Staging Ground: looking back and moving forward

Question

Tldr: Staging Ground has moved from being a new idea to being a standard feature of Stack Overflow.

Impact

Since relaunching in June, over 72,600 questions have been submitted into Staging Ground by over 65,700 unique askers. 44% of those questions graduated to the main site, thanks in part to the hard work of over 4,700 individual reviewers.

We have seen improvement in two main metrics for questions that have gone through Staging Ground before being published on Stack Overflow, compared to those that don’t.

Survival Rate – percentage of graduated Staging Ground questions that remain open for at least seven days after making it to the main site.
Success Rate – percentage of graduated Staging Ground questions with either an answer or a post score of at least 2.

	Survival Rate	Success Rate
Staging Ground	83%	71%
Non-Staging Ground	40.8%	35%

These results show us that Staging Ground is beneficial for new askers, and that the development of the feature has been successful.

Iterations

Staging Ground has progressed through a series of stages (pun intended) of growth and development, especially in the last few months.

Staging Ground development history:

Completed two beta trials, collaborating with beta participants to improve processes, and then launched to general availability
Completed numerous quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes:
- Improved onboarding materials (YouTube video, new help center articles)
- Added email notifications
- Started displaying Staging Ground posts within user profile pages
- Fixed a number of bugs
Implemented additional mod tooling features, such as a new tool for mods to be able to issue warnings to reviewers instead of only suspensions
Added a reviewer stats widget, to provide reviewers with visibility into their impact
Implemented reviewer and asker badges to incentivize participation
Conducted several rounds of user research to learn more about satisfaction with the process, question quality, and more
Launched Question Assistant, an experiment to help askers improve their questions earlier in the process, which resulted in higher survival and success rates

Moving forward

Thanks to the hard work and feedback of beta testers, reviewers, and askers, Staging Ground is able to help new askers find more success and better outcomes in asking their first questions on Stack Overflow. We are excited that this feature has gradually moved from being a new idea to now becoming a standard feature on Stack Overflow.

As with the development of any feature set, we must decide when to consider a new initiative complete. While no software product is ever truly finished, we believe Staging Ground has achieved the status of a fully functioning feature of the platform, creating positive experiences for users. While we don't have immediate plans for new development in this area we will continue to monitor feedback and consider it for potential implementation when the time comes to iterate again, as it always does.

We know there are still some outstanding bugs and feature requests related to Staging Ground, which we will consider through site maintenance processes like bug duty and community-asks sprints. If any new, urgent, bugs, or other pressing issues arise, we are committed to addressing those as well. We feel good about the progress Staging Ground has made, and we want to make sure it continues to be a useful tool for new askers on Stack Overflow.

Speaking of iteration, what’s next?

One additional update that we are adding in the near future is allowing new askers the ability to opt-in or out of Staging Ground. Through feedback we have gathered from user interviews and surveys, it has become clear that some askers react very negatively to being forced into Staging Ground. We want to create the conditions to encourage high quality content on the platform, while also putting users in the driver seat of their own experience on the site.

Making Staging Ground optional will also save time for reviewers by avoiding providing feedback to askers who aren’t willing to collaborate and are likely to abandon their question. On the other hand, our research has shown that askers who do choose to opt-in will be more likely to closely collaborate with reviewers resulting in better outcomes. We hope that new askers who have the frustrating experience of an unsuccessful question will come to see the value in going the Staging Ground route on their own, and will make the choice to opt-in for their next attempt to reap the benefits of posting a higher quality question.

Another idea, which is not currently in development, but which we have discussed several times and hope to explore in future iterations, is the potential for awarding rep to reviewers.

For now, we look forward to seeing how Staging Ground will continue to support new askers, while we focus on bringing more positive improvements to other corners of the platform.

Comparing the success and survival rate among all questions when looking at questions posted without the SG when questions posted from the SG have already been pre-filtered to not include obviously off topic questions is a bit disingenuous. that's not to say that it isn't useful, but i think we're overplaying the success and survival metrics a bit. — Kevin B, Commented Jan 23 at 19:39
Re: "allowing new askers the ability to opt-in or out of Staging Ground" - Can you clarify what that means, exactly? Is it going to be opt-in, opt-out, or a specific choice presented to the user? — zcoop98, Commented Jan 23 at 19:51
I think making Staging Ground opt-in is a pretty reasonable idea. I haven't contributed much, but whenever I do look at Staging Ground I question if it's worth spending time to give detailed advice to users who might not be receptive. When we did the Mentorship project it was optional, but the users who opted-in were often very receptive and so the mentors did feel like it was worth taking the time to assist them. I don't think the async nature of Staging Ground can be as effective as real-time Mentorship was, but this could still help a bit. — user1114, Commented Jan 23 at 20:00
Honestly, that you're giving users to opt out of the SG was enough for me to downvote this. I've been an advocate for getting more users to be sent to the SG since the start, not less. — Thom A, Commented Jan 23 at 20:03
"44% of those questions graduated" So what you are saying is that more than half of all questions asked are junk. Sounds right. — JK., Commented Jan 23 at 21:32
@cocomac As a user who went through SG with a perfectly fine question (approved, 3 upvotes, no downvotes/comments) I would personally opt-out of the SG for the simple reason of I'm confident that I know what I'm doing and don't need to waste reviewer time — Starship, Commented Jan 23 at 21:48
@JK. That number honestly sounds high...I guess a lot of bad questions aren't actually gotten too — Starship, Commented Jan 23 at 21:48
Personally, I think a SG rep system should be the top priority. Giving an incentive to the reviewers to review correctly is the best way to ensure SG is actually useful. — Starship, Commented Jan 23 at 21:54
Mod reminder: Please post anything you want staff to respond to as an answer, not a comment. Comment threads containing multiple discussion topics are unwieldy and difficult to follow. — Ryan M, Commented Jan 23 at 22:48
"Launched Question Assistant, an experiment to help askers improve their questions earlier in the process, which resulted in higher survival and success rates" Eh, I'm still on the fence on that one. I stand by Correlation does not indication Causation; especially when you can't verify the response from users to the QA (or even what the QA advised them). — Thom A, Commented Jan 24 at 14:13
"Making Staging Ground optional will also save time for reviewers by avoiding providing feedback to askers who aren’t willing to collaborate and are likely to abandon their question." The correct way to handle such questions - granted, this requires mind-reading - is to silently discard them before they are posted. — Karl Knechtel, Commented Jul 1 at 19:03
@karl regardless of whether or not that's a joke answer, I disagree. that's bad UX and not respectful of that person's time. even if you make the argument that they're not respectful of others' time, that wouldn't always be the case, and I don't think it justifies it. we don't like UX that does nothing. why would we put that on others? — starball, Commented Jul 1 at 19:43
@starball The point is that such willingness to collaborate is an expected basic requirement to use the site. Therefore, making the SG optional does not save time for reviewers; the time is wasted by any response that doesn't immediately reject the question, because community members must still review it to close it. That time was wasted any time that the OP isn't interested in policy. — Karl Knechtel, Commented Jul 1 at 20:46

Dharman · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-23 22:11:59Z

35

Please don't let users opt-out of Staging Ground. If anything we need to force more users there. I'd imagine that most of the users who complain about landing there are the ones that need it the most.

answered Jan 23 at 22:11

DharmanMod

33.9k1717 gold badges191191 silver badges306306 bronze badges

1

I also imagine that who complain about landing there are the ones who are least likely to learn and improve from SG

Starship
– Starship

2025-01-23 22:31:23 +00:00
Commented Jan 23 at 22:31
If a user actively doesn't want to cooperate, I think would probably be better to just close their question on the main site and not waste (much) time with Re-Evaluations etc (under the assumption that we can't reasonably get them to not ask their question). If a user isn't interested in the SG but wants to cooperate, that would likely someone needing the SG. The issue is that we don't know which users are willing to cooperate beforehand.

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-23 22:34:25 +00:00
Commented Jan 23 at 22:34
12

@dan1st If a user doesn't want to cooperate, I don't want their question on the main site. I'd rather leave it in SG and keep rejecting re-evaluation until they either stop trying or start cooperating.

Anerdw
– Anerdw

2025-01-23 22:40:32 +00:00
Commented Jan 23 at 22:40
@Anerdw There is also the rare but unlikely case of an uncooperative user with a fine question

Starship
– Starship

2025-01-24 00:31:02 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 0:31
4

@Starship Then just approve it and everyone’s happy? I don’t see how thus connects to opt-out.

Anerdw
– Anerdw

2025-01-24 02:35:37 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 2:35
4

"I'd imagine that most of the users who complain about landing there are the ones that need it the most." Completely agree. The users I often see that want to get out of the SG, and not interact with it, are the ones who need to most help & the question should never get out of the SG in its current form; often "Gif me da codez!" style questions, or containing images of text. Otherwise they are people who consider themselves "experts" but are failing at the first hurdle; often these questions are poor as they lack important details they think irrelevant. Such users would certainly opt-out.

Thom A
– Thom A Mod

2025-01-24 12:12:56 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 12:12
1

Just wanted to point to my responses on Thom A's answer below.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 17:45:15 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 17:45
I suspect the folks who'd want to opt-out are generally the folks who see any delay between asking a question and getting an answer as an obstacle/problem. I can understand that those are often the folks whose questions most often need improvement... But I can also understand the point that folks who won't listen to others' feedback are wasting everyone's time anyway, and that making them go through the Staging Ground doesn't change/improve that. It seems like there could be better solutions than just letting folks opt out of it, though.

V2Blast
– V2Blast StaffMod

2025-01-31 18:42:24 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 18:42

Add a comment |

Spevacus · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-23 20:08:04Z

I liked the Staging Ground. I hopped on your guys' podcast to, essentially, gas it up, because I thought it was a good idea that needed backing encouragement to continue to iterate on, improve, and use what you've learned from developing it to improve the new user experience.

Stack Overflow suffers from a lack of onboarding. A lot of the frustration new users experience is a lack of knowing how to get what they want out of the platform. Some of that is a disconnect between what we're perceived as and what we are. Some of that is a result of us not telling them how we work. It's that latter part that we can improve on the most, but the former is important, too.

In a roundabout way, the SG enables reviewers to bridge that gap with tooling you provided. This is great. I was hoping that this would mean further onboarding developments, enabling new users to know "how to Stack Overflow", and then the Staging Ground could move into a supplemental system that turns (hopefully) okay questions into great ones.

This would hopefully separate the site into several stages for an asker. First, you learn what SO is. Then, you learn how it works. Then, you ask a question that gets fed into Staging Ground, where you're shown how it works by reviewers. This little day dream has holes, but I think the bones of something good is here.

One additional update that we are adding in the near future is allowing new askers the ability to opt-in or out of Staging Ground. Through feedback we have gathered from user interviews and surveys, it has become clear that some askers react very negatively to being forced into Staging Ground.

Did you ask these interviewees why they feel so frustrated? I think that question's really, really important here, and I'd love to know if you asked it. If you did have answers to that question, I feel like you'd have mentioned it, so I have to assume you don't have that data. Without answers to that question, it seems like you guys are immediately leaping to "Well, let's let them opt out!" which is just... Well, it's frustrating to me, because Staging Ground is currently the only thing giving us the opportunity to onboard people in a closed environment that has extra tools that help us do that.

Are these users frustrated with the SG because we have stringent content moderation policies? Is it because they aren't getting an answer to their question ASAP? Is it because of something else that they should've been informed about prior to asking their question? Something that onboarding would really, really help with?

That's all I wanted to say. I'd feel bad if I didn't speak up about this because, well, I was really hopeful that the Staging Ground would be the start of a series of initiatives to improve new user onboarding. I still have that hope. I just think this line of thinking goes against the thought process that conceived the SG.

I'm not going to address the rep-for-reviewers portion because, well, that's its own can of worms, and deserves its own post (a modern post, that is; the old one is more broadly scoped). Heck, reputation as a whole might need a rethink, and that's a bear of a thing to consider.

Thank you for mentioning onboarding (before the SG). I think that asker onboarding is probably the most important part of the site that needs improvement to ensure a better asker experience (with and without the Staging Ground), ideally if done in an interactive way (e.g. a single choice menu "What type of question are you asking?" and ask the user to provide different information depending on the answer, e.g. fixing issue-->ask for proper reproducer, expected vs actual result, etc; conceptual question-->expectations (and possibly previous research), recommendations-->not for SO/discussions?) — dan1st, Commented Jan 23 at 21:11

starball · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-23 20:24:35Z

22

Making Staging Ground optional will also save time for reviewers by avoiding providing feedback to askers who aren’t willing to collaborate and are likely to abandon their question.

Sure, but I don't see this as a net good. If a post needs work, it doesn't matter if it starts from SG or not. It needs work, and if it's not SG reviewers dealing with an uninvested asker, it will be someone else.

One additional update that we are adding in the near future is allowing new askers the ability to opt-in or out of Staging Ground.

So for who is it going to be opt-in, and for who is it going to be opt-out? I hope you lean towards opt-out. SG is also a culture-reinforcer. It dedicates a step to quality before getting answers. That aligns with the mission to build a high-quality library of useful Q&A. It helps set expectations for new users.

We hope that new askers who have the frustrating experience of an unsuccessful question will come to see the value in going the Staging Ground route on their own

Consider advertising that benefit of SG when a user's question gets closed and deleted. Maybe with an inbox notification, or maybe as part of the Ask UI the next time they start a new question.

answered Jan 23 at 20:24

starballMod

58.7k88 gold badges7272 silver badges177177 bronze badges

2

In terms of opting in vs opting out, there will be an updated interface in which users can draft their question. When the author completes all the sections and gets to the bottom of the page they will have to select the destination for the post, either Staging Ground or directly to the main site. We will present this choice in a manner that extolls the benefits of Staging Ground, and encourages that option.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-29 21:24:20 +00:00
Commented Jan 29 at 21:24
1

Your idea of pointing users to Staging Ground when their question gets closed or deleted is an interesting one! I have noted it for further consideration.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-29 21:24:26 +00:00
Commented Jan 29 at 21:24
1

@Sasha you could go even further and make a button that copies the post to a new SG item draft.

starball
– starball Mod

2025-01-30 01:51:58 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 1:51
I am not so sure about that. I feel like that would cause people just repost closed questions which may even be approved as-is by some reviewers.

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-30 07:17:20 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 7:17
@dan1st you could go even further and auto-post the corresponding SG canned-comments for the closure reason and put the SG item in "needs major changes" automatically.

starball
– starball Mod

2025-01-30 09:03:21 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 9:03
To be honest, I don't think that would help that much because many off-topic questions are just off-topic/cannot be improved (adding them to the Staging Ground would kinda be a waste of time) and you'd also have to consider possible existing answers and comments (should comments move to the SG? Should they still be present in the question once published?)

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-30 09:31:18 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 9:31
@dan1st close reasons can indicate things that aren't worth / don't need fixing, and which lead to closure in SG (typo, duplicate, etc.). good point about existing answers. those conditions could be cased out. I don't see why not copy over comments (other than it probably wouldn't be super pretty reverse-projecting onto a model with an "extra dimension")

starball
– starball Mod

2025-01-30 10:37:04 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 10:37
The Staging Ground already has a scaling issue. Posts that have been closed already are probably unlikely (in comparison to new questions) to get better so I think it's better to focus on new questions that have a higher chance of being improved. Also, I feel like it might be seen as annoying when some user closes a question that isn't worth fixing on the main site just to see it again in the Staging Ground (or on the main site again without any change if a robo-reviewer just approved it).

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-30 10:47:44 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 10:47
Also, if a post gets closed and the asker isn't interested in improving it, sending it to the SG isn't a good idea either.

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-30 10:48:42 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 10:48
1

@dan1st if the asker's not interested in improving it, why would they click the button to send it to SG?

starball
– starball Mod

2025-01-30 17:14:45 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 17:14
I think I misread some of your previous comments as suggesting to go further and automatically move these questions to the Staging Ground upon being closed (without the user pressing a button).

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-30 17:28:07 +00:00
Commented Jan 30 at 17:28

Add a comment |

Thom A · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-24 12:58:51Z

14

Making Staging Ground optional will also save time for reviewers by avoiding providing feedback to askers who aren’t willing to collaborate and are likely to abandon their question

This isn't going to save reviewers time; it's going to increase it in other review workflows. In the SG a single user's feedback puts the post into a different status, such as Major Changes (with the exception of Closing, which requires 2 users). When a question is on the main site it requires 3 users to close the question. If user with a "Gief me da codez; here screenshot of my bad codez." post can opt out of using the SG, then you are increasing the number of users that need to be involved to get the desired outcome: 1 user reviewing "Needs Major Changes" Vs 3+ users (minimally 3 users VTC, more if it ends up with flags and goes in the review queues as well).

As for the point that such askers aren't willing to collaborate and likely the abandon; good. This might seem harsh, but we don't want that content on the site. It's not helpful, or useful. Some (experienced) users do answer such bad questions and they too are not helping the site either. That these questions are abandoned is good because now poor quality questions aren't being posted, and can't be answered. If they were answered I don't doubt that the community might well strongly downvote the question, and that results in the author being in a Question Ban; we (and I assume SO) don't want that. The SG is a place to help new users also avoid (what can be quickly) digging themselves a (very deep) hole. This is also why I'm an advocate of banned users going to the SG; it helps them get only good content to the main site, and good content helps get them unbanned.

Don't help new, mislead, and uninformed users get into that ban by giving them an option to opt-out of onboarding. Onboarding is the thing the site lacks the most, and the SG is the closest thing we have to it. If users don't want onboarding, they aren't likely to use the site as it's intended, and thus aren't going to have a positive experience. If that's the case, then they are better off not getting the question posted; they can ask their off-topic/low quality question on a site that has lower standards for quality.

edited Jan 24 at 12:58

answered Jan 24 at 12:37

Thom AMod

97.5k88 gold badges148148 silver badges233233 bronze badges

2

I definitely hear the concerns about the amount of work it takes to deal with low quality posts, when they make it to the main site. However, one thing that I think it's important to note is that making Staging Ground optional will not necessarily result in less posts going there, because of the daily cap on the volume of questions that are sent to SG based on how many reviewers are active. Already there are new askers who qualify but don’t have their questions routed to Staging Ground because it is at capacity for the day.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 17:42:35 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 17:42
1

With this change users will be able to self select, allowing those that are mostly likely to actually take advantage of reviewer feedback to receive it, rather than being denied the opportunity because Staging Ground was already capped. Essentially, users who want to collaborate can go through Staging Ground based on their motivation to actually improve their question, rather than the randomness of how many reviewers are around that day and when exactly they drafted their post.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 17:43:02 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 17:43
1

"Already there are new askers who qualify but don’t have their questions routed to Staging Ground because it is at capacity for the day." And that's a problem, @Sasha . They should all be going to the SG. Remove the randomness by making all users go. There should not be a cap.

Thom A
– Thom A Mod

2025-01-31 17:48:29 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 17:48
2

@Sasha sounds great. The people who want to post low quality content are just free to do it. I'm not spending much time in SG because I think main requires more attention. I'd probably review more in SG if I was sure it would prevent that content from reaching main. But since it doesn't, it just feels like a complete waste of time. Why should I be reviewing in SG if crap still gets posted and needs attention? I could just save my own time by not doing that and look at main where the issues are anyway.

VLAZ
– VLAZ

2025-01-31 17:48:33 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 17:48
2

"Essentially, users who want to collaborate can go through Staging Ground" so where should those users who don't want to collaborate go, as it certainly should not be Stack Overflow; that is a place that even more expects collaboration, that is the whole point of the site. If they aren't looking to collaborate then their question is more likely to get closed, and getting such a question opened, and then answered, is a far slower and more involved process for all participants.

Thom A
– Thom A Mod

2025-01-31 17:52:49 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 17:52
1

@Sasha IMO this opt in / out of the SG isn't a great move. One of the aims of the SG was to onboard users and help them to improve their question before it hits the main site. Users who want to not go through SG are likely ones who're facing some friction due to off-topic / not being able to improve their questions. Giving an opt-out just trades that friction for a worse experience on the main site.

Abdul Aziz Barkat
– Abdul Aziz Barkat

2025-01-31 18:05:18 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 18:05
I suspect the folks who'd want to opt-out are generally the folks who see any delay between asking a question and getting an answer as an obstacle/problem. I can understand that those are often the folks whose questions most often need improvement... But I can also understand the point that folks who won't listen to others' feedback are wasting everyone's time anyway, and that making them go through the Staging Ground doesn't change/improve that. It seems like there could be better solutions than just letting folks opt out of it, though.

V2Blast
– V2Blast StaffMod

2025-01-31 18:42:50 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 18:42
It's called a consultant, @V2Blast . ;)

Thom A
– Thom A Mod

2025-01-31 19:42:01 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 19:42

Add a comment |

Kevin B · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-23 20:30:59Z

12

This was a bit complicated to put in a comment, but these are the specific stats I’d like to be able to see.

How beneficial was the SG to new askers?

How many new askers who entered the sg ended up with an answer at the end of their process compared to how many new askers who didn’t use the sg ended up with an answer? (For the purpose of this metric I would consider closed as a dupe as ending up with an answer)

How many new askers who asked through the SG were still active on site 3 months later compared to the baseline?

Can we get an individual breakdown of the two metrics you are using to define success?

How effective has the SG been at filtering out/improving questions that would have been closed?

What percentage of published SG posts ended up closed? This is probably your survival rate above inverted, but I included this for both completion, and to rephrase what that stat actually means to me.

edited Jan 23 at 20:30

answered Jan 23 at 20:27

Kevin B

95.1k77 gold badges106106 silver badges168168 bronze badges

1

clarifying question: what do you mean by "an individual breakdown of the two metrics you are using to define success"?

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-24 19:34:30 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 19:34
for example, if the success rate of SG is 71%, how much of that 71% was one vs the other? 2 upvotes vs received an answer, and any overlap?

Kevin B
– Kevin B

2025-01-24 20:17:41 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 20:17
Ok, I am going to try to answer these questions as comprehensively as I can, so bear with me. Since the relaunch of SG in June, “first questions” posted by new askers that did not go through SG received answers at the rate of 30.5%, compared to 44.7% for SG questions. We did not factor in “closed as a duplicate” to these numbers, just fyi.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 22:34:32 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 22:34
Users whose first question went through SG are slightly more likely to still be active on the site 3 months later (51-53%) than those whose first question went directly to the main site (47-48%). Activity here is measured by simply continuing to show up on the site, not by taking any specific action once there.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 22:34:43 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 22:34
85.9% of SG questions that met the criteria to be considered "successful" do so by receiving an answer only. 3.6% received a post score of +2 (but no answer), and 10.5% of successful questions met both criteria.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 22:34:54 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 22:34
We can’t know which questions necessarily would have been closed if they were posted in their original state, before being reviewed and edited. However comparing the survival rates of questions that went through SG and those that didn’t can give us a glimpse into the impact.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 22:35:05 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 22:35
Looking just at the closure rate (in other words, not counting deletions) we see that 14.1% of posts that have graduated from SG to the main site since June ended up closed. In comparison, the closure rate for all posts on Stack Overflow in the same period was 22.4%.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 22:35:18 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 22:35

Add a comment |

Starship · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-24 00:39:25Z

we must decide when to consider a new initiative complete...Staging Ground has achieved the status of a fully functioning feature of the platform...we don't have immediate plans for new development

I don't like this at all. Not for Staging Ground and not as a general pattern. "Its not so utterly terrible that it needs urgent fixing" doesn't mean "its perfect we're mostly ignoring it now".

Honestly, the one thing you did focus on, an opt-out feature, isn't that useful. Even excluding the potential harm mentioned by other answers when users opt-out a bad question from Staging Ground, there is minimal, if any, harm done by having a good question which the OP doesn't want to going through Staging Ground every once in a while. The only downsides are the delay, which isn't that much of a delay (max 24 hours), and wasted reviewer time, but this probably isn't so common as to be a big issue.

The one thing I really would like to see is giving reputation for helpful Staging Ground reviews, and moderation actions in general, and I'm sad to hear that "the potential for awarding rep to reviewers" "is not currently in development". The best way to ensure the success of Staging Ground is to ensure that questions get reviews, and those reviews are accurate, correct, and useful. Incentivizing users (with well thought out incentives, of course) really is the best way to do that.

Dalija Prasnikar · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-24 19:09:54Z

6

Another idea, which is not currently in development, but which we have discussed several times and hope to explore in future iterations, is the potential for awarding rep to reviewers.

Please do not under any circumstances start awarding reputation to reviewers in Staging Ground.

Even badges are enough to attract vast number of robo-reviewers that are approving just about anything that even remotely looks like a question. I don't have to explain how is posting not-ready and completely off topic questions damaging both to the site and the askers. Introducing reputation would be fatal.

answered Jan 24 at 19:09

Dalija PrasnikarMod

28.7k1212 gold badges9494 silver badges136136 bronze badges

3

To be honest, I think a reputation incentive could work if it is ensured that robo-reviewers end up with a net loss. Of course, such a system will be gamed and the exact adjustments are very important but it could work well if done right (not like the last proposal).

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-24 19:58:55 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 19:58
@dan1st The problem is who will moderate all that. We don't have enough curators to moderated posted questions and close the ones that need closing. This will not work out. Currently the greatest problem with reviewing SG is that those questions are literally hidden from regular curators that don't explicitly visit SG unless they are in New or Re-evaluate state. We need to show all those in regular question list by the time of their creation. this would increase number of reviewers and reduce chances for potential errors.

Dalija Prasnikar
– Dalija Prasnikar Mod

2025-01-24 20:06:52 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 20:06
I have seen completely off-topic questions and unsuitable questions leaving the SG and not only that, but those are getting upvoted, presumably by the person who approved the question. The whole premise of rewarding survival is skewed.

Dalija Prasnikar
– Dalija Prasnikar Mod

2025-01-24 20:08:40 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 20:08
3

I don't think incentives like that should necessarily reward survival but use upvotes (excluding those from the reviewer) instead but there are a lot of other important factors to consider with these things.

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-24 20:12:13 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 20:12
5

an incentive worth participating for is one worth cheating for

Kevin B
– Kevin B

2025-01-24 20:49:30 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 20:49
@DalijaPrasnikar I think rep system could work as long as its only well recieved questions which give rep and bad questions take rep. In fact i'd say that would reduce robo-reviewing. (obviously upvotes by the reviewer themselves should be ignored)

Starship
– Starship

2025-01-27 00:37:00 +00:00
Commented Jan 27 at 0:37
@Starship Define well received. In proposal rep punishment for each downvote is still lower than awarded rep for upvote. We also have numerous off topic questions that attract huge number of upvotes, and which eventually get closed but remain. I have seen a number of users that approve anything they see, including spam. Once some one flags a bad reviewer, I could spend hours investigating in SG, because once you start you land on others. Moderators cannot handle that. Just like we cannot close all off topic questions. Reputation would be a disaster.

Dalija Prasnikar
– Dalija Prasnikar Mod

2025-01-27 06:45:32 +00:00
Commented Jan 27 at 6:45
Yes, the previous proposal is giving the wrong incentives and is encouraging. This is why I think we need a rep system that makes sure that just approving all posts results in a net loss (that's the most important part but there are obviously also other considerations). I also think there are other things that are necessary first (e.g. a proper, interactive onboarding for both reviewers and askers).

dan1st
– dan1st

2025-01-27 07:58:06 +00:00
Commented Jan 27 at 7:58
@DalijaPrasnikar closure would remove rep. And yes maybe upvotes and downvotes should be more balanced.

Starship
– Starship

2025-01-27 11:39:11 +00:00
Commented Jan 27 at 11:39
4

We hear the concerns about the moderation needs in preventing and catching robo-reviewers. Before we would launch any kind of rep system to reward reviewers we would have to do a lot more research and testing. As I said above, this is not something we are focusing on now, but when we do revisit it in the future we will be looking for community and mod input on what would be required to make it work well, which could definitely include beefing up mod tooling.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-29 21:22:45 +00:00
Commented Jan 29 at 21:22
@Sasha just out of curiosity, when is “the future”. Is that in a few weeks? A few months? A few years? Practically never?

Starship
– Starship

2025-01-31 19:42:46 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 19:42
@Starship its definitely not in the next few weeks, beyond that I don't know. As I wrote in the post we don't have any "immediate plans for new development" of SG at this time, but we do expect to iterate on it again at some point.

Sasha
– Sasha StaffMod

2025-01-31 21:21:14 +00:00
Commented Jan 31 at 21:21

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