Shog9/whatisametafor

## whatisametafor
#What is a meta for?

A guest at my house over the weekend stood puzzled next to my driveway. "What is *that* for?" she asked, pointing to a framework of 2x4s and hardware cloth, perched on an old tire amid piles of sand. "Sifter." I said. "For what?" "For sifting gravel." "Why?" "To line walking paths, such as the one you're standing on..."

Spend enough time working with something, and it's easy to forget how strange and unnatural your makeshift tooling can appear to those unfamiliar with it.

Such is the nature of these meta sites. For 5 years, we've been directing folks to them for discussion and feedback, to commune with their community, hash out misunderstandings, propose changes and document the current state of things. And... We haven't always been good about helping them get past the initial shock and confusion of dealing with this system. This has manifested in several unfortunate behaviors:

- **Downvoting of legitimate support questions** - those that are not duplicates and reflect an actual bug or honest misunderstanding of how the system operates.

- **Closing questions that seek input and discussion from the community** - in hindsight, adding "primarily opinion based" as a close reason on meta sites was... a terrible idea. The old "not constructive" close reason made some sense for rants and so on, but for a *discussion site* closing down questions that solicit opinions is just silly. Here on MSE, we prefer the following *off-topic* reason instead:

  > This question **does not appear to seek input and discussion** from the community. If you have encountered a problem on one of our sites, please describe it in detail. See also: [What is "meta"? How does it work?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta)

- **A reluctance to ask questions about asking questions** - which is about as meta as you can get, and yet we probably get more of these via email than we see on meta, while being the least-qualified to answer them well.

After an increasing number of complaints from both core users and moderators on a number of sites, we're taking a hard look at how we can improve this situation... Starting with a change to [the "What is Meta?" help center topic][1]:

> Meta is for...

> - **...$SiteName users to communicate with each other** about $SiteName (asking questions about how the websites work, or about policies and community decisions)
> - **...$SiteName  users to communicate with Stack Exchange the company** (posting bugs, suggesting improvements, or proposing new features), and
> - **...Stack Exchange to communicate with the community** (soliciting feedback on new ideas or features, or discussing policies that affect the whole network)

> Lots of topics are fair game, as long as they are about the Stack Exchange family of Q&A sites in some way. Any issue that concerns the core Stack Exchange engine that runs all Stack Exchange websites is welcome here.

This replaces the previous bullet list of specific topics, and aims to outline broad *purposes* with examples for clarification rather than constraining the scope *to* those examples.

So... that's a start. But a documentation change isn't going to change misconceptions that've already built up among newer users. So I'm asking y'all for help:

**What do *you* think meta should be used for, and how can we better communicate this intent to new users?**


  [1]: /help/whats-meta
	#What is a meta for?

	A guest at my house over the weekend stood puzzled next to my driveway. "What is that for?" she asked, pointing to a framework of 2x4s and hardware cloth, perched on an old tire amid piles of sand. "Sifter." I said. "For what?" "For sifting gravel." "Why?" "To line walking paths, such as the one you're standing on..."

	Spend enough time working with something, and it's easy to forget how strange and unnatural your makeshift tooling can appear to those unfamiliar with it.

	Such is the nature of these meta sites. For 5 years, we've been directing folks to them for discussion and feedback, to commune with their community, hash out misunderstandings, propose changes and document the current state of things. And... We haven't always been good about helping them get past the initial shock and confusion of dealing with this system. This has manifested in several unfortunate behaviors:

	- Downvoting of legitimate support questions - those that are not duplicates and reflect an actual bug or honest misunderstanding of how the system operates.

	- Closing questions that seek input and discussion from the community - in hindsight, adding "primarily opinion based" as a close reason on meta sites was... a terrible idea. The old "not constructive" close reason made some sense for rants and so on, but for a discussion site closing down questions that solicit opinions is just silly. Here on MSE, we prefer the following off-topic reason instead:

	> This question does not appear to seek input and discussion from the community. If you have encountered a problem on one of our sites, please describe it in detail. See also: [What is "meta"? How does it work?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta)

	- A reluctance to ask questions about asking questions - which is about as meta as you can get, and yet we probably get more of these via email than we see on meta, while being the least-qualified to answer them well.

	After an increasing number of complaints from both core users and moderators on a number of sites, we're taking a hard look at how we can improve this situation... Starting with a change to [the "What is Meta?" help center topic][1]:

	> Meta is for...

	> - ...$SiteName users to communicate with each other about $SiteName (asking questions about how the websites work, or about policies and community decisions)
	> - ...$SiteName users to communicate with Stack Exchange the company (posting bugs, suggesting improvements, or proposing new features), and
	> - ...Stack Exchange to communicate with the community (soliciting feedback on new ideas or features, or discussing policies that affect the whole network)

	> Lots of topics are fair game, as long as they are about the Stack Exchange family of Q&A sites in some way. Any issue that concerns the core Stack Exchange engine that runs all Stack Exchange websites is welcome here.

	This replaces the previous bullet list of specific topics, and aims to outline broad purposes with examples for clarification rather than constraining the scope to those examples.

	So... that's a start. But a documentation change isn't going to change misconceptions that've already built up among newer users. So I'm asking y'all for help:

	*What do you* think meta should be used for, and how can we better communicate this intent to new users?**


	[1]: /help/whats-meta