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Following on from my last post and these style guide post we get on meta, do you think a chat room dedicated to help people improve their posts would be useful?

Let's imagine, a user posts an answer and gets told in comments they need to improve it but they are inexperienced and do not know what exactly to do. They could stop by this room and ask more experienced users, how to improve their post.

I think this could really help people to get started here, while also showing that we do want them to contribute and we care about making there posts better.

For now, this is just a discussion to get some opinions, rather than a feature-request. I would like to know, would the experienced users stop by to help? and would more inexperienced users come to the room for tips?

Please give your opinions, good or bad.

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    Isn't that one of the reasons the main room exists? Why create a special one?
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Nov 4, 2016 at 11:55
  • I am sure it is but I was thinking some users may be intimidated by, or be hesitant to go to the main chat and ask for help, a dedicated room may alleviate that? I could be wrong though, so I just thought I would put it out there.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Nov 4, 2016 at 12:01
  • Well, you can always create it, if you like. See how it goes. I usually tell people to come into the main chat and, if they do and there are other conversations going on, I create a new room for them. I just don't see much point in having a permanent room for this. Still, as I said, it's up to you. YOu have the rep to create one if you think it would be useful.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Nov 4, 2016 at 12:02
  • I think I will later on, just to test it but it would be a lot more effective if I could get community support.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Nov 4, 2016 at 12:04
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    There's a second problem - a lot of users who have this problem don't have rep. They can't chat as a result. I don't see how a dedicated room would help - permanent or not - because you would have to add every low rep user to the access lists to do anything with them.
    – Thomas Ward Mod
    Commented Nov 4, 2016 at 12:29
  • That is a valid concern and one I had not considered @ThomasWard
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Nov 4, 2016 at 13:41
  • There! I just improved one of their posts! :-D
    – Fabby
    Commented Nov 5, 2016 at 21:00

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Firstly, a comment only saying "make it better" is worse than useless. The comment must spell out what needs to happen to make the post better.

That said, there are situations where iterative help is required. The system already suggests breaking out long comment threads into post-specific chat-rooms. They're linked to from the comments, so even after the fact, it's a good reference for how a post was improved.

But past that, helping people with the site is —if you had to pick one— the primary goal of the main chat room. There are always people there, often some moderators.

So... I think we already have what you're suggesting, it just so happens to have other purposes.
But it would be nice if it were advertised a little more (by system and users alike).

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  • perhaps then, simply encouraging users to link chat in there comments would be a simpler solution: "If you need help improving your post, please stop by chat. I may be coming at this from the wrong place, rather than looking for the big solution, I should just get out there, be the change and hope others follow.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Nov 4, 2016 at 13:44

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