Every time I do a site self-evaluation, I wind up learning as much about my assumptions as I do about the site. Midway through this time I realized that I was supposed to evaluate both Q&A, so my evaluation procedure changed. Your mileage may vary considerably; In the interests of transparency, I'll offer my highly opinionated summary of my personal site evaluation.
Before I list my evaluations, let me offer my two observations:
I think that many of these questions are thinly veiled requests for discussion or confirmation bias. I think these should be closed/edited more rigorously; others my have differing opinions.
Some of these are, I think, the core competency of PM:SE - questions where OP doesn't understand the problem well enough to google for an answer. Because PM:SE answers are provided by experts who have suffered through the problems, we can offer insight that goes beyond the capabilities of any other resource and serves as a sort of a "bottom feeding coaching/consultancy". If others agree with this analysis, we may wish to alter the help center to support these questions, and possibly use tags or other resources to help us capitalize on these opportunities.
I can find no useful answers with a google search, so this question is superior to google by default. Furthermore CodeGnome’s advice goes beyond simply citing the principles to analyze the underlying problem. The answer compensates for the deficiencies in the question; I wish I did that more often. Note however that this question is an “I think X, what do you think?” question.
I can’t find an answer with google, so once again PM:SE wins by default. The answer points out one of the many variables that would affect the question and offers a potential strategy and a reference. Good answer. Self evaluation asks us to evaluate the answer, not the question, but once again, it isn’t clear to me what the question is, and when I try to understand the question, I find another thinly veiled, “I think X, what do you think?” OP has already reached a conclusion and is looking for evidence to bolster that conclusion. I prefer questions where the question is clearly expressed in the title and the body of the question modifies that question in journalistic fashion (most important points first).
Google reveals no useful answer. SE provides a reference and an answer. There is some debate over the answer, but it appears to be largely editorial rather than factual. I’ll give this another satisfactory, and once again remark that the question appears to a request for confirmation bias.
Two answers with significant practical first steps; I’ll mark this excellent. But I’ll remark one more time that I’m not entirely sure what the question is – the title doesn’t reveal it, and the question seems to be “I need advice”.
Scrum is not my area of expertise; I’m not even interested in Scrum, but I think CodeGnome nails the answer “no” – and provides an excellent justification “Techwriters are team members”. There is some moderately interesting discussion in comments that I think amplifies the answer. Once again, the question is a thinly veiled request for confirmation bias; the question begins with “I think X” and ends with “is this sensible”. Based on this pattern, I’m beginning to think we should contemplate revising the help center.
I probably should recuse myself from this one because the question raises my blood pressure. I’m going to resist my temptation to rant about this, but the subtext is “How can I get my teammates to communicate the way I want rather than the way they want?” This is a request for a discussion (might not be intended to be a request for discussion, but the only possibly response to “How can I get my teammates to behave more like me and stop having opinions/habits/preferences different from mine?” is a discussion – a pointless, discussion which is almost guaranteed to be counterproductive.
The question is prima facia too broad; there are books on the best practices of scheduling. Within the body of the question are references to story points, which indicates to me that the question is incomplete. Mark Phillips requests clarification and the answers indicate that they needed clarification. I’m going to mark this Q&A “needs improvement”, despite very good efforts by Ashok & David
I will recuse myself; I voted to close and still believe the question should be closed.
I’ve got to mark this excellent; OP notes that the answer went beyond what he asked. This may be an example of PM:SE core value; confused questions, crystal answers. OP is struggling to find the right question to ask; answers recognize the pattern based on experience, and provide a deeper answer. By definition, you can’t find that in a search engine.
