Do we want this list of blogs/blogroll on our site?

Question

I am not sure if it's a mistake to make this post community wiki as opposed to simply closing it as not constructive: Project management blogs

In The Future of Community Wiki. Here is a quote from a user on another Stack Exchange site talking about the detriments of community wiki:

... the examples of ‘community wiki’ that I’ve seen so far seem to be actively detrimental to the web site. For example, the ‘What Lion bugs irritate you the most?’ thread takes lots of good questions and answers that could (should?) be individually placed on the main page and effectively hides them in a single thread.

For just about any other question where someone asks "can't we just make it community wiki", we should stop and ask ourselves if there aren't possibly more great questions we can harvest:

Many things which “need” to be community wiki simply don’t. Sometimes it’s just a matter of understanding the root of a question: “Software to record video games” can be turned into a great question (How Can I Record Demos of My Gameplay?) without needing the crutch of community wiki. Or, you may need to break the original question into smaller parts...

(emphasis is mine)

In conclusion, will this post listing blogs be good for our site? Will it just be used as an excuse to make more community wiki posts, losing the message altogether about how it's not a quick fix for problem questions and how they may prevent other great questions from being asked? Will it just bring in spam? If the message gets lost or if it just promotes spam, should this be removed? What value does this bring to our community?

My hope is that it could help stifle the growth of the types of questions we don't want here. My hope is that next time someone asks for a list of blogs, or a link to a resource that discusses Agile, or some other not constructive question, we point them to this post instead.

Let me know what you think.

Answer 1

Honestly, I think the question referenced should be closed or deleted since it evinces several key smells:

1. It's extremely listy.
2. There's no use case or user story here; it's just a proxy for a search engine question.
3. It's too easy to Google for a more up-to-date and less-biased answer. Unless there's some curation value to a wiki list, people should just click on over to http://www.google.com/search?q=project+management+blog instead.
4. Questions that aren't problem-focused are generally just too broad to fit the Q&A format. There might be exceptions, but this isn't one of them.

The only valid reason for keeping it is if we're getting a raft of similar questions on a routine basis. In that case, a wikified FAQ makes sense, since it might be better to have a single merge target rather than dozens of closed questions littering the site.

So, the value proposition here isn't actually in the post or the answers, now that I think about it. It's really just in keeping off-topic questions contained--and that seems a bad reason to keep this particular CW.

Answer 2

I think there might be value in a comunity wiki for this.

The idea of just doing a google search for "project management blog" will lead to blogs with a good google search optimzation, and a lot of sites listing "top 25(whatever) Project Management Blogs"

The problem with google search results is, that one does not how someone came up with his/her list, and who this person exactly is. It might be from someone with years of experience, but it might also be someone with good SEO tactics getting some real money from google for placing the correct ads on a certain topic.

I think we could add value if it would be possible to see who reads/writes what blogs around here.

I think it is one thing to see the top 10 Blogs listed by some random guy topping the google search results. It is something completetly different to see what blogs are read by david, pawel, zsolt, lunivore, jmort and so on. Some users here have a very consistent and high reputation, maybe there is some way to leverage it in this case.

I don't know (yet) if a comunity wiki is the right format...

Answer 3

One argument I haven't seen here yet: I know such lists exist on different sites (SO included). Basing on traffic data on my blog (multiple clicks per visit when referenced from such question at SO) they sometimes seem valuable for readers, i.e. they like the content and the quality enough they stay on the site way longer than average visitors.

In short, this indicates there is some value for users in such questions.

Of course impact of such question at PMSE would be significantly lower, yet we have more focused audience.

Answer 4

I went ahead and closed the Project Management Blogs post after taking into consideration the following points:

• It's not constructive.
• It had 3 downvotes and no upvotes.
• 2 of 3 users who responded in meta appear to support it's removal.
• It had one close vote on it.

I did also think about the points made by Huibert Gill:

The problem with google search results is, that one does not how someone came up with his/her list, and who this person exactly is. It might be from someone with years of experience, but it might also be someone with good SEO tactics getting some real money from google for placing the correct ads on a certain topic.

I think we could add value if it would be possible to see who reads/writes what blogs around here.

This is a good point, and I think that spc asked for a list of blogs here because having real people give you links is somehow perceived as being more legit; thus, the askers feel better about the results. Whether or not that's true or not that the links would be better is debatable.

With that said, when I want to look at who writes what blogs, I tend to go through users' profiles and look at links he or she posted. This is the most appropriate place for our links or favorite blogs, sites, etc.

Also, Pawel makes a very good point:

It's much better strategy to add good, topical link to your site in a damn good answer :)

Well said! We realize that many not constructive questions should be closed for a very good reason: Oftentimes there are several really great questions to be asked, instead of one really broad one. This brings our site more value in the form of more questions and even more targeted, valuable, and interesting answers.

The challenge we all have in front of us is how to gently guide new and existing users towards expanding their not constructive questions into something that is truly valuable for PMSE, as well as the asker. It's no easy task, but with our community's tendency towards teamwork, friendliness, and collaboration, we can make it happen! (We should use our Project Management Chat room for real-time discussions on how to improve these!)