<p>I should be talking about @Glen_b's data (this is a statistics forum, isn't it?), but I have little experience with forum reports and find that I want to see a much longer run to comment. So instead I will expatiate in a miscellaneous way on what I take to be the main underlying question here, how to make Cross Validated work better? </p>

<p>Optimists might look at the large volume of excellent threads here (and I note that the lively discussions can be as helpful as the many definitive answers) and want to claim <strong>success</strong>. Pessimists might look at the large number of questions here that never really got off the ground, including some distressingly broad or vague or confused questions that seemed doomed to get no response that would satisfy the poster, or anyone else, and want to claim <strong>failure</strong>. 
Both are right. In fact any dialogue is not so much between persons as between moods. </p>

<p>My first suggestion is that ways of dealing with the internet seem to be evolving very quickly and this may be behind some patterns of change that we are seeing. Users here vary from those who seem to have joined at about the start and remained committed ever since, through those like myself who have joined much more recently, to users who joined a few minutes ago to ask their question (and who in many cases will not return). </p>

<p>It's already getting hard for me to re-create my initial puzzlement at how CV worked. For some time between learning about this site and actually joining it I was shy because it looked so very complicated (why all those badges, for example? that just looked childish). Looking again at the home page and trying to see the site from a beginner's eyes, it seems more obvious to me that <strong>you can ask a question</strong> than <strong>how you can search for an answer</strong>. As often remarked, there is a tension between the short-term and individual focus "Here is my question: What's the answer?" and the long-term and collective goal of building up a repository or resource that can be consulted. We don't usually hear from those who found something interesting or useful on our pages and just benefited from that. We do usually hear and see those who are struggling even to ask a question that triggers the right response. Either way, <strong>making it more evident that there is a site to be searched and how to search it seems a priority</strong>. </p>

<p>Both here and elsewhere I feel that there is a steady drift upwards in the fraction of questions based on the assumption that we are an oracle capable of answering even cryptic questions. This is tied up with deep-seated educational and cultural attitudes towards statistics, even among people with backgrounds that otherwise are reasonably quantitative and/or mathematical. Some symptomology that is recurrent includes</p>

<p><em>I know little or nothing about statistics, so you need to explain in terms I can understand.</em> </p>

<p><em>I need to know the right way to analyse this dataset, already in my hands.</em> </p>

<p><em>I tried Googling this, but got nowhere.</em> </p>

<p><em>I need to know what to say in my Master's research proposal.</em> </p>

<p>By the way, I should stress that rudeness or discourtesy remain exceptional here; it's a credit to our moderators and more active users that it wouldn't be tolerated.  </p>

<p>In blunt terms, it seems that we are often expected to compensate for those who never received much of a statistical education, or whose statistical education to date has failed to inculcate much understanding. And this is increasing. The syndrome is that <strong>the internet will give me an answer</strong> and therefore that it's the job of CV to provide that answer. Naturally, in broad terms that is what we do offer, but the small print doesn't include promises that we always can satisfy those who have not tried much to help themselves. </p>

<p>Do other fields experience the same expectations? Forgetting statistics for a moment, let me imagine that I want to learn some physics or economics or whatever, some subject where my knowledge is very slim. I would certainly put most emphasis on reading some books; it's not practical for me to take courses but if I were a student it should be; I would use what I could find on the internet. I would feel that I had to work long and hard before bothering strangers in a forum. </p>

<p>Incidentally, @Silverfish's answer had an interesting autobiographical flavour. I won't quite follow suit, but so that this is not interpreted as another patronising put-down by a statistician of those struggling with statistics, I stress that I am not a statistician by training or by (any!) qualifications. I am a primitive life-form, a geographer who uses statistical methods, but a lot. Low-hanging fruit? That's the best. </p>
