asked
[meta] meta questions
It seems to be the season for meta questions so here is one more: As meta questions have evolved into something akin to an opinion poll on the site should they therefore be marked as "community wiki"?
I would say no, personally. For one thing, not all of them are opinion polls (though I can certainly see how some of them, including this one come close). For another, I think the site would be better off getting rid of "community wiki's" instead of encouraging more of them. Personally, if my name is attached to an answer or question, I do not want any random person being able to make edits to it. The moderators and high reputation people are slightly different and I do not mind their edits for two reasons: 1. They have that ability because they have earned the trust of this community. 2. By tradition since this site started they confine themselves to formatting and minor grammar/spelling tweaks. Neither of these will necessarily hold for community wikis.
very valid points, I guess my worry is that someone can build a load of rep on answers to opinion based questions rather than technical ability/support on questions that are problems...
I agree - no. And, the reason is that rep is only given if people vote for what you have written. If you express an opinion on a community matter that a lot of people want to vote for you on, then they are taking that choice to give you that rep. And I personally feel that people who are contributing to the direction and character of the community deserve just as much rep as those who give technical answers. A case in point - Tim here has so far got 20 rep for giving a reasoned and balanced answer - however last week I got 60 rep just for pointing out that someone had missing brackets... I actually think that the other way around would have been far more appropriate, but that's life, and I think that sort of thing evens itself out over a long period of time...
And you both have valid points... Perhaps these questions should be tagged in some way that means that they are excluded from the rep calculations.
Other sites have avoided this mix-up of meta and subject-matter threads by having a separate meta site. I think we discussed this a few weeks ago and decided not to branch off like that. There has been an increase in meta recently, probably due to the switch-over from SE to OSQA, but I'm hoping that over time it will calm down.
