Let's get critical: Feb 2015 Site Self-Evaluation

Question

We all love Poker 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!

Answer 1

I want to make a short, simple point that should need little if any elaboration, and will likely be my number one, perhaps my only significant issue with the usability of this poker forum until it's resolved...

This site needs a way to auto-convert Hand Histories.

The sites health will be improved if we had this. A poker players first contact with poker is playing or seeing a hand-history in the making. I'd suggest the first thing that's intuitively useful to them is a hand-history. Removing that barrier to entry here will very likely provide stimulus to the user numbers. Formalising this element to a matter of a few clicks will make it significantly easier for players to solicit advice about how to actually play, whether that relates to strategy, rules, or any other mechanistic part of poker.

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(Edit 2015/03/08: Case in point, take a look at this question. The formatting of the original vs the edited version which is much better & has gathered three very detailed, thoughtful answers... https://poker.stackexchange.com/posts/5727/revisions)

Answer 2

Final Results

• Should I have bet this river? - KK vs potential flush

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• What is the correct calculation to make various combinations of Hold'em hands?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Nut flush draw shove

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Should I slow play a set?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Best way to put your poker learning into a cohesive plan?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Probability of flopping straight flush

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Final table shuffle in MTT

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

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• What are the advantages gained by those who cheat?

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Dealer cheating, why is rolling the deck bad practice?

Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

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• Problem with a hand in Texas hold'em

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 2)

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Answer 3

I was only able to run about half the questions through a search engine I found that the majority of them where SEO competitive. I truncated the ones with long titles to a basisc two or three word search term, a couple did not make the first couple of pages, but a few did make first page generally above the fold. (above the fold is the first 5 results where the majority of users click)

The numbers for Poker SE have improved in the time I have been looking at them. Visits per day where floating around 650 and now are floating around 1000 visitors a day. Indicating that we are getting more visitors from search. Questions have risen from 0.2 a day to 1.6 a day, not stellar but progress.

The stat that bothers me the most is the users stat, 108 users with a score of 200, 4 above 2000, and 2 above 3000+ rep. I think there were 104 users with 200+ rep the first time I looked, and the other two numbers were the same.

Thinking critically the site is growing, but we still have a leadership problem. Not enough experts, one particular moderator that over moderates. Stifling the democratic process of SE to define what is relative to a subject. This mods stock reason for closing a question is that the OP could of found the answer to the question by searching on the internet. A perfectly silly reason to me, it assures nobody would ever find the answer at Poker SE, and that the user would never risk asking a question here again.

I also saw in the last critical review that one of the moderators just was not moderating anymore. I think appointing another mod or two would be helpful, I am interested, and there are a number of guys on here that I would like to see nominate themselves.

I think everybody needs to pitch in a little more to make this a better site. Bring some of these questions along, with questions to the OP, with edits, work on tags a little more. Even though we have a great question to answer ratio, to many people are posting comments as answers. I would like to see the answers where they belong, so they can be voted on and there is not so much clutter in comments. I would like to see more voting, especially with new users, make them feel welcome and engaged.