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I think we're doing okay on questions and answers -- the volume could be higher, but that will change with time. (I hope.) What we really need is more people involved in the community -- people talking here in meta, people who will guide new users into asking better questions, and in general making us moderators superfluous. (Keeping my fingers crossed... that's how the SE sites are supposed to work.)

All that said, I think a second wave of publicity is in order, targeted specifically towards people who will help keep building the community. What are your thoughts on this? Do we all need to blitz Facebook and Twitter? Put up posts and comments on forums and bike blogs, reading "Help us build a Q&A community"?

  • No answers? C'mon, people; I don't want this beta going the way that Electronic Gadgets did. If the people who run Stack Exchange determine this community to be not good enough... well, our continued existence isn't necessarily assured. – Neil Fein Sep 17 '10 at 3:29
  • I don't think it runs that risk: questions get a lot of prompt answers and there is a high acceptance rate. Even if the traffic has yet to go through the roof, the site meets the second set of criteria in the linked blog post. – darkcanuck Sep 17 '10 at 3:38
  • I'm more concerned with building a user base that will get involved in building the community. The recent threads about location-specific questions and voting to close are great steps, but I'm concerned we're not seeing more of that. Is it just a matter of time until people feel comfortable enough to start being more active in meta? – Neil Fein Sep 17 '10 at 5:09
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I think that instead of blitzing facebook, twitter, forums and blogs with a plea to build a Q&A community here, it would be better to promote specific questions or answers that are really good. You can quote as much of the question or answer from here as you want, as long as there's a link (see the license at the bottom of every page).

Something like: identify some really good answers on our site, find other places where those questions are being asked, and link to the answers here from there.

Or if you're active on another forum and see a question that we've got a good answer to, link to our answer.

Or for more effort, find questions out that look good and don't have answers, ask here, and if the answers are good, link to our answers from their site...

As an added bonus, if you use the URL from the "link" text underneath the answer or question (which has your user id embedded) and enough people follow it, you'll get a badge.

  • 1
    answers are the way to go. If anyone here has blogs (I know I do) even linking to good questions is a good way to do it. Once I get my cycling blog up and running I'm thinking I'll link to my favourite question/answer of the week. – curtismchale Sep 18 '10 at 15:35
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    It should be straightforward(-ish) to incorporate a box with the most recent 5/10 questions/answers on your blog, using the RSS feed. Similar to the one you can see to the right, on this page. – Amos Oct 3 '10 at 20:19

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