Let's get critical: Jul 2013 Site Self-Evaluation

Question

We all love Gardening & Landscaping 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!

Answer 1

Final Results

• Hot composting dock roots

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

• Strawberry Plants from Home Depot not producing.

  Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

• do "real" vegetable gardeners buy plants, or use seeds

  Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

• Does seed from F1 hybrid tomato fruits grow?

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

• Are garden gnomes and similar decorations safe to install indoors?

  Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 1)

• Are these weeds or plants?

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

• How to safely distribute closely growing chili pepper seedlings around a bigger pot?

  Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 0)

• Can someone help identify these two groundcover plants?

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

• Small tomato plants have purplish stems

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

• Nutrition for a Navel Orange

  Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 3)

Answer 2

I find these ratings to be extremely harsh. A number of these questions are very hard to answer due to insufficient details such as "are these weeds or plants" and the "two groundcover plants". Edit: @JonEricson The questions are detailed enough but the fact is that these are hard questions. For the "are these weeds or plants" there are several answers where people do a good job so the -2 rating is harsh in my opinion.