It pains me when I hear people say that our sites are unfriendly, or that we chase new users away. But it’s a hard problem, because our highest priority has always been the quality of content on our sites.  And it still is. We can’t lower our standards. We won’t.

But we have been working hard to make our sites more welcoming, reminding users that feedback can be clear and nice, and helping new users learn the ropes before they get frustrated.  And, as of today, we’ve completely overhauled closing. 

Closing, we just can’t quit you.

Oh, closing.  You are the watcher on the walls. You are the shield that guards the realms of men. Okay, so it’s possible that I may be thinking of the Night’s Watch. No matter.

Closing is a big part of what separates us from other, um… less focused Q&A sites. It’s what ensures that our sites remain the kind of places that experts want to be. Closing… was working. But it wasn’t perfect.

Closing wasn’t clear.

Our close reasons were designed for experienced users, but did little to help the author of the question understand what the heck was going on. Over time, as we tried to make five close reasons address hundreds of question types, they became too broad to actually convey what’s wrong.  Identifying the common factors of poor questions was a good idea, but we took it a little too far.

It’s confusing ask for help solving a specific programming problem, only to be told that it’s”not about programming”. Or to ask which router to buy, just to learn that you’re likely to solicit “debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.” Really?  You guys take routers pretty seriously here.

Now, it’s not that we want those questions, but we need to convey exactly why we don’t want them.  Imagine if police could give out summons that, rather than, “failure to stop at a signal,” just read, “behavioral violation”. When feedback isn’t specific, it’s impossible to fix the problem, but easy to write it off as probably coming from a bunch of grumpy old jerkfaces who’d rather make you look like an idiot than actually help you.

Closing wasn’t nice.

Having your question closed feels lousy; there’s no doubt about it.  Now, we don’t care as much about nice as we do about quality - but that’s not a real dichotomy.  We can be more constructive in conveying our standards without lowering them one bit.   And we need to, because whether we liked it or not:

Having your question closed feels like a personal attack.

It is off-putting to be told that your question is “not constructive”.  To the poster, “not constructive” doesn’t sound like polite feedback; it sounds like something a slightly detached guidance counselor might say to a child.  And,”not a real question”?  Does that make the listener want to get “realer” or to snarkily link to a definition of the word “question”?

Ironically, we picked those terms explicitly because they were nicer ways to convey what we meant. And they were nicer than, “You’re kind of ranting and being a jackass,” or, “No one can answer that ambiguous nonsense.”  But so is prefacing my feedback to my wife with:

It could be just me, but I feel like you’re acting completely nutballs crazy.

In both cases, we’ve gotten nicer than we started, but we’re still pretty far shy of where someone might actually accept our feedback.

Fixing your closed question didn’t work

The goal was always for some closures to drive an edit, improve, re-open cycle. The user gets helped, gets better at asking, and the community gets useful content. Unfortunately, since there was no way to know when a question had been improved, this almost never happened.

We can do better.

We’re not going to lower our standards.  But if we want to educate new users, we need get better at three things:

1. make users want to improve questions, not argue about them – “terminated as too sucky; re-submit when less so,” and, “needs more information, add detail to move forward” are different. One makes you want to work your way to the next stage. One makes you want to kick someone’s shins.
2. make it clear exactly what needs to be fixed, or is problematic, without relying on information on another page.
3. provide a clear path for to get questions re-opened –  questions that are brought up to our standards should get reopened.

Here’s how:

1. “On hold” will replace “closed” on newly closed posts
   The word “closed” sounded final. Think about “closed” discussions, real estate deals, or job applications. In each case,”closed” means,
   a) additional revisions are not welcome, and b) the matter won’t be further considered.We led with a word that sounded final, so when we eventually told users they could edit their post, they weren’t listening; they were dusting off the old debate uniform to argue their case.“on hold” better conveys what we always meant:

   If you can edit your question to better fit our model, we can get you the help you need.

   Questions not re-opened within five days will revert to displaying as “closed,” to serve as a clearer signpost going forward.

2. New close reasons are nicer and clearer
   1. “not constructive” and “not a real question” are replaced by:
      

      too broad – There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.

      unclear what you’re asking - Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it’s currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re asking.

      primarily opinion based - Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

      They’re much less likely to make the reader defensive, and much more specific about exactly what to fix.

   2. “Off-Topic” now includes site-specific close reasons
      Many communities have decided that some questions that sound like they fall under the topic “headline” (“cooking”,  ”photography”, etc.) should be explicitly disallowed:

      • On our cooking site, recipe requests are off-topic, (but recipe replacements questions are allowed).
      • On photography – “fix my picture” questions are off topic, (but specific technique requests are allowed).
      • Stack Overflow is about programming, but programming questions you’d solve on a whiteboard or that ask what’s wrong with a large block of code are no good.

      Each example seems on-topic, but the community definition of what’s allowed has been adjusted to exclude them. These nuanced definitions have always been in each site’s help center (formerly the FAQ,) and are also the new user About page.

      And, as of today, they are also available to “off-topic”  close-voters right in the close dialogue. Users can pick one from the site’s list, or if none apply, they can enter a free-form one which will appear as a comment and as a choice for others voting to close the same question:

      “Your question appears to be about ferret grooming, which is off-topic for Stack Overflow”.

      These site-specific reasons will also address situations previously covered by “General Reference” and “Too Localized”. Those were the least used and most misused reasons – moderator and team sampling found a huge percentage of their application to be erroneous. (References to location in a question were particularly dangerous – never mind that a couple of billion people might live there.)  But they did have some important uses:

      • Questions that could be answered with a single dictionary search on English, and
      • Unguided requests to debug huge blocks of code on Stack Overflow

      In almost all of their good uses, they were clarifying what a community, over time, had deemed to be off-topic for their site. Programming questions, but not code dumps. English language questions, but not single search definitions.  

   3. Duplicates now focus on redirection to the answers you need
      All dupes now must point to an answered question, and the new language focuses on getting you answers:

      marked as [duplicate] – this question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please edit this question to explain how it is different, or ask a new question.

3. Questions edited by the original poster automatically go to the re-open queue
   Once there, other users will review and can re-open improved posts.  No more flagging your own question, or going to Meta to  request a formal appellate review. If you make meaningful edits to your question within five days of being put on hold, it gets considered for re-opening.

Oh, one last thing.

Thank you. A ton of work has gone into this, and as usual, the best ideas came from user input on Meta, so we hope you’re as proud of these changes as we are. We truly appreciate your feedback, and you’ve been incredibly vocal in your support for almost all of the changes.  We know some of you have concerns about moving the good parts of “too localized” into the off-topic menu. We’re listening, and are going to keep a close eye on it as we roll it out network-wide.  In particular, we want to know if you’re finding things that you can’t close now, but could before, and we’ll continue to adjust and iterate based on what we learn.

It really seems like there should be some kind of badge for reading something this long, but the devs shot that idea down.  Hard.  Apparently we “will never ever offer badges to promote your endless ramblings, Jay.”

It would have felt nicer if they’d told me the idea was on hold.

Stack Overflow has always had a strong focus on individual merit. Although collaboration is encouraged to some extent by the editing features, attribution on posts and the design of user profiles all tend to emphasize rugged individuality, that lone wolf toiling away at a keyboard.

But most of us don’t actually work that way. We’re social creatures by nature, and the most challenging part of finding a good job can be finding the pack you want to run with. In spite of the dearth of features aimed at networking, folks have been using Stack Overflow to find and research potential colleagues almost since the day it launched – so a couple years ago, we started looking for ways to make this a bit easier. Well, now it’s done:

With Company Pages, we’ve focused on the best ways to tell an interesting company story. And what better way to tell your story than with massive photos of workstations, team outings, hackathons, local attractions, and the people who make the companies who they are? There are tightly designed sections to list your company tech stack and benefits, along with plenty of room to be creative and communicate what makes your company special, what awesome products you’re working on, and the philosophy that drives your team forward.
—Introducing Careers 2.0 Company Pages

Go check out the other wolf-packs… or show off your own on Careers 2.0.

It seems like just two months ago (OK, it was exactly two months ago) that I announced our last batch of new hires.  Today I’m pleased to introduce our newest employees.  There are TEN of them … so get comfy and prepare to learn all about our latest hires, who seem to have an overall fondness for food, sports, music, and the great outdoors.

Jessica Brady, Associate Sales Representative (Careers 2.0)

New York

Jessica was born and raised in warm, sunny Florida, until she packed up and moved to less warm, less sunny Chicago for non-weather-related reasons (okay, it was school). She has lived in New York and worked in television for the last four years, but is excited to make the leap into a brand new industry at a great company like Stack Exchange. In her spare time, Jessica likes to run for fun, take in a baseball game (TV, radio, or in person), hang out with her four-legged friend Cash (like Johnny)…and yes, watch TV.

Marco Cecconi, Web Developer (Core)

London

Marco is from Milan, Italy, and he has been traveling around the world for some years. He studied in Singapore, then worked in France, Portugal, and finally settled in the UK for the past four years where he lives in Kent with his wife and kid.  He goes by the handle of Sklivvz on the Stack Exchange network, where he has been a contributor since November 2008 and moderator on Skeptics since February 2011.

Pieter DePree, Recruiter

New York

Native to sunny Florida, Pieter decided to trade in his flip flops and board shorts for a piece of the good life here in the Big Apple.  Pieter has a passion for travel and has, at last count, traveled to 27 countries including a year spent living abroad in China. Previously, Pieter has been responsible for high volume regional sales recruitment at ADP, as well as the national sales recruitment at Seamless! Outside of work, you might find Pieter hiking, sailing, or playing volleyball.  Pieter is very excited to be helping Stack Exchange grow its global sales teams!

Jim Egan, Sales Representative (Careers 2.0)

Denver

Originally from the south side of Chicago, Jim now feels the need to argue with people in bars that Chicago is the greatest city in the world. He’s passionate about the Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks, and White Sox, so Jim couldn’t imagine a better sports town. Leaving that behind and moving to the Rockies was tough but needed.  Armed with his trusty sidekick Loomis (pictured here, left), Jim plans to conquer the mountains and everything Denver has to offer. An avid crock-potter and terrible at accents, Jim hopes to fit in nicely.

Paul Frey, Account Executive (Careers 2.0)

London

Paul has lived in London since May 2010 and he loves it!  He was born and grew up in Cologne, Germany. Due to this fact he’s a big supporter of his local football club, FC Koeln. But he doesn’t just watch sports; he also loves to be very active, playing European handball up the third German division, and also squash and football. But his biggest passion is cooking and eating! His cooking style is experimental and cross culture…he never uses recipes, he just combines the things he knows and likes. Most of the time his cooking tastes good. ;-)

Todd Jenkins, Sales Representative (Careers 2.0)

London

Todd originally hails from Boston (UK not US!) but now lives in London. He’s looking forward to transferring his sales skills to Stack Exchange! He really enjoys trying new foods and new restaurants, and he has a great love of the outdoors and adventurous walks. Apart from enjoying friends’ company in London’s nightlife, he does try to keep very sporty, although he admits shamefully that his two favourite sports are the two he’s the worst at (tennis and swimming). Todd is also a huge fan of Liverpool Football Club!!

Shikha Malhotra, Account Executive (Careers 2.0)

London

Shikha grew up in Brussels / Belgium and has an Indian background. She has been living in London for over 6 years, and is super excited to join Stack Exchange’s growing UK sales team. During her spare time you will find “DJ Shake” mixing the latest Bollywood tunes with a mix of French hip-hop and Arabic flavor, reading books, and learning to play the “Dhol” (Indian drum).

Pawel Michalak, Sales Representative (Careers 2.0)

London

Pawel is from Poznan, Poland and has lived in England for 7 years. He studied journalism and PR, and used to play handball (the best European sport ever!) quite seriously. He’s upgraded to playing football (the best international sport ever!), and can be found on London football pitches falling over, or screaming “Go Arsenal!” in support of the best football team in the world. You might see him on the road scooting cheerfully on his Vespa between angry Londoners stuck in traffic. He’s very excited about starting at Stack, as you can see here (CTAPT means START in Russian).

Bryan Ross, Web Developer (Careers 2.0)

Denver

An LA native, Bryan Ross (everybody just calls him “Ross”) moved to Denver in 2010 after being chewed up and spit out by the rock music industry. A self-taught developer of 15 years, he has an unhealthy interest in language design, expensive keyboards, strong coffee, and music. When he’s not nitpicking about the merits of various programming acronyms, he can usually be found writing, recording, and mixing in his home studio.

Derek Still, Sales Representative (Careers 2.0)

New York

Derek spent the first three years of his career in equity sales & trading, and is excited about making the move to a growing firm with unlimited upside like Stack Exchange. He grew up in Philadelphia, spent summers in Cape Cod, and moved to the concrete jungle in 2010. Outside of the office, Derek spends his time traveling, rooting on Philadelphia sports teams (Go Birds), listening to the Grateful Dead, and hanging out with his brothers and friends.

Visit our careers page to learn all the reasons Stack Exchange is a ridiculously awesome place to work. Want to see your face in our next new hire announcement? Here’s who we need:

Web Developer (NYC or telecommute)

Senior Product Designer (NYC or telecommute)

Sales Representative / Account Executive (London)

Sales Representative / Account Executive (Denver)

Sales Representative / Account Executive (NYC)

Senior Account Executive, Digital Ad Sales (NYC)

Community Manager (NYC)

Community Manager (telecommute)

Customer & Sales Support Agent (London)

Customer & Sales Support Agent (Denver)

Inbound Marketing Manager (NYC)

Marketing Manager, EMEA (London)

When we launched Careers 2.0 back in 2011, we set out with a goal: make the job search process better for the millions of programmers who visit our site every month. Part of achieving this goal is educating employers about what you want from them. In the past, our annual user survey helped us help companies change the way they found and hired programmers, while Joel’s book on how to find the best technical talent and his talk on how to stand out and attract top talent are a few other examples of how we’ve worked to educate tech companies on what you really want.

Today, we’re taking this one step further:

Announcing the Employer Resource Center on Careers 2.0

Employers are having a really hard time getting programmers to work for them — hardly a day goes by without another article, blog post or Tweet attesting to this. A study last year found that as many as 93% of employers find a disparity between the technical skills required and the level of the talent they’re able to find while recruiting. As a result, talented programmers are in incredibly high demand, putting you in a position to demand the best jobs, perks, and benefits.

In the Employer Resource Center, we offer advice on best practices, recruitment news and trends, case studies and product guides to help employers with developer hiring. We’ll be updating the content regularly (mostly via the new Careers 2.0 blog), so check back often! If you have any tips you think employers should know about hiring developers, please leave a note in the comments below.

It’s time once again to cast your vote for the next Stack Overflow moderators. The primaries have just ended, and the top ten candidates can be found here: http://stackoverflow.com/election.

Why more moderators?

We’re running the election now (rather than a year from the last election in June) because veteran moderator Tim Post is stepping down in order to work with us as a Community Manager! While we’re extremely lucky to have his hard-working brilliance brought to bear on the problems we face managing all these sites, his transition does create an immediate need for a replacement on the SO mod team.

But of course, we’d be running an election soon anyway; as amazing as the current Stack Overflow moderators are, the workload continues to grow:

What moderators do

Jeff laid out the basic philosophy in A Theory of Moderation:

Moderators are human exception handlers, there to deal with those (hopefully rare) exceptional conditions that should not normally happen, but when they do, they can bring your entire community to a screaming halt — if you don’t have human exception handling in place.

As the previous graph indicates, flags – the primary embodiment of those exceptions – are a fairly frequent occurrence on Stack Overflow, purely because of its size. That said, a lot of flags aren’t identifying things that are particularly exceptional: in particular, posts that need to be closed (duplicates, off-topic questions, etc) or are of extremely poor quality aren’t all that uncommon on a site that gets over 7000 new questions and 11K answers each day. While moderators are well-equipped to handle these quickly, they don’t actually require moderators when a sufficient number of experienced users are willing and able to help.

The effects of improved community moderation tools

I mentioned last year that we were working on tools that would help to distribute the load more evenly between the elected moderators and the community as a whole. Well, eight months after their introduction, I’m happy to report that the revamped Review system is doing exactly that:

As Jeff wrote:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.

That’s not empty rhetoric – on a site the size of Stack Overflow, it’s absolutely essential. Geoff Dalgas came up with the design for the new review system based on his observations of wikiHow’s Community Dashboard: individual tasks, each focused on a specific need with specific actions to be taken and specific guidance provided for new users. The philosophy: don’t just give people stuff to do – help them learn how to do it.

Geoff, Emmett and Kevin have done some amazing work in making these new tools as fast and effective as possible; while there have been some growing pains and a few unexpected challenges, it’s great to see folks jumping in to help so enthusiastically. In the past 30 days, we’ve seen:

• 9384 suspected low-quality posts cleared, 1608 deleted, 319 edited.
• 30339 suggested edits approved, 15497 rejected, 4949 improved
• 17434 posts that’d been voted or flagged for closure closed, 3308 left open, 376 edited
• 571 posts reopened, 2203 left closed, 56 edited

(a detailed breakdown of actions to first posts and late answers can be found here.)

That’s a lot of work being done by a lot of people… Heady stuff. To be sure, that still leaves a huge amount of work for elected moderators, but I think it demonstrates the ability of the whole community to step up and assist when the opportunity is provided, that thousands of you are still willing and able to work together to created and maintain the site that you want to be a part of.

So as you go to cast your votes today, looking over each candidate’s stats and reflecting on what they’d do as a moderator… Remember that moderation doesn’t start with winning an election.