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Wanted to put it to the community before I took any action. John Doucette suggested it and I think it's a good idea!

What are all the different kinds of Neural Networks used for?

PS Here's the source of the chart: https://becominghuman.ai/cheat-sheets-for-ai-neural-networks-machine-learning-deep-learning-big-data-678c51b4b463

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I believe that only questions and answers that have been edited by multiple users and that no longer resemble the original question or answer, respectively, should be made community wiki, given that the upvotes or downvotes are no longer only associated with or attributed to the user that originally posted the answer or question. For example, this answer https://ai.stackexchange.com/a/8688/2444 should be made a community wiki, given that its current version and quality is due to multiple users.

In the article The Future of Community Wiki, it is stated in the section Community Wiki is not a "Quick Fix"

Many sites propose using community wiki to allow content that is on-topic and useful, but can be considered borderline or questionable in other ways. Someone notes that a certain class of question has problems, and proposes using community wiki as a quick fix.

If a question is valuable enough that you believe it belongs on the site, chances are you don’t need it to be community wiki! We welcome all contributions which improve the quality of a site and advertise its greatness to the rest of the world. If you allow a certain class of questions, but only under the stipulation that no one can earn reputation from them, you’ve strongly discouraged these sorts of questions. People aren’t going to put in nearly as much effort to ask them.

Instead, strive for quality. If you're unsure a certain question class belongs on the site, don't tolerate the worst examples — demand that these questions be awesome. Questions shouldn’t be swept under the rug with community wiki; they should get the same respect and treatment as the rest of your Q&A. If those questions are something you are uncomfortable showing to visitors … they probably don’t belong on your site.

Many things which "need" to be community wiki simply don't. Sometimes it’s just a matter of understanding the root of a question: "Software to record video games" can be turned into a great question without needing the crutch of community wiki. Or, you may need to break the original question into smaller parts; a rather well-timed Ask Different Meta post explores this very avenue.

Hence, the question What are all the different kinds of neural networks used for? should probably be closed as too broad. However, given that I edited the post to include "I just need a brief overview (1-2 lines) of their applications.", the scope has been slightly limited. So, at this point, more than one user has contributed to the quality and current version of the question, so maybe it should be made a community wiki (according to my belief above).

In the section Community Wiki is primarily for Answers of the same article

If we haven’t said this enough already, questions rarely, if ever, need community wiki. What about answers? We removed the ability for users to make a question community wiki, but left the ability for users to make an answer wiki.

The intent of community wiki in answers is to help share the burden of solving a question. An incomplete “seed” answer is a stepping stone to a complete solution with help from others; an incomplete question is a hindrance and an obstacle to getting a solution as no one understands the inquiry. It is in answers that the goal of community wiki, for the community, by the community, shows its truest colors.

Yet even in answers, true collaboration is scarce. Most of the time, a single individual can provide a complete answer. There are even times where a question looks like it’ll need a massive effort, but one gallant user steps up to the plate with an impressive and comprehensive answer.

See also What are "Community Wiki" posts?.

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    $\begingroup$ I think the impetus was that it's a broad question, outside of the scope of the normal Q&A which depends on narrow questions, and would function as a general resource. Thus an exception. $\endgroup$
    – DukeZhou
    Sep 24, 2019 at 17:39
  • $\begingroup$ @DukeZhou Yes, but in the article that I quote, there is a section "Community Wiki is not a "Quick Fix". So, too broad questions should not be fixed by making them community wiki. $\endgroup$
    – nbro
    Sep 24, 2019 at 18:29
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    $\begingroup$ I don't see that question as needing to be fixed, just that broad questions with suitable answers would seem to be good candidates for community resources. (For instance, if someone were to ask about the different categories of AI in general, and we got a strong, definitive answer.) $\endgroup$
    – DukeZhou
    Sep 24, 2019 at 19:35
  • $\begingroup$ @DukeZhou Given that it is too broad, it should be closed or fixed (to reduce the scope of the question). So, in this sense, this question needs to be fixed. If you make this question a community wiki, someone may edit it to include more neural networks, etc., which will lead to other long answers. I believe that we should really be more strict when it comes to broad questions, which can't really be answered satisfactorily or have a wide range of possible answers. I think this is one of the main problems of this website that needs to be solved. $\endgroup$
    – nbro
    Sep 24, 2019 at 19:58
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    $\begingroup$ I have to wonder though, if a few strategic broad questions might yield steady traffic, and help boost site participation in the long term, in that we'd be providing not only narrow Q&A, but a few vetted, general resource pages. (For me it's always ultimately going to be about utility, even if rules have to bend on occasion.) $\endgroup$
    – DukeZhou
    Sep 24, 2019 at 20:03
  • $\begingroup$ @DukeZhou I believe that this is not the right approach. If we allow certain posts to live only to attract more people, then these may degrade the quality of the website, with respect to the "SE standards and philosophy". SE is supposed not to allow all type of questions and answers. Anyway, I hardly doubt that anyone else in the future will have the exact same question as https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/15594/2444, which means that it won't answer the exact question that someone else will have. This is also why I am against this type of questions. $\endgroup$
    – nbro
    Sep 24, 2019 at 20:09
  • $\begingroup$ @DukeZhou For example, I think that a question like "What are some potential applications of Liquid State Machines?" would be a lot more interesting, because the answerer could go more into the details. An answer like "RNNs can be used for sequence prediction" can be found very easily on the web. $\endgroup$
    – nbro
    Sep 24, 2019 at 20:13
  • $\begingroup$ LSMs would be interesting, and I notice the Wiki for it is fairly sparse. (PS I saw your note on ai.stackexchange.com/a/8688/2444 as a wiki, but hesitating b/c it's a duplicate, and doesn't have many votes. Was part of your thinking that making it a community wiki would allow differentiation from the duplicate?) $\endgroup$
    – DukeZhou
    Sep 24, 2019 at 20:16
  • $\begingroup$ @DukeZhou I mentioned that answer as an example of an answer that could become a wiki because its current version does not resemble the original answer. Given that it is already marked as a duplicate and, indeed, it has not received many upvotes, I would not take action in this case. $\endgroup$
    – nbro
    Sep 24, 2019 at 20:20
  • $\begingroup$ pps- i declined that flag on the duplicate because it still come up for me on search, so I thought it would be a good idea to leave the link to the original Q&A... $\endgroup$
    – DukeZhou
    Sep 24, 2019 at 21:14

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