During the initial days, there are a lot of issues to be worked out. The most important questions, vary from site to site, and from private to public status. The answers to these will have a lasting effect on how your site operates for a very long time. This post attempts to aggregate the most common and important issues that should be addressed depending on your current site status.
Private Beta
1. Are questions about [subject] on or off topic?
You should actively watch the earliest questions with an eye for quality and purpose. Ask yourself: “Is this the type of question we want on this site? Is it pushing the boundaries of on- and off-topic questions? Are we opening a can of worms?” Talk about these issues in meta, early and often. They are the key to establishing the boundaries around your site.
Remember, this is a class of questions, and not just a single question. The more specific topics that get discussed, the more meaningful the discussions will be.
For example, on Chocolate.SE, discussing:
Should dark chocolates be on-topic?
Will most likely result in flame wars, and reach no useful conclusion. However, discussing:
Should the additives used in the process of making dark chocolates be on-topic?
Will lead to more constructive discussion.
2. How should we tag questions about {subject}?
Tagging questions is an ad hoc way of organizing content. It is mostly improvised by users asking the questions but only to a point. Tag auto-completion and community editing will influence the proper use of tags for a very long time.
The type of things you should look out for: how to handle acronyms common to your subject, brand versus product-specific tags, common terminology, and the use of semantic tags to categorize specific types of questions unique to your community. Every site will have their own unique set of tag-related issues.
The best way to identify tagging problems is to watch new posts closely, and try to build tag wiki excerpts that explain what the tags are for. When tags become ambiguous, too specific (or not specific enough), or just somehow off, raise those issues in meta, and quickly. Proper tagging is very much a lead-by-example activity. The sooner you get the “community standards” for tagging ironed out, the less chance you’ll have to face the drudgery of cleaning them up later.
3. Should tag A be a synonym of tag B?
Usually, in the early stages a fair bit of redundancy gets developed as many users may suggest different variations of the same tag, or some may call the same thing by a different name. These can result in disorganization and confusion in using the tags. It is important to look for and discuss such redundancies that could become problems later on.
4. What’s the “elevator pitch” for our site?
Imagine you’ve just gotten on an elevator with a friendly stranger. You have precisely one floor to describe your community to them. What would you say? The elevator pitch is a brief sentence that describes what your site is about.
This helps in visualising what your community is about and what it is going to be. If you have trouble describing your community in one-line, then its a sign that the community needs to take a relook at its scope and purpose.
5. What's an interesting name for the chat room?
Every site comes with its official chat room. This is created automatically and can be reached from the Site Switcher on the top right. The chat room is the third place of your community, after main and meta. It is like the lounge where everybody can get together to discuss, complain and have fun. Personalizing this space to reflect your community and what you are is one of the small steps to take towards building an active and engaged community.
Try to get a few ideas up, discuss and vote on them. The name could be something esoteric in your field, or something that every person may understand. Whichever it may be, go ahead and start the discussion!
6. What makes a good answer?
People tend to focus on questions during the private beta, but answers are just as important. Stack Exchange is about answering questions; if a site has poor answers, then said site won't be useful. Every private beta should generate three or four stellar answers that can serve as models for what a good answer should look like. Those stellar answers should be identified, the community should come to an agreement about why those answers are good, and the community should attempt to replicate those answers during the public beta and beyond. Guidelines that teach new community members how to write good answers should be written and on meta, where they can serve as a resource.
Public Beta
1. How do we promote our site?
By now, your site should have 100+ questions, mostly excellent with expert level answers. Next comes the issue of getting the word out i.e. how to promote your site and how to reach out to the experts and peers in your industry. Meta is the perfect venue reach out and ask around about who knows whom. Ask your friends to ask their friends. The people needed to make your site a huge success are already within your reach.
Keep in mind, that this is again not one discussion, but a set of discussions that will collectively come under the tag of site-promotion. For any degree of success, it takes a bit more coordination and discipline than asking a one-shot question and expecting a final solution to simply emerge. It takes individual members to rise up and ask methodical, step-wise questions with an end-goal in mind — and follow through.
Some of the avenues to consider are:
- Encourage your community to share links to outstanding questions and answers. And if you feel you’re not producing outstanding questions and answers worthy of sharing with the world, endeavor to fix that first.
- Reach the right kind of publications and bloggers. Make sure that the key experts in every field know about the site; not just the “Martha Stewart” big names; we want to talk to the people who go to these conferences.
- Make sure evangelists from each community have the opportunity to speak before groups of experts in their fields.
- Encourage and participate in grassroots conversations in existing discussion groups, where appropriate.
You should be thinking in terms of “what is it really going to take to make this a world-class site?” Don't wait for anybody. You have to get the ball rolling. Being a voice in a crowd works for certain types of collaboration and brainstorming, but sometimes you have to take on the role of the organizational czar.
2. What should our documentation contain?
Most of the content present in the Help Center is same across the entire Network. There are some parts however, that need to be discussed and developed within the community. The most important page is the /help/on-topic page that lists broadly the scope of the site. This page acts as a guide for new members of your community and should be carefully considered and put together to accurately represent the site scope.
3. Do we really need tag [subject]?
As tags start to get better organized, there will be many problematic and extremely specific tags that may have been created initially, but do not actually serve any purpose. Such tags may be meta tags, may be redundant, or may even simply be spelling errors. Whatever the case, it is important to bring these up and discuss their need on the site. Many of these will eventually be removed, and the earlier this happens the cleaner the tags on your site stay.
Useful Links
In cases of conflict between official posts on the blog and on MSO/MSE, give priority to whichever was posted later.
Increasing Community Participation
1. Who are you? Why are you participating on this site?
Examples: 1
This one is debatable. This is more in line with discussions on other forums and most recently on topic based discussion sites such as Coursera course forums, Udacity forums and to an extent across some other networks. This is an extremely common practise on mailing lists as well. This is a discussion that can help draw out individuals to participate on meta, and also create a sense of community within at least a subset of the larger community which appears to be beneficial in the short term.
