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🎉 ℋ𝒶𝓅𝓅𝓎 ℱℴ𝓊𝓇 𝒴ℯ𝒶𝓇 𝒜𝓃𝓃𝒾𝓋ℯ𝓈𝒶𝓇𝓎 🎉

Discussing about growth of the community.

You can see the overall progress graph from starting to the end of 2017 in chart and tubular at here. In this year we have requested for graduation claiming consistent 10+ QPD but those questions have been asked by specific users and were not quality questions. Though I've pointed out how QPD is more considered towards the graduation but we're happy with low QPD with quality rather than high QPD without quality and as far as we maintain quality the site is unlikely to be shutdown as quoted there.

At present the thing I want to emphasize on is unanswered questions. Currently we have 1800+ questions with no answer which is highly affecting the lower %Answered stats. We have never achieved 80% answered stats after 2014, also see that answer ratio is reduced to 1.6 !

We've been lagging in %Answered stats among religious sites on SE network:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┓
┃ Buddhism     ┃ 98 % ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━┫
┃ Christianity ┃ 97 % ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━┫
┃ Islam        ┃ 86 % ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━┫
┃ Mi Yodeya    ┃ 85 % ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━┫
┃ Hinduism     ┃ 77 % ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━┛

Here are some suggestion to improve the %Answered stats (Ref. Steps to reduce the number of unanswered questions - Islam.SE):

Visit list of unanswered questions and consider to take appropriate action:

• If the question has an un-upvoted and/or unaccepted answer, then improve the answer until it’s worthy of being upvoted and then upvote the answer. (A question is considered unanswered even it's having an answers if those answers are neither upvoted not accepted).

• If a question has no answer at all then try to improve questions by editing so-that others may get better understanding and find a way to answer the question. Sometimes new users don't bother about title and tags while asking question. Also some complex question can be edited to make it more clear.

• You should also try to write the answer if you can, though this requires much effort.

Another way is to avoid unworthy questions to improve the stats:

You may be aware about automatic deletion of unworthy questions by system which includes RemoveAbandonedClosed , RemoveDeadQuestions RemoveAbandonedQuestions etc. So, if you find an answered questions that is unworthy i.e opinion based, off-topic, unclear or may be duplicate, then vote to close appropriately. And closed questions will be caught by system for automatic deletion. (You can also consider to downvote low quality questions to satisfy RemoveDeadQuestions criteria but it should be done with care)

featured Feel free to point the question you feel action can be taken and discuss in our chat-room.

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One more important thing I want to draw attention about is improving the quality of posts. We know that we have few knowledgeable users who actively contributes in writing quality answers. If we get more experts from other sites or outside the network, it can much benefit to the community and one way to get such new visitors join the site is to attract or approach them. Usually visitors get attracted by seeing quality and usefulness of posts on our site. So, we should actively participate in improving quality of posts (especially questions from new users).

So, we can increase the %Answer by bringing or having experts who can contribute in posting quality answers to our community.

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Also note that this is not only purposed to increase the %Answered stats or answer ratio but actually this will ultimately be beneficial to the visitors to learn about or follow the community - which is the goal of site.

Thanks.

Answer 1

First of all, ℋ𝒶𝓅𝓅𝓎 ℱℴ𝓊𝓇 𝒴ℯ𝒶𝓇 𝒜𝓃𝓃𝒾𝓋ℯ𝓈𝒶𝓇𝓎 to all of the community users. That's really nice to see it coming from a Mod himself.

Since you already covered all possible points. I would like to add few :

1. The question quality will keep decreasing as long as we keep upvoting bad questions with answers. So it is advised not to do that. We must use the downvote system to discourage bad quality questions.

2. Regarding new users, Since most of the new users won't be expertise they'll not be able to ask quality questions nor they will be able to give a quality answer unless they really take a tour. So if they ask a bad quality question, high rep user can always take an initiative to put a comment asking them to take H.SE tour once to get an idea how to start with this site.

3. Obviously most of us do a research first then post an answer to a question, So it is sometimes possible that we might end up posting a wrong answer. So if some user who is expertise can always come up and point out the mistake.

4. There are few users who comes under the category "We do not care". These users post a question, get an answer and will never accept. We have to figure out a way to encourage them to accept the answer if it answered their post.

If we all really follow what you have suggested. We can graduate in no time.

Answer 2

It's a good motive for increasing percentage of answering. But the same thing is already asked a while ago Let's concentrate on "percent answered" stats! and closed a duplicate yesterday.

As a response to that question, I commented

many questions can be answered by comments only. The OP agrees with the answer stated in the comment. If they are posted in the answer field, the percentage gets increased. Also there are some inactive questions which should be closed.

I will almost the same thing now also. The main drawback of our site is answering in comments.

• We* should discourage answering in comments

  Across the network, many sites discourage answering questions in comments. Comments are used for asking clarification or suggesting something or correcting the mistakes done in the post. But besides this, our site also use this for answering purpose. We post a series of 4-5 comments to address the question. They do it just because they do not know exact reference. That is the reason they do it. But we have to remember that comments are not second class answers. There is no hurry to answer in comments without proper references. We can take our time and be ready with complete answers We post questions and answers for all the community and the readers to visit the site. Adding answer in the comments only help the OP of the question. Most of the people are first timers and say "Thanks, it helped very much" and do not visit again. Now, we have a post which is solved (according to OP) but not really answered. In these cases, we should be strict and encourage answering in answer field only. Read Are we allowed to answer personal-advice questions that have been closed, in comments?.

• We should be patient while flagging

  Lately, I have noticed that answers which have no references are flagged as Very Low Quality (VLQ) very quickly i.e., less than 30 minutes after posting. This is a very quick move to flag an answer as VLQ just because it lacks sources. The flag reads

  This answer has severe formatting or content problems. This answer is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.

  This flag should be used when

  • the answer is no way salvageable through editing.
  • When the answer is only link
  • When the language is non English
  • The language is gibberish or formatting is very ugly (formatting can be fixed if some time is spent)
  • When it asks clarification about the question or answer posted or gives a passerby comment.

  Other site-specific reason but not for lacking sources or a detailed explanation. We should contact the user in comments to add sources. We can improve if we already know the source, we can downvote the answer and undo it later after improvement. Flags should be used as a last resorts. But flagging instantly is not a right thing to do if we are here for helping people. Users should make use of their privileges.

• We should use our voting (both sides)

  We are not participating in the voting which is like a fuel to the site. Upvoting good stuff is very important for encouraging the users who spend their time for adding good content to the site. Encouragement gives a boost to post more questions and answers. There are many answers posted but no positive score or low score. We should upvote them too.

  At the same time while encouraging good content, we should also use the downvote privilege by downvoting bad content. Users are in an impression that downnvoting is a sin (yes, I mean that). Even when they flag, they don't downvote. If an answer is eligible for deletion, why is not downvote worthy? Sometimes a downvote does a thing which a comment cannot. Some people only respond when their post is downvoted and not when there are many comments on the post to improve (My experience). So, we should not hesitate downvoting bad answers and unwanted content such as primarily opinion based, clearly too broad and off-topic questions.

• Discourage answering duplicate and closable questions.

  Answering duplicate questions and other closable questions should also be discouraged. Having upvoted answers to the off-topic, primarily opinion based questions is one of the factors Community user cannot auto delete questions. Hence, users should first check whether the question is duplicate or off-topic. We can improve it if it is eligible and close it. If it can be improved, we can modify and then can answer. It enhances quality. But there are some people who post answers directly without checking comments and on-topicness of the question. In this case where Community user cannot delete unwanted questions, users with moderator tools should step up and use their privileges. We should discourage users who answer questions even they are aware that it will be closed soon. Currently, this is happening for primarily opinion based, clearly too broad questions.

• We should take constructive criticism to heart

  Some users ask for improvement of questions and answers for avoiding closure or deletion of answers. Sometimes, they also ask to visit community followed guidelines, faq or useful links for understanding the site functioning better. Some also give reasons why your answer is bad and wrong in comments. They have nothing in personal (If it's personal, there are flags). What they do is for betterment of the site and content. We should be ready for that feedback or sometimes constructive criticism. By reading that, we should try to improve ourselves. But there are some people who do not care and say

  I need not to read anyone's answer. I know how to answer. I will continue to do that. Stop following me.

  or

  I know how to deal with my questions. Stop spamming me. Who asked you to intervene?

  There are people who think we target or follow them and comment on their posts. They do not care about comments, feedback they get. This is what we should stop immediately. We are a community driven site and we should respect the views of the people who read, vote on your content. If the comment given by them is useful, we can correct ourselves. Otherwise, we can ignore the comment (and not the user). We have to figure out how we can indulge users in the community moderation.

All the things said should be followed by all (ourselves included) and not one or two. We can easily improve not only answering stats, more than that.

* _{The whole community, the users.}