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Proposal

You haven’t been active on Meta for a while. Please consider to take a look at recent posts and to help determining this site’s policies by voting and providing feedback.

Send users a reminder along the lines of the above through the inbox if the following conditions are met:

  • The user has some experience, e.g., they have acquired the edit privilege (2 k on graduated sites, 1 k on betas).
  • The user was not active on Meta recently, e.g., they have not posted or voted on the per-site meta in the last 20 days.
  • The user was not reminded recently, e.g., they have not received a reminder in the last 20 days.
  • The user was active on the site, e.g., in the last 20 days, the user made at least three posts or reviews.
  • There was some meta activity regarding policies and similar, e.g., there were at least three posts on the per-site meta in the last 20 days that were tagged or .

As the main time span (20 days in the example) seems to be a subject to discussion, I gave my rationale for this in an anwser below. So, if you only disagree with the time span, downvote that anwser.

If desired, make this a feature that can be activated per-site. For example this is not a problem on Stack Overflow, whose Meta receives much more attention than Meta Stack Exchange.

Rationale

To translate a statement from German Language’s chat:

Meta is huge, but the entrance seems to be a well hidden cave.

Right now, the only thing that reminds users of the existence of the per-site meta is the featured on Meta/hot Meta posts sidebar (which they may not notice out of a habit) or perhaps the occasional answer, comment or badge they receive (but this requires some meta activity in the first place). I have seen several cases where high-reputation users were not seen¹ on Meta for months, despite being very active on the main site, including reviewing – which shows that they did not only care about reputation but also about the community to some extent.

This leads to extremely low activity on some per-site metas. Getting an amount of votes on proposals that can be regarded as a consensus may very well take a month; constructive feedback is rare and consequently those who actively participate are discouraged.

Now, we can and should not force users to participate on per-site metas, but I do not consider a reminder every 20 days to be too obtrusive. It should be comparable to the occasional reminder to vote on questions (that I have only seen a handful of times so far, mostly on Programming Puzzles and Code Golf.).

¹ As per the *last seen* on their profile page.
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12
  • +1000 I've seen many people who want to help but need to see something like this.
    – M.A.R.
    Sep 26, 2015 at 17:38
  • +1. It took me a while to find out about per site metas, and I think that it's important people know they exist. I think you have a good way to identify those users we want on those metas, so you have my support for this proposal
    – MTL
    Sep 26, 2015 at 17:40
  • Would you have this reminder sent to users who have used a per-site meta in the past on another site, who subsequently get 2k on a different site?
    – MTL
    Sep 26, 2015 at 17:41
  • @Shokhet: Yes (I just saw that I forgot a recently at the critical place). There seem to be some users who tend to forget to visit Meta from time to time, though they know that it exists. The reminders should be regular but rare (assuming that the user did not become active or ceased to be active on Meta).
    – Wrzlprmft
    Sep 26, 2015 at 17:50
  • Okay, cool. Just wanted clarify that point.
    – MTL
    Sep 26, 2015 at 17:57
  • 6
    20 days is too frequently. I can easily go three weeks without checking meta even on sites where I consider myself active on meta. Once I develop the habit of ignoring these reminders, they won't work. I think at least 30 days, possibly more.
    – Kate Gregory
    Sep 26, 2015 at 21:10
  • @KateGregory: What do you mean by “I can go easily”? Possibly every individual person can go easily without visiting Meta. The question is if Meta can go without you. Also, if nobody has opposed a featured proposal (say, a change of a custom close reason) within a month, at least I would stop waiting for further input and realise it.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Sep 26, 2015 at 21:34
  • @Wrzlprmft what I mean is, if I was on Meta yesterday and you remind me Meta exists, I dismiss you thinking "I know that!" If I was on Meta last week, I do the same. On a low-traffic Meta (say Travel or Gardening) not much happens each week. Even a 3 week reminder is too frequent. Perhaps the poking should depend on how much action has happened on meta since your last visit (say 5 or 10 posts) not how many days. I would love to know there are 5 new questions/answers/posts since I was last there. That would be genuinely useful.
    – Kate Gregory
    Sep 27, 2015 at 1:32
  • 1
    Not going to use metas unless the cloudflare clusterfluke with TLS is fixed.
    – Deer Hunter
    Sep 27, 2015 at 9:28
  • Note the approach taken by Photography SE to place an invitation (and link) on the banner of the main site to help by participating in meta. In my opinion this is preferable because less intrusive, allowing for self-selection of those with an interest.
    – hardmath
    Sep 27, 2015 at 17:18
  • @hardmath: That banner is even less prominent than the featured/hot Meta questions, which are nice but apparently not sufficient.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Sep 27, 2015 at 17:25
  • I think both Ask Ubuntu and Unix & Linux use community ads linking to their meta sites.
    – muru
    Sep 28, 2015 at 8:16

4 Answers 4

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13

I support this, but all those "20 days" in Wrzl's proposal need to be doubled to six weeks -- especially the reminder frequency. I feel a reminder every three weeks is too soon after an interaction to assume that this user has forgotten about that meta.

Also, no e-mail reminders, please, not even as an option.

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2

Since this seems to be a major point of discussion, but not essential to the proposal as such, let me give my rationale for the proposed time span of 20 days here (so, if you dislike the 20 days, downvote this):

I chose the 20 days, because three weeks is roughly the time I would give an important proposal to gather votes or opinions before realising it. Thus, if somebody only visits Meta due to the reminders, this should suffice to participate in everything important. Also the time span corresponds to the time you would have to wait from votes and feedback from users whom the reminder targets and successfully activates.

Finally remember that the proposed reminder only becomes active if you did not do anything on Meta for the time span. If you visit a featured or hot meta question and vote on it, the timer is reset. If you did not do this for 20 days, you probably did miss something.

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1

This should be applied but should be optional.

I do not really want to know about the new updates right now so I would like to see a checkbox allowing the reminder to be shown or not. Maybe the time could be extended to three to six weeks instead of 20 days. Put this in the inbox and/or even make a pop-up. Of course, you could make a little "ad" on the sidebar in big, black, bold letters:

Remember to visit Meta for the new updates or be punished/suspended/have-account-deleted!

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  • 1
    We already have little ads on the sidebar (called Hot Meta Questions) – it does not seem to work that well.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Sep 26, 2015 at 23:03
-4

I support this proposal.

I would recommend that this reminder be sent to the user's registered email, similar to the email sent to beta users about the presence of meta and chat. I think that it will probably be more visible and effective than a reminder sent to the inbox.

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  • 5
    Or both... However I think, as this is targeting active users, it should work as intended if it was just the inbox!
    – ᔕᖺᘎᕊ
    Sep 26, 2015 at 17:45
  • @ᔕᖺᘎᕊ Fair. Even so, it's a lot easier to leave an inbox notification on the side for a moment, and then forget about it completely, than it is to set an email on the side (at least, in my opinion)
    – MTL
    Sep 26, 2015 at 17:50

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