Feedback from a newbie

Question

As someone who works in IT myself, I know it's hard to see the newbie's perspective; I thought some feedback about my experience would help. You can see my post here.

As I said, my expertise is in IT, I'm generally an advanced user; also I've used SE sites before (for IT), though I posted only a few times. This was my experience here:

1. Read rules, guidelines
2. Compose and post to History SE
3. Discuss rules, edit post
4. Find post put on hold anyway
5. Post to Meta, as instructed
6. Requires signup; go through signup process
7. Check my email, click link
8. Rejected with error: "That email address is already in use". Seems highly unlikely, no instructions on how to proceed
9. Redo signup with different email address
10. Error: Email address does not match your profile, edit your profile
11. Go to profile, find edit button (non-obvious; it's in a different section than the email address)
12. Signup again, check email again, click link, works this time
13. Post question to Meta
14. EDIT: Question rejected at Meta; I'm told I got "bad advice" so steps 5-13 were a waste of my time and effort. I'm recommended to make yet another post asking that the original main site question be re-opened. I'm also offered links to more reading on rules As you can imagine, this is a frustrating, time-consuming experience and I'm stopping here. (Generally, everyone is polite and considerate, which I do appreciate; thank you!)

At this point, nobody has talked about history yet; it's been all a time sink and frustration. I suspect you lose a few users along the way there. In fact, the only reason I completed the process was to post this feedback. In particular:

• Far too much focus is on rules; it reminds me of Wikipedia (not a good thing). I just want to talk about history, not become an expert in SE.
• The rules are unclear. I read the 'manual' (something most users don't do) and somehow still didn't understand[1].
• Prohibitting asking for book recommendations in a history forum would seem to eliminate much value for no apparent gain. My question was pretty specific and I searched for answers before posting.

[1] Help says the site "is not about ... Asking for reference material". I suppose that could apply to my question, but it's ambiguous. 'Reference material' could mean primary sources, specific citations (e.g., 'where is a cite for Napoleon's height'?), reference books (e.g., 'Biographical dictionary of American History'), or several other things. I wouldn't think a narrative about Chinese history is considered "reference" and I expect that's exactly what a history forum would discuss. If it's confusing to me, I expect others will be equally confused. Also, I'm not sure why my question is appropriate on Meta. Again, look how much time is spent reading, puzzling over, and discussing rules!

Answer 1

Pretty much any question along the lines of "Could you name me some good books on topic_x?". Are considered off-topic by users here, and are pretty much guaranteed to be put on hold.

If you didn't find the FAQ entry clear on this, perhaps you could suggest a rewording that would have made it clearer to you?

It is kind of sad that these questions are off-topic on the main site, but they just do not fit the StackExchange format at all. All answers are going to be subjective (guaranteeing lots of arguments in comments and posts that go nowhere), and no answer can ever be complete because there are millions of books, and new ones are always coming out. Given that there are liable to be good books mentioned in multiple answers, how can there ever be a single "right" answer for you to accept? Our tools just do not work for that kind of question.

What makes a good message board post does not always make a good StackExchange question.

If you "just want to talk about history" without getting hung up on annoying rules about fitting "questions" into the SE format, that's why we have chat rooms. You could try chatting in The Time Machine.

Answer 2

Source recommendations are best answered by scholarly literature reviews and reviews in journals or by a specialist academic librarian. There are no definitive answers. Source recs are a poor match for se format.

Answer 3

1. I can't say I can echo any of your experiences with respect to signing up for this site. I was on SO for quite a while, I went to this site, was prompted to use the same logon I use for SO, clicked OK a couple of times and done.
2. On all of the SE sites the rules are ambiguous - just like most LAWS are ambiguous - it's the nature of the beast. There are always different ways to slice and dice and interpret rules/laws and some people will be more "liberal" and others more "conservative" about it. Sometimes you do feel bad that a question is closed - you can try editing it, restating it in a different way, etc - sometimes it works, sometimes not. We do have a user driven community here and you won't always see eye to eye with the community at large - again, it's the nature of the beast: Some people will inevitably "fall through the cracks" in any system of rules or laws that is community driven and seeks to regulate a large number of people.
3. As for requests for references, @SamuelRussel, who (unlike most of us here...) is a trained "professional" historian and an astute member of the site, has given you a "professional's" answer and SE sites are indeed designed to be for "professionals". Also note that many questions closed because they constitute a "request for references" can be re-worded in a more acceptable way. And as @T.E.D. has hinted, if you're comfortable enough on the internet to be seriously engaged on SE sites, doing google/wikipedia/amazon searches etc should be a simple matter and you'll find plenty of references. I personally have found that using Amazon together with their user reviews is often an excellent resource for reference material. Most history books that are not "hard core" scholarly works will be found on there with plenty of user reviews for the good/popular ones - you can get the good the bad and the ugly from there. The good articles in Wikipedia also cite, and often link to, valuable source material.