What is the biggest overall challenge to the success of the various Stack Exchange sites?
I'm trying to think of problems holding back, or threatening the success of, the Stack Exchange sites (including official, unofficial and up-and-coming sites). In other words, the whole SE platform.
One challenge per answer please.
I'll post my answer only because it happens to be the exact opposite of MGOwen's -- the biggest challenge facing SE sites is stopping them from deteriorating into normal forum sites that nobody wants to visit. For the first couple hours of the Unix/Linux beta that started yesterday it looked dangerously like we were going to have more poll questions than not -- a majority of questions that have no true answer.
I'm of the opinion (and close war logs on SO seem to agree) that the people most inclined to participate in these communities are also the people least interested in reading about what IDE you think is best to write C# code in Linux. New SE sites are particularly vulnerable because there aren't any precedents for that sort of thing, and people have a really bad habit in betas of posting any question they can think of, no matter how unneeded it is, Seeding an SE beta is useful, but asking whatever subjective question you can come up with just so you can say you asked one of the first 100 questions on the site is not the way to set up the site as the authority on that topic; it does just the opposite
I would much rather a site be forked off that is dedicated to these sorts of things, like the Not Programming Related proposal. People that like those questions can have their fun there, and leave the other sites for actual questions.
I asked on a poll question once why people insist on posting them on SO instead of a site meant for that sort of thing, and the much-upvoted reply was that SO has a far better community than those sites, apparently completely missing the obvious: There's a reason that's true
Seems to me that the biggest problem is attracting experts. I don't think anyone would argue with the FAQ:
Don't suggest questions like "How do I unclog a drain." Instead ask, "If you run 2.5 GPM through 50 feet of 1/2" galv pipe, how many psi will be lost to friction loss?"
But the people who are participating in the betas — private and public — are asking questions that are more like the former than the latter. It's not entirely their fault; it's unlikely that the private beta participant who heard about Area 51 because he was a high-rep Server Fault user is both a great sysadmin and a master plumber. And as I've discussed elsewhere, some of us commit to proposals in good faith only to discover that we don't know as much as we thought we did.
Whatever the reasons, the problem remains: with those sorts of questions, we won't be attracting outside pros. And without outside pros, it'll be hard to get better questions in the database. And that's more than a small issue for a site based on the idea of being home to a community of experts.
I think the biggest challenge is to draw in non-technical people from outside SOFU - the chances for this are very, very good though, and the minimalistic UI will help a lot. However, a lot of things that are self-explaining to a tech-savvy thirty-something are not so for our moms, grandfathers and aunties. I bet many of them have not heard the term "faq" before.
The second biggest challenge will be to achieve a "modus operandi" - a standard for what are acceptable questions and what are not - that is as mature and refined as the one on Stack Overflow. This standard will differ slightly for every site due to the specific nature of its topic.
I'm interested to see how this plays out.
Perhaps it's more an Area 51 challenge, but Stefano Borini recently blogged a bit about the challenges faced with creation of new sites and how there's a lack of more general proposals, resulting in small subsets of communities which will be neglected.
For example, he considers the inevitable success of a "Guitar Playing" site - since everyone and their cousin plays guitar - contrasted with the failure of a "Bass Playing" site - since serious bass players are harder to find - and wonders why there isn't a more general "Music" (or "String Instruments" or "Contemporary Band Instruments"; maybe since he posted it there is a "Music" site; I dunno) to start with.
It's a kind of Matthew Effect when you think about it.
I think it's a very valid point.
(CW as I'm parroting someone else's answer)
http://forthescience.org/blog/2010/07/22/stackexchange-sites-proliferation/
One challenge I also (my second answer) see is getting questions answered that fall off the "new" list. I know there are ways around this: offering bounty (the official / correct way - but it costs reputation) and editing your question regularly (bad if it only to get it in the active list!).
I don't have a great solution. But one possibility is a random button which selects an unanswered question, possibly based on a tag you specify.
I think the biggest challenge facing the team is finding a viable business model to earn enough to pay the bills. With the new SE 2.0 sites, the cost of running the whole thing rises dramatically.
One challenge (don't know if it is the biggest) is retaining new people. I have no idea what the stats are but I see lots of the same names appearing and many in-jokes* (waffles, Jon Skeet references). So I wonder how quickly new people can become part of the scene.
The challenge is not just getting but also retaining and nurturing new people and therefore avoiding a clique.
*Of course, this is a question of balance - it's got to be fun as well.
I think the biggest problem is going to be integrating the SOFU communities and "the outsiders". Apart from the people who pick up early in the beta, the majority of new users will eventually have no affiliation with SOFU or coding or even a computer-related profession or interest. Some might not know what IRC is. Or codez. And each one of those users has to learn the rules. Some will have their own ideas about what will work, uninfluenced by prior any experience with stackexchange.
My pet hate is over-zealous question closing/deleting. I don't mean legitimate pruning, like cleaning up spam or actual duplicate questions or totally off-topic stuff; I'm referring to OCD over-moderating of harmless questions (that aren't strictly outside the guidelines and are valued by the community).
(I posted a rant on my blog called Overkill: the problem of over-modding in StackOverflow about it if you want to see what I mean).
