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During the private beta, we discussed when/what types of questions should become community wikis (and still being discussed in another bioacoustics.meta thread).

Community wiki answers can be easily edited by anyone, and no one gets reputation points for the answers anymore.

The consensus seemed to be that "list" type questions looking for resources, etc., make sense as community wikis because they will likely need to be updated over time and there isn't necessarily one "right" answer. While these types of questions aren't the goal of SE, at this early point on our site it seems like we are getting a decent number of them, and I do think they are valuable to share (but happy to discuss!).

During private beta we opted to leave those questions as "normal" questions, but now that we are in public beta, it may make sense to start switch a few? My question here was prompted by @JNat making this question about conferences into a community wiki.

Additionally, this one already is from early in private beta: 'Foundational Literature' in Terrestrial Bioacoustics

So, my question is...

Should we go back and combine all the separate answers in the conferences question perhaps grouping by some of our keywords (ecoacoustics, underwater, etc., and more similar to what the linked example from @JNat on the Japanese language site) OR should we just leave it as is with several relatively short and not super organized answers?

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  • $\begingroup$ For practical consequences of turning into Wiki, this (MSE) post is interesting: What are "Community Wiki" posts? $\endgroup$
    – Noil
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 10:34

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Should we go back and combine all the separate answers in the conferences question perhaps grouping by some of our keywords (ecoacoustics, underwater, etc., and more similar to what the linked example from @JNat on the Japanese language site) OR should we just leave it as is with several relatively short and not super organized answers?

The latter option you propose goes completely counter to the purpose of Community Wikis (CWs). As I explained here:

if you're gonna have an ever-growing list of answers, none of which is "more correct" than the other, AND the question is definitely on-topic, maybe it's a good candidate to CW.

and quoting Grace Note:

Community wiki is for that rare gem of a post that needs true community collaboration. That’s when community wiki shines.

So the whole point of having CWs is to have a community-maintained list of resources, instead of an ever-growing list of tiny answers. As such, y'all should be collaborating to curate that list, as opposed to leaving small and unorganized answers under those questions. Otherwise, you should maybe consider whether the question is even on-topic given the SE model, and whether it should be kept around. To quote What types of questions should I avoid asking?:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you @JNat, I agree and would vote FOR turning the example into a CW but wanted to see what others thought. I appreciate your clarity for what SE mods/staff would do in this case! $\endgroup$
    – selene
    Commented Oct 17, 2022 at 16:09
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The Japanese language site example you gave is a good one, I like the table of content in the question post that redirect to answers which each of them corresponds to a sub-topic.

If we choose to do so, should we close all the existing answers to make new ones that correspond to subtopic? This sounds harsh, but probably good for long-term perspective?

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    $\begingroup$ That's exactly what I was wondering. That seems like a lot of editing (which we wouldn't want to do long term) but because of the timing of the question with private beta, etc., I was wondering the best way to proceed. $\endgroup$
    – selene
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 18:38
  • $\begingroup$ I think the limitation of the comparison w/ the Japanese Language SE is that our site will most likely have a wider variety of questions that might be considered 'wiki-worthy'. $\endgroup$
    – Shannon
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 13:44

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