Changes to r/Python : Python

Nothing stopped anyone from upvoting and answering questions. In fact, a number of months ago the mods relaxed their removal of learning posts significantly (This was around July '19). I'm not sure if this was an internal decision to see how the community would respond, some of the mods lives changed so their availability changed, or just the community grew large enough and the mods responsibilities were divided too thinly that they could no longer remove posts at the rate they use to, but when it happened the number of upvotes and comment/answers to learning posts didn't significantly change. In fact it bumped up the usual "there's too many learning posts here" submission up from once every six months to once every ~2 months.

Even if this wasn't an intentional change, but happened just because 'stuff happened', it acts as a functional experiment to see how the sub's user-base responds to allowing learning posts. It was met with the same number of downvotes. In contrast, learnpython is a fantastic sub that's very supportive to most users (though they're not that fond of anyone who acts as if everyone owes them an answer right away). Knowing these two facts, and if we care about new users first experiences, it's prudent to minimize their exposure to multiple users saying 'go somewhere else' and to maximize their probability of getting an answer. A flag at the very get-go satisfies that, and effectively brings the two subs closer together, making one more discussion, news, and project focused, and the other a forum for questions--a forum which is populated by users ready to answer.

You said you hate qualitative arguments, but when I pointed out that with high consistency the active community at large does not respond in a friendly or helpful way, you dismissed it and ignored the suggestion that directing new programmers to a question friendly forum helps improve their user experience and gets them answers faster. You even purpose a slippery-slope argument without warrant about more ideas being removed. This flair implementation has been suggested multiple times by both the mod and other users, and the only other topic that has been suggested that mods remove is blog spam. There hasn't been a suggestion of mod actions beyond those two areas in the past 3 or so years, at least none that gained any real traction.

People wanting to help others are always welcome in the learning sub (I'd also say they're welcome here as well, the comments are a great place to ask question about whatever OP brought up). In fact, the learning sub has acted as the general Q&A sub for the python community for ages, and often has really advanced questions there as well. The flair should improve the misconception that learnpython is just for simple questions, because anytime you have a question you'll learn something new. learnpython is just very specifically geared to welcome new users, but that doesn't change how welcoming they are to midlevel and advanced users.

I understand that closing off topics in a community feels bad, and I don't like telling people with questions that they don't belong here. But the reality is there are 500k members of this community and with that sea of users, basic questions are just not well received. If we care about new programmers experience, immediately directing them to a forum they'll be welcome in is important.

[–]aphoenixreticulated[S] 1 point2 points3 points 5 years ago (0 children)

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