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We all love Computer Science Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.

The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.

Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

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    $\begingroup$ Internal eval: site looks good. No, really - there's nothing seriously wrong here, it seems healthy and all indications are it could sustain itself long term. When concerns tend toward laments over the cold analytically attitude of the meta membership on a CS site, you know things are in good shape. $\endgroup$
    – Shog9
    Dec 20, 2013 at 18:06

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One thing that stroke me as odd during the review was the amount of question which had just a single answer. And often this single answer was provided by Yuval Filmus. Is it possible that the selection of questions was "intentionally" not representative, or is the percentage of question were Yuval Filmus was the only one to provide an answer really so high?

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    $\begingroup$ The selection is random among questions that are posted in a certain time period and have at least one upvoted answer. A single answer provided by Yuval is not that rare. $\endgroup$
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Nov 14, 2013 at 7:51
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    $\begingroup$ So the fact that the outcome is unfortunate indicates that we have the unfortunate situation of a) many questions that interest few and/or b) few people who bother to answer regularly. $\endgroup$
    – Raphael Mod
    Nov 14, 2013 at 13:21
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    $\begingroup$ I just checked previous site evaluations. The fact that many questions had just a single answer was already present. The fact that Yuval Filmus is significantly more active than others seems to be new. Perhaps he just tried to reduce the number of unanswered question during the last quater, and hence the selection criterion indeed failed to be representative. $\endgroup$
    – Thomas Klimpel
    Nov 14, 2013 at 18:19
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    $\begingroup$ I'm not surprised that there were multiple questions with a single answer, provided by Yuval Filmus. Yuval is very active in answering questions. He also tends to respond very rapidly, and to post excellent, clear answers. It would not be surprising if most others see the question only after Yuval has already answered, they look at his answer, discover that it is excellent and think to themselves, "I can't improve on that, this one is already answered" and move on to some other question. $\endgroup$
    – D.W. Mod
    Nov 15, 2013 at 6:54
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    $\begingroup$ We can do an experiment - I can keep quiet for a week and we can check whether questions still get answered. Let's say 11/19 to 11/26. Hope it encourages other people to contribute. $\endgroup$
    – Yuval Filmus
    Nov 19, 2013 at 18:17
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    $\begingroup$ Ok, experiment finished. I noticed that the percentage of answered questions went down from 89% to 88%, but it is hard to say whether there is any connection. $\endgroup$
    – Yuval Filmus
    Nov 26, 2013 at 10:40
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    $\begingroup$ That experiment is flawed because it was not blinded. It is quite possible some people, upon seeing that announcement of experiment, decided to replace Yuval in that week. Further experiments is required. $\endgroup$
    – John L.
    Oct 9, 2018 at 21:09
  • $\begingroup$ @Apass.Jack the scientist never rests! $\endgroup$
    – ItamarG3
    Jun 4, 2019 at 7:34
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Final Results

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