A large portion of the front page questions right now sound like spam. They're asking things that are either nonsense or not history-related.
All of these questions keep getting downvoted and vote-to-close'd, yet they still show up high on the front page. Why would these questions float to the top?
Having so much cruft on our front page is only going to discourage new visitors from using this site for actual history questions -- this is perilous for a site in beta.
What can we do to fix this?
Actually, I consider it sort of a good thing. After a summer in the doldrums, our amount of questions has gone way up the last couple of weeks. A lot of them are low quality true, but a lot aren't.
No web community of any size is without trolls. Dealing with their output isn't fun, but the fact that we're starting to get enough notice to be worth trolling is an encouraging sign.
As Reggie Jackson said, "They don't boo nobodys."
As noted in Expand "What kind of questions can I ask here?" section of FAQ , our FAQ is currently a generic SE beta faq, rather than something tailored to History. Those who are interested ought to add answers to that question to help make what is and isn't an on-topic question clearer. That may help the situation (or it may not...)
