Area 51 requirements

Question

Okay – 2.5 answers per question is good, only 1 answer per question needs some work. In a healthy site, questions receive multiple answers and the best answer is voted to the top.

The first reaction that I have to this rating on the Area 51: Board and Card Games Proposal, is to go over a bunch of old, already answered questions and add more answers to them.

Should I not do that?

What if I have more information to add to an answer or question, or a different view on the topic, even if it is fuctionally no different than an already accepted answer?

Also, the questions per day:

Needs Work – 15 questions per day on average is a healthy beta, 5 questions or fewer per day needs some work. A healthy site generates lots of good content to make sure users keep coming back.

Isn't that inviting to fluff questions?

Thoughts?

Answer 1

Should I to go over a bunch of old, already answered questions and add more answers to them.

No. If you believe that the current answers for any old, already answered questions are poorly worded or could be improved. Make an edit, the author will be notified. If the current answer is completely inaccurate and cannot be corrected without completely changing the intended message, then post a new answer. The majority of questions on B&CG.SE are rules questions. Rules questions invariably only require one, correct answer. This means that on average, if the first answerer gets it right, no future potential answerer will attempt to provide a competing answer (what would be the point). I would expect a healthy amount of answers/question to be between 1-2 and dependant upon the ratio of rules questions.

5 of expected 15 questions / day, Isn't that inviting to fluff questions?

Unfortunately yes it probably does. Do not feel tempted to ask fluff questions. The biggest mistake we can make as a community is to increase the number of poor question or answers to make the arbitrary site metrics look good.

Answer 2

Answers per question

I wouldn't worry about this metric. It's not actively bad and, as user 1873 said, a lot of our questions do have a single canonical answer (e.g. a quote from the rulebook or author -- though some of these questions definitely do have room for multiple answers just because of differences in how you explain the rules).

If we really want to increase the number of answers per question (e.g. if it starts to dip significantly), my advice is to write questions that go deeper than a rule reference. Many of the strategy questions on this site generate 3-5 good answers, for example.

Questions per day

This is a problem. I think mostly it's an issue of site population. So the ideal activity for fixing this is to raise the site's profile -- use the "share" button, write good answers to commonly-searched questions, &c. And be welcoming to new users. ;)

Also, remember that "Answer your own question" is an option. I don't think you should make up questions just to post, but if, for example, you run into an issue in play and resolve it yourself, it can be a useful service to other players to go to post the results of your research on the site.