## On defining the scope of a Stack Exchange site, with an application to Lifehacks When defining the scope, you need to think about three kinds of audiences: * Regular users — people who frequently visit the site, post answers, participate on meta, etc. * New or casual users — they know the site name, and if you're lucky they've read the [tour page](/tour). * Visitors who found a page in a search — they don't care what the site is about, they're only looking for an answer to their inquiry. Keep in mind that for any Stack Exchange site that's been around for a few months, the last category constitutes an overwhelming majority of the views. You can't explain the site's scope to these people, you can't talk to them individually. All you can expect them to read is the question's title, the question body, and the first few answers. In particular, **visitors don't care about the definition of “lifehack” or about the scope of the site**. This isn't to say that you can completely forget about them when defining the scope. In particular, it implies that **[the scope must not exclude answers for not being “lifehacks”](https://lifehacks.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1137/should-we-be-downvoting-conventional-answers)**. One thing we do have a consensus on is that the valid questions on this site are a subset of the problems of the form “how do I solve this problem in my day-to-day life?” — so that's what we can expect people to be searching for. It is vital that the answers *help* the people who find them, otherwise we would be making the Internet worse. **Casual users** will usually notice the site name, but they'll rarely care about what is really a lifehack. There'll always be new users who think their question should be on-topic even though the consensus among the regulars is that it isn't. Nonetheless the scope must not be too subtle, otherwise it will have to be explained anew for every new user, meaning that very few will stick around. That's why [I propose not to make up our own definition of “lifehack”](https://lifehacks.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/what-is-a-lifehack/1334#1334). **Regular users** are the ones who decide what the scope is, because they're the ones who care and they're the ones who have made an investment in the site. The only limit to the power of regular users is to find a scope that's consistent with the goals (make the Internet better) and format (question and answers) of Stack Exchange, and that makes sense to visitors and casual users. From what I've seen on meta, regulars are mostly interested in creative, unconventional solutions to everyday problems. However this is problematic for many reasons: * There is a huge variability in what each person considers “creative” or “unconventional”, which makes these criteria problematic. * Seeing the non-closed questions on the main site gives me the impression that any question about problems encountered in day-to-day life is valid. There doesn't seem to be any consensus to somehow exclude questions that aren't fishing for creative/unconventional answers. * Excluding answers on the basis of conventionality or creativity is incompatible with providing useful content for visitors looking for answers. If questions are to solicit lifehack answers, that needs to be made clear by restricting the scope of questions, not by restricting what answers are accepted for a question. ## Scope proposals The scope proposed in the present meta question is problematic because it defines desirable answers but fails to define desirable questions. ### Everyday Life Stack Exchange Accept every question about problems encountered in day-to-day life. Anything that requires a professional opinion is off-topic: only questions that a non-expert is supposed to be able to answer are accepted. Pro: matches the questions that are currently open. Con: very broad, and by definition lacks experts. ### Trade-off Stack Exchange One way to define a hack is that it's a trade-off — it works in this specific case, but it lacks generality, reliability or elegance. So require every question to **specify a trade-off**. For example: * I'm looking for things I can try for free. I don't need guaranteed success: if they fail I'll call in a professional. * I need to drive to the next gas station, and I don't care if it damages my car a little. * I have all the time in the world, but I don't want to spend a cent. * I don't care if I look ridiculous, I just need to get home without dying of exposure. Pro: these are the kinds of questions that tend to call for creative solutions, so they should be largely what the enthusiasts for this site are after. “Conventional” answers would be mostly excluded by virtue of not meeting some concrete, explicit requirement (cheapness, reliability, etc.). Con: I haven't seen this idea much on meta, and it's met resistance when I broached it in chat. It would exclude a lot of current questions. ---- ## One month later… Looking at the front page, I see mostly two kinds of questions: * Questions asking about how to do something about household items or everyday tasks — office supplies, keeping warm, cleaning, grooming, cooking, etc. * Questions asking how to do such things for free or cheap. Barely any are getting closed, which means that they are all considered on-topic by the bulk of the site's regulars. Thus, regardless of all the debates on meta, the actual scope of this site is **Everyday life Stack Exchange**. Questions of the second type are the ones that Trade-off Stack Exchange would want. But I find that they are actually the weakest questions: they're inevitably [asking for a free lunch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch). For Trade-off SE, they are on-topic but low-quality, because they hardly ever bother to compromise on anything: it has to be cheap, but it has to work well. This results in pretty generic answers — not hackish answers, which defeats the purpose that restricting the scope would have.