How do we improve question and answer quality?

Question

I've noticed a few questions on here that are pretty, well, chatty, and a lot of answers where people are just offering their opinion on the poster's question. Since we want this to be the premier site for concise, answerable, fact-based questions, can we work hard and try to nip this in the bud (especially since lots of high rep users are part of the problem instead of the solution right now)? I suspect that we have a lot of new-to-Stack-Exchange users coming from the forums, and we will want to make sure that this site keeps a clearly different "feel" from there.

Some examples:

This sounds more like a marketing meeting or a brainstorm than a Q&A site.

This is way too open-ended and invites subjective suggestions. For reference, sites like Gaming prohibit shopping advice and recommendations.

The accepted answer for this one starts with "my predictions are", and the question itself is pretty useless. Predictions? This is supposed to be expert Q&A.

The answers to this one are totally uninformed, possibly even dangerous. You should not be answering a question like this unless you know exactly what you're talking about (probably the question needs to be on a legal site anyways).

etc.

Remember people, you should not be answering a question just to offer your opinion or input. Stack Exchange sites are meant to offer expertise where accepted and high-scored answers can be trusted to basically be "the final word" on the subject. This isn't a forum, and it isn't a strategy meeting. It's a place to compile verifiable, referenced facts for the use of the internet at large.

My apologies if I come on a bit strong, but I don't want to go through downvoting tens or hundreds of questions and answers when there's a much better high-level solution--all of us getting on the same page.

Answer 1

The site is brand-new, and a lot of users here don't have experience on Stack Exchange—and so, may not have read the FAQ.

Here's the relevant bits:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.

If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

• every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”
• your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”
• there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
• we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”
• it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”

If you see any of the above, please flag them!

Answer 2

My question, about which weaknesses affect market/mind share was an attempt to gather information about perceived Bitcoin weaknesses and prioritize them. It was in fact in response to an actual problem I have -- I'm not sure which Bitcoin weaknesses most need work, and working on those weaknesses is one of the things I do.

The question about mining pool payout models seemed to me to be more about which payout model makes the most sense for a casual miner. If he's a casual miner, he has to select a pool. There are a lot of payout models, and they're not always easy to understand. Rather than understand every payout model (some of which are mathematically complex), he'd rather see the ones that are best for most casual miners explained to him. There are a lot of casual miners, so it's useful for reference too.

I see these two questions very differently from you. Maybe I'm just trying too hard to see the good and ignoring the bad because it's bad. But maybe to some extent you are doing the reverse as well. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I understand that we share the goal of making the site as high quality as possible.)

Update: I realize I may have misunderstood you. You are talking about question and answer quality. My answer was addressed under the assumption, likely incorrect, that you were talking about question quality.

Answer 3

I agree in principal, however I think there are some logistical issues with being overly strict. As I pointed out elsewhere unlike programing Q&A where there is a fixed and known answer that is testable by the asker bitcoin has a lot of 'fuzziness'. People will be justifiably interested in the pros and cons of different mining pools for example, and at least an answer that explains what the differences are and how they work is useful (but not of course opinion on one viruses another).

We can always vote to close ones that are truly off topic, and down vote opinion based answers, but I'm at a loss to see how we have any other influence on the quality of of the Q&A. Open to suggestions though, because I agree with your concern.