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We all love Islam 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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Final Results

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)


Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 2)


Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)


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


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


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


Net Score: -4 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 4)


Net Score: -5 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 5)


Net Score: -5 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 5)


Net Score: -6 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 7)


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There were some reasonably interesting (in the sense of "I haven't heard this one a million times already") questions this time. The "foremost" question was good (although the questioner probably should've put some effort (i.e. mentioned some effort) into reading a tafsir of the verses first), and attracted good answers (to my eye, hardly an expert on the topic). The "4 wives" question was excellent, and deserved far better answers than it received (both of which appear to have missed the nuances of the question, as the only "reference" they provided was an ayah that, from context, the questioner likely already knew).

Of the ten questions, at least two of them should've been closed (and now are), and three of them contain answers that are nothing more than copy-paste (one of which is actually accepted despite its negative score). While these have all received negative scores in this review, indicating that these are in fact not the types of posts that give an appropriate impression of this site, the fact that they made it to the review in the first place is telling.

Basically, if we as a community don't want these posts to represent our site, they need to be cleaned up before they get noticed. Cleaning them up after the fact doesn't really help, since the damage has already been done: First impressions are notoriously hard to break.

This means voting to close anything that needs to be closed when you see it, editing to improve posts that can be improved, voting to delete (or flagging, for those users who do not yet have delete privileges) those posts that actually do more harm than good (be that harm to the original questioner or to the site as a whole) when you see it, using the review queues regularly to ensure that problematic posts are dealt with promptly. Indirectly, voting in general to ensure that those users who contribute positively to the site have the ability to contribute more positively in the future.

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I have to say that some of the questions I reviewed returned stellar results on DuckDuckGo as compared to Google.

Compare finding it on the first page and not finding it on even the tenth page.

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Importance of Friday prayers needs improvement. This hit on google seemed better.

http://seekersguidance.org/ans-blog/2011/02/03/is-the-friday-prayer-prayer-fard-or-sunnah/

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