Under normal circumstances, all first questions should land in staging ground and be refined there. Also Spam is filtered there. Why do we need another queue?
-
6"all first questions should land in staging ground and be refined there" well, they 1. don't right now. 2. It was never intended they would all land there. 3. SE specifically want to reduce the items going in SG.VLAZ– VLAZ2025-11-19 09:34:53 +00:00Commented Nov 19 at 9:34
-
@VLAZ what are the criterias for SG?Bending Rodriguez– Bending Rodriguez2025-11-19 09:37:58 +00:00Commented Nov 19 at 9:37
-
4Users under certian rep threshold and with no other published questions are eligible for SG, but only a percentage of the questions were routed through there. And going forward it's going to be an opt in or an opt out whether a question goes to SG. I'm not sure if that's already implemented.VLAZ– VLAZ2025-11-19 09:41:24 +00:00Commented Nov 19 at 9:41
-
Looks like the option to chose is implemented, @VLAZ (screen shot from my 1-rep sock).Thom A– Thom A Mod2025-11-19 09:44:40 +00:00Commented Nov 19 at 9:44
-
2odd I didn't know you could choose, since a lot of SG Users moan about why their questions are stuck there and not getting answeredBending Rodriguez– Bending Rodriguez2025-11-19 09:52:18 +00:00Commented Nov 19 at 9:52
-
1I'd argue that at some point, it was planned for all questions from new users to go to the staging ground but that plan changed at some point.dan1st– dan1st2025-11-19 10:29:10 +00:00Commented 2 days ago
-
1Only a very small amount of users ever even see their question in Staging Ground. We so absolutely need the review queue. Questions are also being promoted out of Staging Ground, when they shouldn't be, so the review queue is a second chance to correct that mistake. The few questions I ever reviewed in Staging Ground, were so poorly written, but when I tracked them they were still promoted out of SG by users erroneously.Security Hound– Security Hound2025-11-19 11:05:52 +00:00Commented 2 days ago
-
1"Questions are also being promoted out of Staging Ground, when they shouldn't be, so the review queue is a second chance to correct that mistake." - That's not correct AFAIK. SG questions bypass the First Questions queue.dan1st– dan1st2025-11-19 12:48:33 +00:00Commented 2 days ago
-
1"Why do we need another queue?" - what do you hope to gain from removing the queue?Friedrich– Friedrich2025-11-19 21:05:18 +00:00Commented 2 days ago
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
I was an advocate of all new questions, from eligible users, going to the SG (and I mostly still am), as well as having other users (such as those who are question banned, which would avoid this scenario), however, that isn't the implementation that exists.
As VLAZ stated in their comment, it was never intended for all users to go there (as for reducing the volume, that's not something I'm aware of, but it does sometimes feel that). Instead eligible users get the option to chose to have their post peer reviewed:
From recollection, eligible users are those than have posted less than 2 questions, and haven't posted a positively scored question.
The page defaults to the Staging Ground. Admittedly, I do have a problem with that above model's "I need answers immediately" text on posting it straight to Stack Overflow; there's no guarantee the user will get answers, let alone immediately, so this could quite easily mislead the user into thinking they will get fast answers (I should probably feed this back independently).
As such, eligible users that choose to post straight to Stack Overflow will have their question sent to the First Questions review queue, so the queue existing is still important.
Under normal circumstances, all first questions should land in staging ground
This has never been the case. Since its launch, Staging Ground has had two filterers for what goes in:
There are two mutually exclusive roles - askers (whose questions can be in the Staging Ground) and reviewers (who can see and review questions in the Staging Ground). Only some users qualify as "askers" for Staging Ground. The criteria for askers is1:
asked fewer than two questions on Stack Overflow, and have less than 500 reputation on the site.
The help article claims "A “new question asker” will be guided to Staging Ground" but that gives the false impression it applies to all askers. However, it was not the case.
Since the beginning, only a portion of the eligible questions were directed to the Staging Ground. See it discussed under "Scaling" but the concern was that too many items will strain the reviewer resources. This was never followed up on.
The actual intake started to fluctuate wildly this year. And only downwards with way less questions going to Staging Ground than expected. The behaviour was never explained.
This is for the past. But a decision was made that users could explicitly choose whether to go through Staging Ground. See it in Staging Ground: looking back and moving forward. This has since been implemented as well.
As far as I am aware, the company considers the Staging Ground feature "complete" and would not iterate on it in major ways. The "looking back and moving forward" post describes that, as well.
Therefore, the First Questions queue was never made obsolete, nor was it planned to be obsolete to the best of my knowledge. Yes, ideally new questions would have been pre-vetted via the Staging Ground but it was never the case and at this point, it is also completely unachievable.