Timeline for What new things can be done to increase participation in MSE?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
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| Nov 26, 2019 at 10:04 | history | edited | NoDataDumpNoContribution | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 23, 2019 at 11:08 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Troyen There is something to be said about the bunker mentality and it's true for the stack exchanges as well as for the company. The million dollar question is how to leave that behind and basically invent yourself new regularly without breaking all that's good or heading in the totally wrong direction? I admit that the company tries to introuce change, but so far it's much more announcements than real action and what real action there is, is mostly shallow or not very thought through in my opinion. Listening might help finding better solutions. | |
| Nov 23, 2019 at 11:00 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Troyen I don't know so well for other exchanges, but SO is going down, the number of answers (not to speak of the quality) is down from it's peak to the level of 2012 and no end to the downward trend is in sight. The company does almost nothing to encourage more and better answers, if anything it seems focused on questions and some side things. The changes they made in the last years are rather cosmetic in nature. To me it looks like they seriously think that pronouns usage is the most important issue at the moment. | |
| Nov 23, 2019 at 10:57 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Troyen My idea is that talking about it is almost always better than not talking about it, at least in the long run. The sympathy for the company is at a low currently and not without reason. Jeff Atwood, kind of idol for many users especially older ones, coined the statement that listen to the community is important as long the community doesn't decide. And just because always someone will complain listening and explaining seems to me to be instrinsically better than what they are doing now. | |
| Nov 22, 2019 at 22:04 | comment | added | Troyen | Absolutely not claiming the company is blameless here (especially not with recent actions), but I can see why they may not want to bring some changes to the community for consideration. The bunker mentality explanation matches what I've seen, though instead of "last two years" I'd say closer to "since 2013-2014". Then again, SE is not a monolithic entity anymore even if they're treated as one. I'd argue Megan's team is pretty invested in working to improve the site, for example. | |
| Nov 22, 2019 at 22:01 | comment | added | Troyen | @Trilarion Power users can provide valuable insight, but their experiences and interactions with the site/community are different from everyone else's, so if a change is proposed that targets a different group and the power users strongly disagree with it, but the company goes ahead anyway (to help that other group), I think the reaction would be worse than if it wasn't proposed in the first place. Now you get complaints that the community was overruled instead of the community wasn't consulted. | |
| Nov 22, 2019 at 21:59 | comment | added | Troyen | @Trilarion Agree we should separate out the post-September environment, so I'll set those events aside. The voices I find squelched the most on meta is the middle crowd, somewhere between 10 and 10k rep. Neither power users nor help vampires (though often lumped in with the latter when people are arguing against changes). Changes like increasing question rep and putting a temporary cap on the displayed negative score (like reddit does) can benefit this group, but based on the reaction to both, I don't think asking meta beforehand would've gone much differently, even in January. | |
| Nov 22, 2019 at 12:08 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Troyen Not sure if this is really true, but with the existing material here we could probably test it. If it were true, the question would be how one can have a civil discourse with angry participants. That's probably a good question. On the other hand many controversial questions here are pure bike-shedding. People argue because the stakes are rather low (often it doesn't really matter much). It seems we all like a bit of drama from time to time instead of concentrating on the really important events. The events in the last two months are excluded from that however. | |
| Nov 22, 2019 at 11:03 | comment | added | Troyen | This sounds good on paper, but it's much harder to put in practice now than it was...say a few years ago (and especially compared to a decade ago). Not just on SE, but all over the internet, people are more aggressive and openly negative about all kinds of changes than they used to be, and that drives both the people that want to have a civil discourse and the devs away because who really wants to show up to get yelled at? Also, I think there are very few things that the full community can get behind, the rest is controversial or more beneficial to one group vs another. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 22:56 | comment | added | Stop Harming the Community | @Trilarion: That's a risk. I actually did originally have a more specific criteria originally, but I changed it before submitting because it wasn't an important detail and I could imagine the conversation turning in the direction of "that's not a good indicator of who should be involved in Meta." While "What is a good indicator of someone who should be involved in Meta?" is an interesting question, it's not the one I wanted to ask. Besides, no one wants to brainstorm how to encourage people they don't want to participate to participate. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 22:49 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @rockwalrus-stopharmingMonica I don't think that it is a good idea to allow total arbitrariness there. If you are not specific with your question, it might become unclear or too broad. If the answers depend on the definition of "high value user", it might also be opinion based. Typically all those traits don't make good questions. There could be an exception of course. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 22:42 | comment | added | Stop Harming the Community | @Trilarion: It's kind of ironic that you wrote "as you like to call them." :) I was searching for words that would allow readers to fill in their own values for the kinds of people they want to be here. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 21:06 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @IamMonica Yes, I agree. But that is not the way to attract more "high value users" to MSE. I propose that the company just changes course in this regard. That would definitely be a new thing, wouldn't it? | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 16:47 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @FrédéricHamidi You have a point. Maybe they should throw in the occasional completely antagonistic decision. But then the question was about attracting particularly "high value users", not sure if that can be achieved by drama only. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 16:43 | comment | added | Frédéric Hamidi | I'm not so sure about that. Human nature unfortunately dictates that a well-oiled system that works correctly generates less drama and attracts less participation than a mismanaged system completely on fire. Just look at the traffic on social networks -- they positively thrive on conflict. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 16:41 | history | answered | NoDataDumpNoContribution | CC BY-SA 4.0 |