We’re all here because we’re dissatisfied with Stack Exchange. But are we all dissatisfied about the same things?
Excellent question. Reflection on this is important for the other excellent question @gilles raised about why other extant QA software won’t do; and when formulating an MVP.
Objections to SE/SO/etc could fall into several buckets, such as (with examples, not necessarily my views):
- governance - “I don’t like those in charge, and what they’re doing”
- social - “I don’t like prevailing social norms w.r.t. to new users / poor questions / etc”
- procedural - “I don’t like how one moderator can decide on things / I don’t like the process for complaints being handled”
- mechanical - “I think questions should get multiple chances at the reopen queue / I think anonymous votes should have some weight or give/take rep”
- technical - “I think the API should be more open to make automated tasks (eg spam hunting) easier / I think the stack software should be open source so we can run our own $TOPIC community”
Many of these are interlinked or overlapping; and some we will want to modify more than others.