So we created this gaming Q&A website

So we’ve been doing this next-gen programmer Q&A thing …

Which has done astonishingly off-the-charts blockbuster well. We turned it into a general idea about how to make the internet better with a network of next-gen community created and moderated Q&A sites on a variety of topics, created through an open, democratic process, that are forever creative commons …

http://stackexchange.com
http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq

Which spawned a gaming centric Q&A site …

Though I am a gamer, obviously, I was quite leery of a gaming centric Q&A site because it lacks certain … er, aspirational … elements that I believe exist on a lot of other semi-pro Q&A topics. Surprisingly, the gaming site has been doing very well in terms of quality of content (what I really care about) and also traffic (which I care less about, but it’s an OK metric of “is this even working?”). Additionally, the community mods and users are insanely active on the site, almost obsessively in fact. So I guess my fears were unwarranted.

I’m a little freaked out that there are so many Dwarf Fortress / Rogue questions on the gaming site, though many of the gaming questions are often absolutely freakin’ hilarious out of context in the all-network aggregator at stackexchange.com:

How can I stop nauseous animals from vomiting everywhere?
How can I tell if a corpse is safe to eat?
How to pray safely (to god)?
My wife is stuck in a wall, can I save her?

Our stated company goal is to make the internet better. We look very closely at the Q&A the community is producing to make sure it’s the kind of page you would want to end up on as the destination of, say, a Google web search. We plan to actively shut down (and make the data available under creative commons) any site proposals that survive to public beta, but do not ultimately generate content that we’re proud of, and that we legitimately feel makes the internet better at least in some small way.

Anyway, I present this for

a) your general amusement

b) your opinions on the suitability of our Q&A engine to the gaming topic

c) your comments on “are we actually creating a gaming Q&A site worth a damn at http://gaming.stackexchange.com?”

Feedback welcome.

My original post from 03-2008 on this topic, presented for historical interest:

I find the existence of the site baffling, because I don’t understand the usage scenarios at all.

Who are these people who can’t find the existing hand-edited, 1000x better FAQs for popular games they’re playing? The Nethack spoilers contain literally everything about that game. The only ones I see that have an explanation other than “can’t type into google search box” are the ones about obscure or meta topics - A Boy and His Blob on NES, the most popular starcraft 2 maps, etc.

This is different from the original stack exchange - there’s a ton of strange shit in programming where the only documentation is “ask someone who’s done it.”

I guess if you are too lazy to find a FAQ yourself, you can get somebody else to do it for you. One of the questions I looked at was literally answered by looking at the official company FAQ on the subject.

Interesting; I never thought about this in the context of existing game FAQs.

As I said, I’ve been concerned about this site from day one because it lacks professional and aspirational elements. Games are pure entertainment which is kind of the antithesis of what we’re trying to accomplish. That said, I am a gamer myself so I’m definitely sympathetic; I wasn’t against a gaming Q&A site … but I couldn’t in good conscience support it.

Thought experiment: can every game Q&A site, then, be reduced to “RTFFAQ?”

Thought experiment: what’s the ultimate, perfect search result page? Isn’t it a page that contains exactly the precise thing you wanted and nothing else?

Opened as a meta discussion topic as well:

And posted in the chat room:
http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/174115

(we don’t have chat.gaming up yet, but will… soon-ish…)

Programming is filled with obscure answers to very detailed problems that happen to a small number of people. By their nature games are more open and have a larger number of people looking at them. The surface questions are not hidden but purposefully exposed.

Larger questions like meta strategy are covered in depth with a larger pool of people contributing from other sources. Most games have some community site attached (often multiple) that does a much better job of offering various opinions on strategy.

The problem is you have such a limited number of users compared to the dedicated forums for each game. Deeper questions like - I want to find the best strategy do Y in game X, on your site I am going to get the opinion of one or two people at best. At worst (which I am seeing) I am going to get their interpretation of them googling the same question.

Sorry, not sure what this does that google or going to game dedicated forums don’t already do better.

Programming is filled with obscure answers to very detailed problems that happen to a small number of people. By their nature games are more open and have a larger number of people looking at them. The surface questions are not hidden but purposefully exposed.

Well, you could argue that modern games are quite complex and can generally warrant this kind of treatment in ways that older games could not, like say, Oblivion vs Donkey Kong, or Grand Theft Auto IV vs Bomberman.

Larger questions like meta strategy are covered in depth with a larger pool of people contributing from other sources. Most games have some community site attached (often multiple) that does a much better job of offering various opinions on strategy.

Sure, no doubt that an Oblivion specific site should have better information than a general gaming site. Though that does depend heavily on the audience and the software; phpbb is really, really bad at surfacing stuff. On a phpbb-alike, you’d have to read through a 50 page thread, buried in the animated sigs and other noise, to find the three people who can form coherent sentences and also have useful information to share.

With phpBB and their ilk, it’s like panning for gold in a river of sewage.

not sure what this does that google

How is that bad? The whole point of the exercise is to feed google quality content; as I said earlier

make sure it’s the kind of page you would want to end up on as the destination of, say, a Google web search

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback, and I’m not defending gaming.stackexchange.com – I still have deep reservations about gaming as a Q&A topic. You can be a professional programmer, or a professional sysadmin, or a professional webmaster, or a professional handyman, or a professional cook… but a professional gamer? Not so much…

I would name this cratestacker.com

Well, one thing that would be potentially be realy cool is if you somehow auto-aggregated all the questions asked into a FAQ. Or people could earn the right to be editors and do so. You’re basically running a usenet forum (which in the old days was aggregated into FAQS) with search and tags grafted on.

Like… say… this?

or… this?

(these are the only two tags strong enough to support the algorithm at the moment, though)

Does this mean you’re going to have a meltdown if someone asks a gaming question here?

Interesting site, but I think it would really take off if the questions were more of a griefing or exploitive “how-to” nature.

After all, an entertaining loss is more enjoyable than an annoying win.

Plus, this is the kind of info that offical FAQs and fora tend not to include.

As a bonus consequence, programmers and the like can submit questions on how to counter these situations leading to better games ahead…

There’s no organization, though. I really don’t think it’s a volume of content issue; I suspect it’s the very-long-running categorization vs. tagging, editor vs. machine information theory problem all over again.

It still serves a useful purpose for people who aren’t very good at searching, or questions that are of the type you can’t easily find an answer, but there’s a certain level of usefulness I don’t think you can reach without a human editor. For example - let’s say I had a burning desire to make sure people do C++ const correctness, or to find out how to do it.

Option 1: Search stack exchange.
Option 2: Parashift C++ FAQ.

Maybe they’re totally different usage scenarios, I dunno. Personally I find the Q&A format aggravating as hell to actually ask something, because on what planet do I have time to wait for the answer? Useful as hell when the answer is already in there and it crops up on Google, though.

It’s a 1000 times more useful than digging through forums, obviously, and it’s a fantastic Google content filler (though I have reservations about how the algorithm relevance actually is going to work over the long term for anything but very obscure things), but it’s also a 1000 times less useful than things like the crazy bastards at UESP wiki. Finding some way to knit that information pipeline together would be a hell of a drug.

I think the forums let people see the nuances in the answer and build a better answer over time. And honestly, I find your UI more distracting than most forums - dear god man,have you entered a contest to see how small you can make a font?

I think the forums let people see the nuances in the answer and build a better answer over time.

How so? Can you provide an example? On most (all) forums, I end up having to dig through 10 pages of “answers” to find the rare few that are coherent and relevant and useful. If I’m lucky. Or, pray that the last page contains the final resolution.

In our engine, the best stuff is voted up to the top, so you can mine the long tail if you want, but 99% of the time you don’t have to – the best stuff is on the same page, right under the question.

As for building a better answer over time… how? By copying and pasting, over and over, in replies? The epic of Gilgamesh is succinct in comparison to most phpBB and vBulletin threads.

At least in our engine, once you earn 2k rep, you can edit anyone’s posts – anywhere.

While I’m still on the fence about gaming as a topic, there’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind that we have a better mousetrap than crusty old vBulletin/phpBB for getting actual quality answers to the top of the page. YMMV of course, but … damn.

have you entered a contest to see how small you can make a font

Er… what?

Where are these tiny fonts on http://gaming.stackexchange.com you speak of?

(note that the “sketchy” template is used for all beta sites until we determine if they will survive past public beta)

You honestly can’t see on your page where you use small fonts?

Good luck with the site.

Those fonts aren’t small.

Well, the site is out of beta now. We couldn’t find a decent domain name (long story) so it’s sticking with http://gaming.stackexchange.com for the time being.

CrunchyGamer wasn’t available?

Dunno how much i’ll use the gaming one, but the programming one has been really handy at work. I’ve used it several times with great success.