Making a site for professionals

Question

There are already a million places on the internet where you can type simple car maintenance questions and get a bunch of teenagers telling you some random nonsense that they have no reason to know the answer to (Yahoo!Answers anyone?)

If we fill up the private beta with questions like

• How do I remove a dent from my car
• How often should I change my oil
• Should I use the brakes or low gear on downhills

this site will drive away people with real knowledge of auto mechanics--the exact population we need to make a great site.

For those of you who wandered in here from Stack Overflow, think about what would have happened if Stack Overflow filled up with people asking how to get on The Facebook and "My Internet Is Broken". The programmers would have fled and the site would have been useless.

mechanics.stackexchange.com is a site for people who repair vehicles. It's not Car Talk and it's not Yahoo Answers. Don't ask questions here (especially during the private beta) that will scare away the real experts who will make this a great, professional resource.

I would go so far as to say, don't even ask questions about "your" car. Ask questions about a "1996 Honda Civic with 75,000 miles in good shape that has had the engine rebuilt."

EDIT: I should be clear that everyone is welcome on the site, but the intent is to make a site with high-level questions, not simple, basic questions that are already answered in a million places on the Internet. You don't have to be a professional auto-mechanic to participate, but you do have to be committed to learning more and the subject matter should be limited to non-introductory questions.

Answer 1

Ok, this makes sense and explains why some questions were closed :-)

Answer 2

The tone of this directive still annoys me.

The core reality is that most of the enthusiasm for this site is going to come from the educated amateurs, shadetree mechanics and grassroots motorsports enthusiasts. Check out the GRM forum: they bin up their topics rather loosely but you won't find a bunch of people screeching CLOSE! after a question from someone trying to solve a car problem on their own (AKA DIY).

For example, the three samples listed are a few words away from being very helpful to me personally (original in italics):

1. How do I remove a dent from my car's aluminum hood without damaging the fire-retardant material? It's possibly a different procedure from a steel hood,.
2. How often should I change my oil in my rear differential if I drive in low traction conditions on a regular basis?
3. Should I use the brakes or low gear on downhills given that I'm concerned about overheating the oil in the differentials?

Constructing rhetorical examples of bad questions in advance of their arrival is a waste of time. We'll know those when we see them and, hopefully, tune them for utility rather than slamming the door on legitimate inquiry.

EDIT: responding to Jeff's points in the comments.

These two phrases summarize the fundamental disconnect:

1. theoretically real mechanics
2. the blind leading the blind

Seriously? How can either of those come across as anything other than insulting? In Jeff's terms, I'm either not "real" or I'm one of the "blind."

Let's consider some fundamentals related to this community and to StackOverflow:

1. Programming is easy: there's typing, compilation and running. Didn't work? Then repeat the previous steps. The whole programming paradigm is very accessible for the casual amateur. Digging into a motor vehicle is different: the procedures are generally laid out in advance but every situation is different (e.g., rust, wear, intended application, etc.).

2. Programming is common: the accessibility of programming drives its popularity. However, many people driving cars would never consider opening their hood to check their oil, much less change their oil. If someone like that is willing to learn, I'm happy to answer their question about what size socket they'll need for their drain plug.

3. Most software is not life-critical: almost no one you are ever going to meet will ever work on real-time, safety-critical software. On the other hand, everyone driving a car is operating a system that can easily kill not only themselves but plenty of people around them. More knowledge for more drivers is a good thing.

Given the above, I don't think the StackOverflow reflex to close basic questions that actually do contain useful information applies. If a question is too general, get more detail. If the language isn't clear, improve it until it is.

Answer 3

So, after waiting quite a few months for the site to open on the premise that it is for

mechanics and DIY enthusiast owners of cars, trucks, and motorcycles.

You now want to take advantage of our patience and long term commitment and change the site to something that will actually exclude nearly every one of us who have got it this far? What a great idea and thanks.

This also explains your extremely heavy handed moderating and comments.

If you wanted this site to be exclusively for professionals why was it not made clear from day one of the proposal, instead of misleading us?

Answer 4

I agree that:

mechanics.stackexchange.com is a site for people who repair vehicles.

If you're going to define professional as "somebody who repairs vehicles for a living", though, I think that's the wrong contributor to chase. That kind of professional is not likely to come here as part of their day job. They don't have time to ask a question and wait for answers when they've got a vehicle up on a lift in the shop. I'm not saying they're not going to look things up on the Internet, just that they're not likely to ask for help and wait for a response. Maybe they'll answer questions on their own time, but my gut feeling is that while may IT folk will sit in front of a computer for their day job and go home and sit in front of a computer in the evening for fun, that sort of thing doesn't happen as much amongst professional mechanics.

Instead of "somebody who repairs vehicles for a living", I think we want "somebody who repairs vehicles". An enthusiast for Make X, Model Y, Year Z who works on their own vehicle. Who rarely, if ever, takes it to a shop for anything. Who, when faced with a good description of a common problem, will tell you exactly what's wrong and what the fix is. Maybe they make their living as a mechanic. If they don't, though, I think their input is just as valuable as somebody who does.

I don't think you actually meant "somebody who repairs vehicles for a living", though. I think you really just wanted to keep the crap questions to a minimum and "professional" was a poor choice of words.

I'm over a year late to the party, but there is my two cents.

Answer 5

There are already a million places on the internet where you can type simple car maintenance questions and get a bunch of teenagers telling you some random nonsense that they have no reason to know the answer to (Yahoo!Answers anyone?)

This is exactly the problem that Stack Exchange was designed to solve:

After someone asks a question, members of the community propose answers. Others vote on those answers. Very quickly, the answers with the most votes rise to the top. You don’t have to read through a lot of discussion to find the best answer. [unlike all the auto repair forums filled with pointless arguments and garbage]

Like topics on Wikipedia, questions and answers on Stack Exchange can be edited. If someone writes the beginning of a great answer, someone else can embellish it and make it even better. [even if a dumb teenager's erroneous answer is mistakenly thought to be true by a few people, this can later be corrected, unlike Yahoo, where the wrong answer is set in stone forever]

All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions.

If you restrict this site to only professional questions answerable by professionals, it will quickly die from disuse and be closed forever.

Answer 6

It seems like part of the way to do this is by "aggressive" moderation and consolidating of variations on common questions (e.g., like the low/high beam proposal).

I also think that adding a tag like basic-operation or something like that or even common-question would help, both to filter for folks who aren't interested in those questions and to help people with those questions find appropriate answers.