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We all love Pets Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.

The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.

Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

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    Yikes on some of the answers!
    – Joanne C Mod
    Commented Apr 18, 2015 at 15:41
  • I ended up with 50/50 either needing improvement or simply satisfactory. I don't know if I was given the bad examples or what.
    – Spidercat
    Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 18:01
  • @GimmeTehRepz - Yep, same here. Either not a good quarter or just not a good selection.
    – Joanne C Mod
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 7:54
  • Pets.SO is the only pet community I have seen so far that focuses on cited answers and by far the most unbiased site I have seen so far. Many communities get to wrapped up in their own culture that they oust anything that does not meet with the majority view - completely disregarding of if the answer is helpful, accurate, or correct. For example, the rawhide debate on other communities would openly and gladly downvoted to hell wherever rawhide is merely mentioned because some users do not approve the option themselves.
    – rlb.usa
    Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 23:10
  • And because off-topic chatter is discouraged, SO is uniquely better suited for newcomers who might otherwise quickly and easily be hazed, and usually pertaining to the above.
    – rlb.usa
    Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 23:13

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Final Results

Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 0)

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 2)

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 4)

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 3)

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 2)

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 9, Needs Improvement: 3)

Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 9, Needs Improvement: 3)

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 4)

Net Score: -7 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 9)

Net Score: -7 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 8)

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Honestly I'm not sure how What is my risk of getting Toxoplasmosis from my neighbors cat could be answered. There's research comparing toxoplasmosis rates between cat owners and non-cat owners, but there's no way to tell if someone got it from their neighbor's cat, a parasite that was in the ground from another source, or just from unwashed fruits/vegetables.

Questions like "why does my pet do X?" (Why does my dog push his food out of his bowl?) have been traditionally weak, because they're also hard to answer. We can't ask the pet why they do what they do, we can only speculate based on what we know about their motivations. Some behaviors we understand better than others, but ultimately it's still speculation.

Ultimately, I feel like we're attracting more questions than we have folks who can provide good solid answers (either due to time or knowledge). I'm not sure what the solution for that is.

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  • I may be more worried that some of those got rated as excellent by some users, there are ones that are outright terrible... Anyways, now that the eval is over, I got rid of the absurd rantings on that Toxoplasmosis question, meant to do it ages ago. I agree with you, though, it's been a tad harder to find the time to create good answers recently, for me at least, because I've been so much on the road. We need some improved stickiness of users.
    – Joanne C Mod
    Commented Apr 26, 2015 at 0:08
  • Holy crap, that venison poster on the Toxo thread really had it out for you, Z!
    – JoshDM
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 14:37

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