This should have been done a long time ago. At this point, however, such an email would be a bit insulting for some higher-rep users; they might take it as an offense towards their work. The major problem is that the behavior we want to change today has been tolerated for way too long. This has lead to:
- users not voting to close as duplicates, but rather responding over and over again,
- few questions being closed as not a real question or not computer related (questions about websites are still answered by many, even though the FAQ says they're not SU related),
- people giving vague answers to vague questions instead of asking for more details in comments (this leads to answers being edited a lot of times, making it a needless back and forth),
- a complete fear of the community wiki flag. No one requests it, no one wants it, few people answer questions that are marked as such.
This behavior has to be changed, but moderators need to really crack the whip on this one. Good behavior should be rewarded by having a healthier community, not by throwing badges and rep at it.
Thinking about it, I think the whole concept of Super User is flawed. There's no direction, there's no clear-cut niche to fill, it's a dumping ground for anything even remotely IT related. We keep adding bullet points to the FAQ in the hopes it will somehow help things out. That's why it's failing; because that's the truth, it is failing, rotting from the inside. There's been endless discussion on meta about why SU's not working. There are simply no conclusions. Jeff doesn't really care about it (he's not involved in the site or the community that much), we can't change it because we only care about our own rep, leaving it to die.
We were left with a single active moderator (Diago) for the better part of 3 months. People might claim that they were active in the background, doing unglamorous janitorial work, but that's not true. There was one moderator, that's it! It's unacceptable to have one person left with so much work.
Using traffic as the most important metric means that we're steaming full speed ahead towards a very successful clone of Yahoo! Answers. I'd rather have a smaller, leaner, more focused Super User with users better prepared to handle the traffic that will inevitably come, than what it is today.
This might come off as just a bitter rant against a whole community, but I don't want it to be that. It is my personal opinion, one that I have formed over the months I've been active in the Super User community. I am part of that community, part of both the problem and the answer. I want this site to succeed because I think the idea in it is incredible; a place where people can help and get helped out of sheer good will, not through monetary incentives.
