6

I'll be blunt: Why is the review queue completely stagnant? Do people not take pride in this site? Do people not like keeping it clean? Do people not want to improve it?

I can't participate in any of the queues because I don't have enough reputation, but a quick review shows that there are currently:

  • 72 reopen votes (0 reviewed today)
  • 47 close votes (0 reviewed today)
  • 20 first posts (3 reviewed today)
  • 11 low-quality posts (0 reviewed today)
  • 7 late answers (0 reviewed today)
  • 0 suggested edits (3 reviewed today, all by a non-Bitcoin moderator)

I don't get it -- I've had close vote flags sitting in the queue since July 29th. There are over 100 people on the site with enough reputation to participate in the review queue, so how about it?

Sorry for the confrontational tone, but when spam still sits around for hours at a time, and items sit in review queues for months, it's kind of frustrating.

(I don't even have enough rep to create a new tag, otherwise I would have added it)

3
  • I'm 99% certain you're aware of this, but the reputation threshold for using the review queue was just increased to 350 on beta sites for first posts and late answers, which probably excluded at least a few active users of the queue.
    – John Bensin
    Commented Sep 12, 2013 at 11:22
  • 2
    @JohnBensin - yeah, I saw that, which is really unfortunate. There's still dozens upon dozens of people with enough reputation to handle the queue. The fact that this question only has one upvote (presumably from you) and 12 views tells me plenty about the current state of user involvement here.
    – user5954
    Commented Sep 12, 2013 at 12:44
  • 1
    Hopefully as the site ages, more users will start using the tools, even though on a small site, it may not be necessary to use some of the review queues, e.g. it's easy enough to pick out first posts just using the activity tab. That doesn't apply to close votes, though. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any ways to encourage people to use the review queues, apart from badges (which don't seem to be enough at the moment). Maybe higher-rep users and mods will have more ideas.
    – John Bensin
    Commented Sep 12, 2013 at 14:11

2 Answers 2

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5

I seems to me that Bitcoin.SE members got a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work that they were stuck with. Fact is that there are few active experts, but a disproportionate amount of dabblers that come to ask one question and zip away again. There is a very small middle-ground, the people that would help by raising flags and voting. When I rediscovered Bitcoin.SE for myself a few weeks ago, I had the impression that this SE had slowed down and fallen to disorder in some degree. I think that if a handful people restart it by putting a bit more effort into cleaning house, working through review queues, consolidating duplicates and voting this site could quickly would regain momentum.

It is somewhat of a self-sustaining cycle:

  • Good questions and answers hardly stand out of the flood of mediocre and localized questions¹
  • -> the page first confronts you with what looks like a mountain of work²
  • --> people aren't motivated to stick around³
  • ---> there are few people that vote and sustain the quality
  • ----> Good questions and answers hardly stand out...

Since I started coming here about a month ago, I have cast more than 400 votes, raised more than 50 flags, and done more than one hundred reviews. I am sure that I won't be able to keep up the pace (I have a lot more time currently than I usually would), but I'm hoping to help clean up, inspire others to do the same and perhaps initiate the breaking the aforementioned vicious cycle. By the way, I think it would also help, if there were more interesting questions. Most questions that currently crop up, are localized, duplicates or low hanging fruits – so if you have any, hit us!

¹ Currently, you get what, maybe one or two votes for a well-researched in depth answer? And most times the asker doesn't even bother to accept anything.

² Hundreds of unanswered questions, even more questions without an accepted answer, tons of duplicates

³ Nobody ever hangs out in the chat, praise for effort put in is scarce

So, let's just do this. :)

7
  • Oh snap: xkcd.com/810
    – Murch Mod
    Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 14:51
  • It seems to be even worse now.
    – fedorqui
    Commented May 15, 2017 at 21:36
  • @fedorqui: I beg to differ. We're currently somewhat overrun with First Posts, but tagging is much improved, other review queues are usually practically empty, and we have a few experts that participate in answering questions. What you see is a current run-up due to congestion on the network and peaking interest due to the recent price-rally.— Feel free to help out though, we sure could use more help.
    – Murch Mod
    Commented May 27, 2017 at 22:37
  • First of all: I am sure you are doing a great job :) I suggested an edit to a post in the HNQ. I noticed there were no reviewers after a lot of hours, which I found strange compared to other Stack Exchange sites. Upon searching, I found this question as well as checked the numbers in the review page to see they were quite high for a small site. There is probably a need to have more active users in moderation-related issues. Area51 stats look ok, but sometimes they do not show the full picture, specially on users that are not active anymore.
    – fedorqui
    Commented May 29, 2017 at 11:05
  • @fedorqui: Thanks. Yeah, unfortunately, we're a pretty tiny site with lots of drive-by askers and a small number of regular contributors. I think I may be the only one that looks at the review queues every day. ;) In times like this price-rally (Bitcoin went from ~$1300 to ~$2700 in a few weeks, suddenly there is a lot more interest. I think we've done a lot to clean up the site since this post three and a half years ago, but the community of regulars is unfortunately still a similar size.
    – Murch Mod
    Commented May 29, 2017 at 17:08
  • I saw a fresh, related discussion in Meta: Is there any way for “outsiders” to help a site with a full edit queue?. And me myself being mod in another small site I see it ver often to have mods being almost the only ones taking care of review queues. So yes, probably the key point here is on how to get those drive-by askers and answerers to return to the site. I don't have the formula, but I noticed that commenting and pinging them tends to work... sometimes. Success!
    – fedorqui
    Commented May 29, 2017 at 20:32
  • @fedorqui: It does work for people that are active on other sites, however a huge amount of our askers come directly from the web, many don't even have accounts. It seems to me that those tend to not return and especially not accept an answer. I think the way to retain a better community would be to actually reject more of those low-quality questions. That would make the frontpage more interesting to experts and confront them with less boring content. However, this obviously also creates a backlash in the wider community, and requires more presence and energy than I can bring to the table.
    – Murch Mod
    Commented May 29, 2017 at 20:41
4

I'm kinda doing my best to clear the review queues every time I come here. But heh

Thank you for reviewing 20 Close Votes today; come back in 9 hours to continue reviewing.

So, that's all for today.

FYI. I don't come regularly because this site is not helpful to me. Very poor quality due to the lack of participation from experts. Less than 20% of questions are tagged properly, which makes it impossible to find duplicates. And as Murch said, “good questions and answers hardly stand out…”. This site clearly lacks a core group of active competent users that are motivated enough to improve the quality and clear the crap out.

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