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We all love Chemistry 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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  • $\begingroup$ Too much homework :/ I may post a longer answer on this later, but I'm a bit caught up IRL this week. $\endgroup$
    – ManishEarth
    Nov 14, 2013 at 15:03

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This set of review questions was in my opinion a bit weak. There were very few questions with more than one answer, and while I didn't keep good track of the answers, I believe most of them were not accepted.

Homework questions seem to be on the rise and there may be a need to be a bit more critical of the OPs who are posting these questions.

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  • $\begingroup$ Physics is tightening up its treatment of HW. We already were a bit loose with it, maybe we should be a bit stricter? I'm not too sure on this. (When I get the time I'll flip through the HW questions we have and have a closer look at their quality) $\endgroup$
    – ManishEarth
    Nov 14, 2013 at 15:06
  • $\begingroup$ @ManishEarth I was thinking of proposing a tutorial which we could use in connection with homework. For example, a Q might be "How do you solve concentration (molarity/molality) questions" and the answers provide a number of strategies, examples and references. We could then mark generic homework questions as duplicates if they can be readily answered with the information in the tutorial Q&A. $\endgroup$
    – bobthechemist
    Nov 14, 2013 at 18:10
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, basically a faq question. Great idea!! Go ahead if you want; a meta post is good but not necessary here. If you feel we get the same type of question over and over again -- one that can be really addressed in a single self-answered/community wiki post, go ahead and write one and tag it as [faq]. $\endgroup$
    – ManishEarth
    Nov 14, 2013 at 18:22
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Final Results

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  • $\begingroup$ Pretty balanced, but not too promising. Too many homeworky ones, though many had a good amount of conceptualness. Still, I'd like some higher level activity (so I may have been stingy with votes this time) $\endgroup$
    – ManishEarth
    Nov 19, 2013 at 20:47

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