I see two large topics on your meta post here and I’d like to address them in sections.
- First is about site scope, moderation process and closed questions.
- Second is about hostility, code of conduct and resolving difference of opinions.
Your question fails to be on topic in my eyes and I commented and voted accordingly. If something changes my mind, I will freely reverse my vote and am happy to explain my point of view and why I voted, edited, commented. I’m also grateful for your post here and questioning of the process.
Aside from Google apps on the Mac App Store being off topic (IMO), You’re also asking a yes/no question which gets two sorts of answers and are generally low value on this platform:
Yes this is possible.
No this isn’t possible.
The help discourages this type of question and I’ve seen (and closed) other yes/no questions in the past and expect to do so for just that reason in the future when needed.
Even though you asked a yes/no question, I see it as fundamentally about “what Google has done” which in tech is generally not useful since these things change often. What was a correct answer at one point in the past is now wrong. Then after some time, things could change again, and what was right and then was wrong is now right again. Our process works best when there is a concrete answer to a practical question that’s durable.
The initial version of your question had quality issues but several months later, another question was added to it via the edit process. You expanded the scope. Now the question reads about three different app stores / SDK in one question. That makes me conclude you’re not trying to solve a practical “where do I get this thing I want” - you’re interested in a pattern of decisions by an organization (Google) that we don’t really cover if that pattern of decisions was Apple instead of a company less central to the site purpose.
- Asking why a company does something is almost always off topic and closed rapidly, even if the company is Apple. I can’t tell if you want to know why Apple did things or why Google did things and I’ve approached your question several times over several weeks to see if I could offer any sort of answer.
- You answered and didn’t select it as solved, so it’s not clear why the post should continue to be hosted here or kept open for more answers. Not selecting an answer after 24 hours indicates you want more answers and I fail to see how someone could provide a good answer to the post as written.
- Despite thousands of views, it didn’t get enough votes to avoid the process for deleting abandoned questions. Six people cared to vote on it and three felt it was useful and three felt it was not useful.
Now for part two. You’ve said you are “Baffled by the hostility that followed”
We expect polite disagreement and civil discourse here. That activity is to be protected, encouraged and should never to be confused with hostility.
- I see several people disagreeing with you and zero amount of hostility directed at you.
- I see you disagreeing with others and your comments towards others are slightly hostile.
The good news is everyone appears to be taking things well and not escalating or making things personal.
You accused someone of downvoting you and then again complained about down votes. No one should tell people not to vote on specific posts. We should all encourage voting in general up and down. There’s nothing odd about people voting, yet you keep commenting it’s odd. That can make people afraid to engage with you which deprives you of honest feedback.
Worse, people could assume you are calling them odd. Try to focus on your actions and not let your feelings project on to others. If you disagree with someone, it’s nice to explain to them you disagree and not make it about right or wrong unless there is a clear process failure (and then, it’s best to flag and let the moderation team point out a mistake as we have tools for private discussions that tend to de-escalate over a public admonishment).
You also complained that an edit to the post was improper. The correct way to handle that is in meta, not reverting and complaining or calling names or telling people they are wrong. Your question was initially about iOS apps running on macOS - and then you edited it to add additional scope as opposed to narrowing scope.
- We strongly prefer one question per question.
- Expect down votes when you add side questions to an existing question with an answer already on it. (In general that’s how I see people behaving here.)
- Also sometimes it takes months or years for a question to get the attention it deserves. Rest assured that even deleted questions can come back to life if and when high reputation users want to see it on the site again.
Your edit made the question objectively worse from a moderation standpoint since now there are “two questions” and not one to answer. (Or three if you want to be extremely precise about Apple SDK and classes of apps in the App Stores)
- Why are apps designed against iOS API provisioned to run on macOS? (Technically three questions since iOS SDK and iPadOS are different SDK)
- Why are macOS SDK apps not published on the Mac App Store?
However, we all are volunteers and can make mistakes or miss a post. Please flag any instance of hostility and the entire mod team can review it or explain to you in private why.
Now back to general guidance that may or may not be needed, to tie up what is turning into a long answer. I do want to address your specific post, but also to address any question on the site that’s closed due to expanding scope or being about why some company X did some thing Y.
- Popularity has nothing to do with what is on topic here. We hope to enable a place for a diverse community to use Creative Commons licensing to curate a library of useful and clear answers to practical problems (within the scope of the site).
- Keep using chat and meta for discussion. Avoid long comment chains as they are truncated by design, deleted regularly and rarely work for complex issues other than serving to link to a specific chat room or specific meta post.
- Voting is normal and criticism can always be seen as a gift. We require criticism to be polite, but even if you don’t see it as polite you can always choose to assume positive intent and take it as such. In the end, someone cared enough about your post to engage and offer a different view.
- I value my posts that get down voted - it shows me someone really cared about it enough to say “this is not useful” or “this stinks” and I endeavor to always add silently - to me or in my current state of mind or even that they hope I come back as they expected something better from me. That helps me feel encouraged and appreciated when I receive critical input.
- I see much evidence of people assuming a positive intent in your post here and on the main site in general. Please try to assume the same going forward when people edit your posts and vote on them.
- I guarantee that myself and the entire elected moderator team will keep responding to flags and posts. Should we decide any one of ys have made a mistake, we challenge each other and discuss things. We have in the past and will continue to reverse our votes if we missed the boat on a judgement call.
Please don’t confuse the reception of a specific post with how people see and relate to you. Moderation is supposed to be all about the post and not the person. Try not to feel attacked if people have a different opinion on your post. I commend you for asking here on meta and airing your feelings and thoughts so they can be evaluated and addressed and understood. Hopefully the care and attention several of the elected moderators have provided reinforce that you are welcome to participate on this site even if that one post or other posts are closed.
}
