3

New user comments say, "this site's on/off-topic definition is kind of confusing compared to other SE sites", and, "I took the tour".

The "tour" must be a reference to the About page (because the hyperlink to that page from the Help button on the top-of-page banner says, "Tour - Start here for a quick overview of the site").

To what extent can this About page be customized? I guess that,

  1. This part can be customized:

    Welcome to Skeptics Stack Exchange

    (Logo)

    Skeptics is a question and answer site for applying scientific skepticism. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers challenging unreferenced notable claims, pseudoscience and biased results.

  2. The rest cannot be customized (except in choosing the example questions and answers).

Can we improve either of the above?

  • Some text to specify what's on- and off-topic
  • A hyperlink to the Welcome to New Users answer (and/or other FAQ topics)
  • Choose an example question which includes a notable claim (or especially create an example question just for that purpose)

The above page seems to me to suggest you can post any random/unreferenced claims/questions.

5
  • All three of your bullets are possible, as - as you note - the intro text, on/off-topic lists and example questions are all customizeable. Just gotta decide what should go there...
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 2:43
  • What exactly is the size restriction (e.g. how many lines of text) on the example question? IIRC someone once alleged that that question didn't/couldn't include a notable claim, because there wasn't room for one in that template.
    – ChrisW
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 2:57
  • 400 characters, off the top of my head.
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 3:22
  • The first paragraph of the About page of other web sites (e.g. StackOverflow and Bicycles) are equally brief, without an on-topic/off-topic list and without links to their FAQ or Help pages. Are they (really) customizeable?
    – ChrisW
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 3:23
  • 1
    Yup. Generally-speaking, less is more. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164778/…
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 3:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I'm interpreting this question as 'What may we do?' as opposed to 'What should we do?'.

As described in What are all the different FAQs and Help pages?, this intro page is editable.

Your suggestions should follow the guidelines. (Hat tip to @Sklivvz)

You could post your improvement suggestions here. (I think could legitimately start a new meta-question too if you preferred.)

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .