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The fact of life is that for the majority of visitors, what describes your site is its name. And that's if you're lucky: on Computer Science, we get quite a few “fix my Windows” questions, from people who stopped reading at the first word. (And then there are the desperate “hey, a text box” cases, who ask about gardening or relationship advice on Stack Overflow.) The better ones will also read that introductory sentence (“is a question and answer site for people looking to bypass life's everyday problems with simple tricks”) and at least part of the tour page.

The fact of life is that for the majority of visitors, what describes your site is its name. And that's if you're lucky: on Computer Science, we get quite a few “fix my Windows” questions, from people who stopped reading at the first word. (And then there are the desperate “hey, a text box” cases, who ask about gardening or relationship advice on Stack Overflow.) The better ones will also read that introductory sentence (“is a question and answer site for people looking to bypass life's everyday problems with simple tricks”) and at least part of the tour page.

• A meta thread titled A Lifehacks Manifesto.
• A help page which basically summarizes the manifesto. The tour page lacks site-specific guidance.

• A meta thread titled A Lifehacks Manifesto.
• A help page which basically summarizes the manifesto. The tour page lacks site-specific guidance.

The fact of life is that for the majority of visitors, what describes your site is its name. And that's if you're lucky: on Computer Science, we get quite a few “fix my Windows” questions, from people who stopped reading at the first word. (And then there are the desperate “hey, a text box” cases, who ask about gardening or relationship advice on Stack Overflow.) The better ones will also read that introductory sentence (“is a question and answer site for people looking to bypass life's everyday problems with simple tricks”) and at least part of the tour page.

Lifehacks.SE fails on both counts, which explains a rather high rate of closed questions (12 of the 50 most recent questions as I write — compare with 7 on Computer Science (mostly “I'm a CS student so my programming assignments must be on-topic”); 13 on Skeptics which has a non-obvious requirement that all questions must take the form of a notable claim).

The fact of life is that for the majority of visitors, what describes your site is its name. And that's if you're lucky: on Computer Science, we get quite a few “fix my Windows” questions, from people who stopped reading at the first word. (And then there are the desperate “hey, a text box” cases, who ask about gardening or relationship advice on Stack Overflow.) The better ones will also read that introductory sentence (“is a question and answer site for people looking to bypass life's everyday problems with simple tricks”) and at least part of the tour page.

Lifehacks.SE fails on both counts, which explains a rather high rate of closed questions (12 of the 50 most recent questions as I write — compare with 7 on Computer Science (mostly “I'm a CS student so my programming assignments must be on-topic”); 13 on Skeptics which has a non-obvious requirement that all questions must take the form of a notable claim).