Am I the only one that thinks the Scope is confusing?

Question

From the beginning of the site we as a community have been trying to arrange a Scope that defines our site and makes it simple for our community to be run by that scope. So we came up with a Scope that defined us, but naturally we made changes and those changes went into Meta Post that were mostly tagged scope and so on. But I find it hard to discuss a Scope that is everywhere and is not exactly true any more due to numerous changes. That being said I would like to know if anyone agrees that we write up a new Scope using our old one as a guide and take the Meta Post tagged Scope and incorporate them into a Gigantic Master Scope. I think that by adding all the Meta Post into a larger Scope would help everyone understand where we are now. Does anyone agree or do they find the Scope to be organized?

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Some users are suggesting that the community is split, but I think the problem might be as simple as users not knowing where certain pieces of the Scope are and thus not reading and understanding it. I came up with a beginner Master Scope to show what might be built if anything is decided. If anyone agrees with me, any ideas of how to change it would be welcome. I think that changes should be posted in answers and the answers that are mostly upvoted should be agreed changes.

This Post may be similar to Is the lack of a narrow scope problematic for this site?, but that was made in December, 12 and is thus slightly outdated.

Answer 1

The scope of the site is inconsistent, which is understandably confusing.

There's no agreement on what a lifehack is. There's a post that purports to set the scope in stone but, as you might expect form a proposal that was elaborated by a few users in chat, objections have been raised, and these objections have not been addressed.

In addition to the disagreements on meta, there's the scope as defined by the non-closed questions on the site, and that doesn't match any one position expressed on meta.

A decision needs to be made regarding the scope. I don't see the community getting anywhere near settling fundamental issues, which for a site that's existed for one month is worrying. Hopefully the site will acquire moderators soon, and the moderators will end up deciding what the site is about. It would be better to reach a near-consensus on fundamental issues, rather than have three people decide, but if the community can't reach a consensus, someone has to be given authority to decide.

Once a scope is established, it is vital to close all the questions that don't match the scope. Existing questions are how people will discover the site; if we attract new users with questions that are deemed to be off-topic, they'll be disappointed, which is bad for the growth of the site.

Answer 2

Scope

Gilles is a relatively new user on LH (or else he just recently became much more active; I haven't been tracking him), and that might be part of why his answer to What is a lifehack? didn't get that much attention. I think his idea of site scope is well thought out, and intuitive to new users, so I'll copy it here.

[...] I propose to align with Wikipedia's definition. I am copying the current relevant part of the article here.

Life hacking refers to any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life. It is arguably a modern appropriation of a gordian knot — in other words, anything that solves an everyday problem in an inspired, ingenious manner.

For me, the key ideas are:

• solves [a] problem: a lifehack must be about solving a concrete problem. It's a “how” question, not a “what” or “why” question.
• an everyday problem: a lifehack concerns everyday life. Problems encountered as part of professional life, or requiring specialized knowledge, are not lifehacks.
• increases productivity or efficiency: a lifehack is about solving the problem quickly and with few resources, not about finding the solution that produces a high-quality result.
• trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty: a lifehack can involve taking shortcuts. It doesn't have to be robust or generalizable. It doesn't need to have been covered in peer-reviewed literature: something made up on the spot is fine as long as it works.

Answer 3

The scope is defined by the questions that are welcome. That leaves us with the definition of on-topic-question:

1. You need to have a specific problem. You, not anyone else, not an idea you have that could be a problem. It needs to be specific and you need to state your very problem in your question. SE is best at solving actual problems, don't skip that part.
2. It needs to be a physical problem. Something that you can grab with your hand.
3. You need to seek solutions that can be applied simply, quickly and/or cheaply.

After that apply the content of this Meta to improve your question from "okay" to "high quality"

Please note that nothing in this post tries to define what a lifehack is. Because thats for the answers and the scope is defined by questions, not answers.

Also, please note that a lot of stuff makes questions "bad", but not "off-topic". Something that has an obvious every day solution might be "bad" and deserving a downvote, but that does not make it off-topic. And visa-versa a well written question can be off-topic, requiring a close-vote, but not a downvote.

As a sidenote: I felt that the scope was well understood in the last days. When I opened the front page I mostly saw questions I would expect.