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We all love Movies & TV 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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    Nice to see, this time most of the questions are not ID
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Sep 28, 2013 at 8:42

2 Answers 2

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Final Results

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  • Not bad.....!!!!
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 8:28
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Good job turning out for the review! I like the enthusiasm.

Notes on the questions:

  • Why is Caillou bald?

    I would not say that the question is Excellent since the official answer is real easy to find via Google. The two answers are themselves nothing more than copy and pasted from official sources (the publisher and PBS). It's fine to have a few of these sorts of questions, but they are not the bread and butter of a long-tail Q&A site.

  • Why is this formula useful in Iron Man 3?

    This is a substantially better question and Google has found it. Most of the other results are stupid "Top X" lists of minimal value. Reddit has some interesting speculation on the actual equations used by the producers as a prop. The answer here is... matter of fact. That's fine, but I think it could have been a little more engaging to someone (such as myself) who enjoyed the movie, but isn't really into the Iron Man universe. Still, the answer is better than the rest of the internet so this is Satisfactory to Excellent in my book.

  • How does video come on the walls of the buildings?

    Movies.SE is the top result when I search for it. The answer is probably as good as you could hope for and unique on the internet. An Excellent long-tail question, well answered.

  • Did Mike's granddaughter get Mike's money?

    SPOILER ALERT! (Seriously, I'm a season behind on Netflix and I don't want to know.)

  • How did the Four Horsemen accomplish their second trick?

    Second question on a movie I'd not heard of before. (To be fair, I have infant twins and don't get out much any more.) Looks like there might be more information on the internet about this question, but Movies.SE takes the top spot in my search if I look for "second trick" and the name of the movie. More likely, people will ask about all the tricks (it seems to me). This question shows up on the second page, which isn't bad.

  • https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/13107/travel-back-in-time-to-stop-a-crime-on-a-train

    I'm not a fan of questions, and the exercise of searching for them shows why. I know why y'all have these questions, but meh.

  • Apples in a greenhouse on a spacestation

    Problem the second with : did this asker get useful answer? Who knows. "Needs Improvement".

  • What's that song at the end of Dexter S08E08?

    Ok. A "name that tune" question. And nobody mentioned "Lost"? Meh.

  • Did the blue pills cause behavioral modification?

    Second page on Google for me. Seems like there are lots of places to find what the blue pills are primarily for (including Quora). But the side effects question is a little harder to find. Unlike the Caillou question, the official answer (or rather the script's answer) resists discovery. I like answers that dive into the transcript and really figure things out. (And if you add "behaviour" to the search string, this question shoots to the top.) If it's not Excellent, it's close.

  • Why wasn't Shaw's intersect suppressed?

    Excellent. If there weren't a carpet company named Shaw, it would be the first result on Google. A neat little puzzle in the series solved via inference. (Or at least I assume it was solved; I only saw one episode of the show.) I think the formatting on the answer could be improved ("Edit:" is unnecessary since we have revision history), but overall I think someone who has the same question will be satisfied.

I like what I see here. This is a growing site with tons of potential. The ratio of identification questions seems a little too high to me, but it could be an unlucky sample. It seems clear that the site is making the internet better and that Google is bringing people here. There are a few things (as seen above) that I'd adjust, but good job so far.

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    You're not alone in the dislike of ID questions :)
    – Tablemaker Mod
    Commented Oct 16, 2013 at 13:02
  • Thanks for your insights. It doesn't seem to have been an unlucky sample, though.
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 14:46

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