What should be next for community events?

Question

Update October 17th, 2023

We are unfeaturing this as we have given enough time for everyone to weigh in. Suffice to say we have some internal shuffling going on at the moment. You can expect to hear an update in the near future after we have a chance to regroup.

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Recently, we announced the end of Winter/Summer Bash. I posted an answer there, sharing that I was tasked with looking into what could be next to bring the community together. To that end, we would love to hear about what kinds of network-wide events you would enjoy.

We don’t have a concrete direction yet that we would like to go. All we have settled on at this stage is that we would like to have network-wide events that encourage community activity.

Some things to consider in anything you may want to suggest:

• Is it just fun, or does it have some tangible effect to improve the experience on the network?
• Is it really specific to one set of sites? Or is it welcoming to everyone on the network?
• Is your suggestion easily repeatable, or is it more of a one-time thing? Lots of custom work for something not repeatable makes it harder to adopt on our end.
• What kind of resources would it take to make your suggestion happen?
• Will this take more resources than Winter Bash? I am not saying that can’t ever happen. Since we are being mindful of resources, anything that would be a significant undertaking for our product and engineering teams is not something we can commit to in the short term.

I am interested in hearing what people want to see for future community events. Something I have tossed around is the idea of a limited-time Q&A site where we just do something fun or amusing, and then shut it down when we are done with it. For example, a “wrong answers only” site where we seed it with questions from around the network and only answer with the intent of doing the best wrong answer. There are likely better and different themes than this that could be applied to this framework, but I wanted to give you an idea to play with.

Another interesting suggestion from Mithical was a network-wide bash for adding alt text to images that currently lack them. There may be variations of this that could be made if tweaked as well.

What happens next?

We will continue to consider feedback on this post until October 18th, 2023. After we’ve received your feedback and ideas, we’ll review those with stakeholders from other teams that we’d need to collaborate with. Once we can determine a feasible lift for the team and the timing, we’ll get back to you to let you know.

Answer 1

Hackathons have kinda kinda/sorta fallen by the wayside, but we have quite the talented pool of folks who write userscripts to fix Stack Exchange stuff (full disclosure: I kinda sorta do).

What might work well would be allowing submissions for UX fixes via userscripts in some sort of contest involving voting by the community on usefulness. The upshots for SE would be

• Improves the network
• Doesn't take much in terms of Dev work (in theory you have a voting system for electing moderators)
• Recognizes active contributors to the SE network who likely go unnoticed otherwise
• Lets your devs find problem areas of the UX to work on (if someone is writing a script to fix your UX, that's probably a sign that area needs work)
• Prizes don't have to cost much ($100/50/25 gift cards, swag, etc.)

Answer 2

Similar to how the Community-a-thon encourages Stack employees to participate on the public sites, and invites them to have a new-user experience, a contest where participants contribute to a network site where they have no previous activity might be good for helping boost some of our smaller friends on the network.

A contest that encourages asking, answering, and editing on sites that you haven't participated on previously has a bunch of benefits:

• Helps improve the information repository on the network
• Boosts activity on smaller network sites that may be struggling to attract activity
• Allows participants to learn about new subjects and areas outside of their domain of expertise
• Allows users who are used to being established power users on some sites to experience the "newbie" point of view again

Some way of measuring activity and awarding points might be useful, such as one point for an approved suggested edit, two points for a question, and three points for an answer during the event. Users could either be ranked in a dedicated system - similar to the Winterbash leaderboards - or could win some sort of prize at the end, such as swag or a gift card.

Answer 3

If you take your time to look at the story of the event that was just shut down you will probably notice that part of an answer is already there.

Winter Bash was not born on Meta. Winter Bash is just a generalization of Hat Dash, an event that started on Arqade and was then extended to the rest of the network. And you know what?

Hat Dash had actual prizes.
And it wasn't even my final form the only one. A quick search shows that Arqade used to have many game-related contest.

• Kingdom Of Amalur promotion
• Mist of Pandaria beta contest
• Diablo 3 training contest

etc etc etc. Then, nothing more.

I think it should be easy to try and reach out to gaming companies that may see the opportunity to get "close-to-free" advertisement on the site and in turn show players of popular games that they can use the site as an alternative to Reddit for asking specific questions. And I can also see those same companies be willing to get an ads space on those same sites. You know, maybe if Arqade had (STATIC) ads about Zelda, Final Fantasy, Monster Hunter and so on... people would re-enable ads?

It is also worth noticing that there is another site that could easily do the same with little effort. Anime.SE. Just do a contest to win a figure or an artbook and I trust the site will get more than the 6-8 questions/month it gets now...

Short version: just look out for companies that have an interest in getting their products talked about.

Answer 4

In a sense - winterbash was a replacement for a significant number of 'smaller' community events. In the early days we had anniversary contests for the trilogy and other earlier sites, graduation events for new sites.

I've no specific suggestions - but rather an overview of... issues and suggestions

I'd say the goal for any contest would be three fold - attracting folks on the periphery into becoming regular contributors, showing appreciation to established users and attracting new users.

I think a useful starting point is working out what resources the company can put into it on the long run. We've had a lot of the things we did in the past run out of steam because the company couldn't sustain it. We've had 2-3 attempts to bring back swag fall on the wayside. Finding a company that'll say print on demand swag and ship it at a reasonable cost to SE might mean a reasonable prospect of per site swag for example. Figuring out the logistics - whether of tangible rewards, or sustainably building in non tangible ones is a first step.

Ideally the 'lightest' engineering lift would be meta based contests - but you'd be focused on existing users.

The old contests were promoted on the blog here's an example. Admittedly the prizes were "we have start up money" level - but the 'general' model , having a series of categories (and essentially you'd probably be able to figure out winners with an (internal?) SEDE script or three) would be the something you could do with a CM and someone mailing out packages.

There were specific incentives for new users, encouraging both users from other sites, and folks who found out about it elsewhere. The goal to these events, fun aside should be positive, long term engagement.

Maybe even better with a sponsor. You'd lack reach though even compared to the early days I suspect. I'm not a marketing guy so I've no real ideas on how to improve that.

I would say though, it needed no engineering work, and I half recall outside the T shirt, a good chunk of early contests were "we'll order it from you from somewhere, and get it delivered".

I'd like to address one potential issue though

"I am interested in hearing what people want to see for future community events." What if we don't see a future for such events?

The company has often had a lack of follow through on such initiatives.

In a sense - something like the Stack Overflow Student Ambassador Program is a good example of a 'low' engineering lift initiative. It had (to me) a clearly defined goal, and while the question had a fairly negative score - the follow up answer was positively received. It very nearly follows the patterns laid out earlier as well. It could be an example of how events could be run. There's other historical examples, but this is already a very long post.

I feel like we never really heard anything about it after that.

Question really is - what was the longer term implications of this. Were there users from there who ended up becoming established SO contributors? Did everyone lose interest and it wasn't worth following up? Was there a lack of funds, or no event to sponsor this year? Or is it coming soon, and we're just being impatient (and meta can be at times, and occasionally a little demanding.)

An event that runs 1-2 years and gets dropped because of lack of resources, or simply forgotten is going to have much less of an effect than something people looked forward to every year. You don't need a lot of engineering work - you need in a sense, marketing towards the various constituencies and a goal of moving people into deeper levels of engagement from where they are now.

Answer 5

My first ever MSE post was in response to a swag contest, hosted on MSE, with a winter bash theme. Some of the ideas there really did end up as hats in winter bash. I found it a very 'approachable' question to post my first answer to, and I stuck around on MSE after that.

I've also seen some communities come up with their own contests/challenges, though those aren't always focused on 'fun', some can be serious efforts to add valuable content to a site! On the more fun end, I would put the photo-competition on Photography.SE and purim-torah-in-jest from Mi Yodeya, and on the more serious end, Movies.SE had a topic challenge, and Writing.SE seems to still do topic challenges too.

So I've been brainstorming about

• Having silly fun with networkwide users like the past swag contests on MSE encouraged.
• A way to make community-led events more discoverable network-wide, and thus more discoverable for new users.
• Ways for communities to organize their own contests/challenges, advertise them networkwide, and 'rewards' for those users that participated.

And I came up with: Participation trophies.

Since swag seems to be a perpetual problem, I'm thinking a 'realistic reward' could be 'participation trophies' that can be showcased on a special tab/section of a profile page (a bit like imgur's special trophies). Nothing too 'in your face', since these are mostly serious sites, but something somewhere you can 'collect' your fun and showcase your participation rewards.

And there should be a way/place where users can find all ongoing contests networkwide somewhere. Perhaps a single (mod only) tag that can be added to contests/challenges on sites, that gathers them in a single place. Something like the old contests.stackoverflow.com perhaps. And while there are plenty of requests for adding more useful stuff (like meta/chat) to the left-nav, I think this is a good candidate to be at the bottom.

Is it just fun, or does it have some tangible effect to improve the experience on the network?

It has been argued just fun is important for healthy communities, so in that sense just fun already improves the experience.

I think there should be two types of events. First off, there should be more contests like the past swag ones on MSE, probably on MSE. What was really great about those was that they were done in such a way that you can participate by programming, baking, crocheting or even just punning. In short, this type of fun should be open-ended, allowing users to engage in all sorts of creative ways, depending on their own favorite ways of expressing themselves. They should really use the 'experience' of all sorts of networkwide users.

The more site-specific contests/challenges could focus on the topic of a site. They could have the goal of adding some useful content to the site like some of the ones I mentioned above did. They could also just relate to the site topic but focus more on showing off skills (like a photography challenge). And communities should also be free to have the same kind of 'useless' fun as there was on MSE swag contests in the past, as long as the topic of the fun could be related to the topic of the site (though I can't come up with specific examples here of what that would look like, and it probably should have 'limits' on how often such a contest/challenge can be started/held so that there isn't just endless fun and no serious content writing going on).

If these events can somehow be advertised networkwide, they may provide a way for communities to attract new users that may stick around afterward. I think it could offer an approachable way for new users' first interaction with an existing community (fun usually doesn't come with downvotes if you put a slight amount of effort in).

Is it really specific to one set of sites? Or is it welcoming to everyone on the network?

Site-specific challenges and contests would probably require some familiarity with the site's topic, and may not be 'welcoming' to everyone on the network.

But if MSE can have more 'fun' contests like we had in the past, I think those can be welcoming to everyone, everyone has some kind of skill they could showcase in answer to a contest challenge!

Is your suggestion easily repeatable, or is it more of a one-time thing?

I think this can be easily repeatable, though it would require coming up with a new topic to engage with and perhaps new participation trophies each iteration.

What kind of resources would it take to make your suggestion happen?

• Someone to come up with a contest topic for a site, to make a meta post, and perhaps to award the 'participation trophies'.
• A way to bring all ongoing contests to the attention of networkwide and new users, not just the regular users of a particular site. Just a link in left-nav called 'ongoing contests/challenges' could do.
• If sites want to have their fun on their meta site, a (temporary) lowering of the barrier to participate on meta for that site to 1 reputation point (so that everyone that wants to can participate).
• Dev time to build a framework for participation trophies (one time effort) and implement specific participation trophies for each contest. Bonus points if the framework allows moderators to create participation trophies for their own communities and those thus require no further CM/Dev time.

Will this take more resources than Winter Bash?

Initially, yes. It will probably take a bunch of time to set op a page to gather all contests, and develop a framework for participation trophies.

I think, once things are rolling, that this may eventually take less resources. Especially if moderators can create the 'participation trophies', it can be an entirely community-led effort.

Answer 6

On Worldbuilding SE, we have an informal tradition of Christmas and Santa related questions at around that time of year, such as:

How would a Martian colony be able to celebrate Christmas?

Santa exists. How do we react?

How can Santa exist when adults buy the toys?

How does Santa keep the elves from revolting?

As an idea, seasonal Q&A sites could be activated at the relevant times of the year where tongue-in-cheek questions and answers about the event could reside. We could have one for Christmas-related Q&A, one for Easter, one for April Fool's day, Star Wars Day, Day of the Dead, Diwali, Halloween and so-on. They could be read-only most of the year, and activated and advertised at the relevant times of year.

Since they would persist from year to year, and merely alternate between being active and inactive, they would have a one-off set-up cost, and low-ongoing maintenance costs.

Answer 7

A vague idea is some sort of mutual mentorship event across the network. Misc "brainstorming" below:

It would kind of work like match-making: let users who wish to participate list a number of topics they wish to learn more about and a number of topics where they have expertise and are willing to teach others.

This would be network-wide, so for example - let’s say that I mainly participate on Stack Overflow and Electrical Engineering (Stack Exchange site). I could list that I'm willing to help out mentoring various technologies featured at those sites, based on tag badges (bronze/silver/gold) that I have received. And in turn I will also list topics that I wish to learn more about, ideally something completely different on a completely different site, encourage people to explore outside their usual stomping grounds.

Then users are matched and after giving consent get access to some shared chat room, using the already available chat feature. The idea is that the main effort of learning still has to be carried out by the learner, but they could ask for help along the way, both by using the Q&A and by asking their mentor.

The mentor part could also extend to teaching site culture at the certain site, similar to the "ask a question" mentorship experiment that was carried out at SO some time ago. Maybe a lot of the infrastructure needed by this idea is already available from that experiment even, as well as valuable experience of what worked out well and what did not. Having someone experienced of the site to ask before posting would soften the blow of lots of new, clueless users flooding a small site on the network and thereby increasing moderator workload, which apparently was a bit of a problem during Winter Bash.

Also, the goal of this would be learning and increased network traffic, which has lasting value. As opposed to abusing various site mechanisms in order to gather virtual hats, only to have them taken away a few weeks later.

This could have some end goal like the mentored person posting well-received question(s)/answers about the topic at a certain site, aiming to gain a certain amount of reputation tied to the specific tag.

But the main benefits would be the way there: learning, mentoring, positive socializing and maybe getting to know other users. Most of it is in line with the Q&A mechanism and the existing purpose of the sites.

This can get expanded in numerous ways and get held multiple times. There would be some initial development work in getting the "match-making" and topic registering parts made, but from there it shouldn't need much maintenance. Maybe give site moderators the privilege to announce certain events directed at certain topics or themes.

(I'm sure there are negative effects of this too, like increased moderator workload for supervising chats, etc.—when a lot of people get together, drama eventually follows. But in the spirit of brainstorming I've left negative things out, to be dealt with later should this idea become more than an embryo to something more concrete.)

Answer 8

Some kinda community wide collective puzzle and quest system would be fun.

People together would Solve puzzle to unlock a quest. Quests can be like flag 20000 comments , Answer 10000 Question etc (Example numbers). After the quest bar is filled next puzzle will unlock. Each puzzle and quest will become more and more difficult.

Only people who click on participate in event should be able to fill the quests.

Final prize may be a Badge for all participants based on level reached etc or some real goodie for person who solves the puzzles.

Answer 9

How about an event where you can code Easter eggs for chat? Maybe this could only apply to a specific site or room.

Answer 10

Open up a new temporary SE site just for fun and entertainment for everyone (maybe some users don't enjoy this way, but this is just a suggestion). The site would be a Reverse Stack Exchange where the site's scope is any non-sense topics. Many people are already an expert in such topic including me. All serious questions are off-topic.

Just let the users play!

Enjoy yourself. Enjoy the strictlessness!

Answer 11

International site, so do something fun and educational based on that. Competition perhaps to showcase an aspect of culture or something similar. That would be more interesting than any of the suggestions I see or hats.