 3 '12 at 14:31
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These sorts of questions usually devolve into "I took this long"...which is so not helpful, and there is a site that already does this.... – Ashley Nunn Apr 3 '12 at 14:49
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@DerpyHooves those answers should be downvoted; the question itself is still fine. It's quite common in reviews to quote a typical play-through time, which can often be elaborated upon if you "do all the side quests" or whatever. – Nick T Apr 3 '12 at 16:39
Likewise to @LessPop_MoreFizz – Nick T Apr 3 '12 at 16:40
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@nickt I'd suggest discussing this further over here – LessPop_MoreFizz Apr 4 '12 at 12:15
up vote -2 down vote

How to repair Puzzle marked as ??? in Puzzle Swap?

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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This is a really bad question - I strongly suspect that the issue does not, in fact, exist. The OP does not really explain themselves well at all. I suspect that they do have the puzzle they are looking for - I know how the mechanic works, and this seems like a really odd and rare bug, if it in't just a case of the person not noticing them getting the puzzle they thought they missed.... – Ashley Nunn Apr 3 '12 at 14:48
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If it's a really odd and rare bug doesn't make this a bad question. Getting questions under the tiny parts of the long tail is one major advantage SE has. What is a problem is that '???' is not very Googleable. – Joe Wreschnig Apr 4 '12 at 16:10
up vote -4 down vote

Who's telling the truth? Saadia or Kematu?

Better than, worse than, or similar to other sites out there?

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If you Google the NPC names we're top, but if you use the quest name, nowhere to be found. – Nick T Apr 3 '12 at 3:54
@NickT but how does that make the information in the question bad? – Ivo Flipse Apr 3 '12 at 10:39
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@IvoFlipse findability is given as one of the criteria to judge by. See the four bullet points and the linked guide in the question. I assume the idea being that even if we have the best answer in the world it's still effectively useless if no one can find it. – DMA57361 Apr 3 '12 at 10:41
I always assumed this was mostly an evaluation of how well our answers were and pray that the Google gods favor us enough to rank us highly. While surely there are things that can be done to improve are SEO, at some point we just have to accept that only Google knows how people search for these things and that we can only do our best and hope that its better than others – Ivo Flipse Apr 3 '12 at 10:45
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It probably doesn't help that this is an incredibly stupid question. – LessPop_MoreFizz Apr 3 '12 at 11:55
@DMA57361 That's pretty much it. Unfortunately it doesn't matter to the Internet at large how awesome our answer is if nobody knows it's there. – Anna Lear♦ Apr 3 '12 at 14:34
Ironically @LessPop_MoreFizz when I lose my save games I decided to sell her out and did wonder which side was right. But still, its probably the whole point of the quest for there to be no right answer, which indeed makes it pretty stupid – Ivo Flipse Apr 4 '12 at 7:37

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