How do we boost participation?

Question

We've now been in public beta for over a year. According to our Area 51 stats, we've come a long way.

Our % answered is excellent. 100% of the questions on our site have received answers.

Our "avid users" stat is also excellent. We have a solid group of core users to assist in moderating the site, with enough rep to perform many of the tasks to assist in running the site (vote to close/open, edit permissions, moderator tools, etc.).

Our answer ratio is also excellent. Each question receives, on average, 3.8 answers. The recommended ration is at least 2.5 answers per question.

Even our visits/day has improved significantly. I've watched our visits/day grow from around 300/day to the current 1170/day.

However...

There are two areas where I feel we need significant improvement.

First, and foremost:

We need more questions!

We're sitting at an average of 1.4 questions a day. The standard is that 15 questions a day is a good target. Less than 5 a day is a sign that we need improvement.

I believe I've seen us as high as 8-9 questions a day. However, we've had a steady decline over the past few months. We need to fix this.

We also need more participation!

The other issue is, in my opinion, overall participation from the user base.

People are answering questions. That's fantastic. But its not enough.

We have more than 80 members who have enough reputation to cast close or reopen votes, but I don't believe I've ever seen a question closed entirely by users. In fact, I don't remember the last time I've seen a question that needed to be closed that had more than 1 close vote by a non-moderator.

Now, it could be argued that this perhaps points to an "over-eagerness" on the part of moderators to close questions, but we really do try and work to avoid closing questions, and I believe that our moderation here is much more lenient than in most other SE sites in that we actively suggest improvements via comments to the OP if we think there's any way the question can be salvaged, before closing, and many questions that are "borderline" are left for several days to see if any improvement is forthcoming.

In addition, quite a few of the questions we've closed have either received a single close vote from a non-moderator user, or received flags (sometimes from users who had enough rep to vote to close, but did not).

Furthermore, I don't recall ever seeing a closed question with a reopen vote cast by a user.

User suggested edits are extremely low, although there are plenty of questions or answers that could use edits/improvement.

Flags are very rare (which is probably more of a positive than a negative).

Our chat room has become deserted. We tried one topic-driven chat event and I believe I was the only one who showed up to give any feedback to the OP. One other user showed up... almost 2 weeks later, after the chat room had auto-deleted due to lack of activity.

So what do we do?

I'm looking for suggestions.

In addition to asking you all to be more active, ask more questions, and take advantage of all of the privileges you've earned through rep, I'd love to see answers to this question telling us what you think we, as a community, can do to help boost the areas we need work in.

Do we need to change our scope? Allow recommendations? Make specific appeals to target audiences? Advertise in a certain place? Run contests? Throw some bounties out on key questions? Capitalize on popular events or hot topics?

Don't limit yourself to just this meta question, though. We need more meta participation in general, so ask more questions about the site itself, look through existing questions, vote, and add any answers you think are good suggestions.

Also, I encourage you all to participate in this site evaluation question. The Stackexchange Community Team is reaching out to us. It is vitally important that we show that our community cares enough about this site to at least participate in the discussion they've opened up.

Answer 1

Design, design, design.

This looks like a programming site, and not what the typical parenting site looks like. I imagine that for most people, this might as well be the command line and the ever-mysterious shell prompt. :)

Even to me the layout is a turn-off.

Answer 2

I think moreso for this site than others, it's really quite hard to come up with unique questions. All parents have basically the same set of problems they need help with... tantrums, eating better, sleeping better, etc.

Quite frequently I type up a question, then go through a few of the suggested items and realize that the same thing was asked and answered quite well a year ago. So I don't think there's value in me asking that question again. It'd just be a dupe of the earlier one, and would just sap the community having to re-answer it again. Wouldn't it?

Answer 3

I had to go find this because I really like the site and want to stay but there are a few reasons why I am 'uncomfortable'.

1) anonymous downvoting. It isn't helpful, feels punitive, teaches nothing nor encourages participation.

2) editing for spelling, grammar or because someone doesn't like the wording. If you understand it, I think it should be left alone. Not everyone has your education, keyboarding skills or English as a first language. Some of the edits I've seen suggested are just imo, someone who has the power -- abusing it.

3) Only questions. Sometimes, it would be nice to have a discussion on a subject. Sure, it could be worded as a question to fit the format. Say I'd like to discuss allowance or dating. I do not have a specific question, but I'd love to discuss those aspects of parenting with other parents.

4) Duplicates. So many new people want to talk about their own specifics. If you WANT participation, link them to older answers and discuss the issue with the potentially new and staying participant.

5) By all means, explain rules or ask a poster to edit a comment, but we aren't or should not be nannies.

6) People are not going to agree all the time. I write an answer and someone disagrees. So I re-read my answer and their comment and perhaps I've learned something new or have food for thought. It simple logic. We all learn something, or should try to, every day. Being open to other ideas is a good thing. Also, really disagreeing should be okay as long as the facts are stated, and the poster is not attacked. The mods can always remove a post or member from the site.

Again, I am enjoying the site. I am hoping to stay and keep on doing so. I think you/we can easily boost participation by simply making the site more welcoming. I am actually quite experienced in this area. Since 2003 I've owned and run extremely successful sites, including ones for photography, parents of children with special needs, teen chats, and relationships. I just got tired of being the boss. I am retired and the only things I do these days (besides parenting, running a household and being happily married) are writing my novel and counselling the few families I've worked with for years whose kids are still not adults.

Answer 4

The moderation here is much stricter than on StackOverflow, as well as the several other StackExchange sites I participate in. You even admit that the moderators are being more active than the voting participants, but you ignore that data in favor of your own personal impressions. Pay attention to the data. One of the strengths of the StackExchange platform is user moderation, which gives the users a feeling that they own the site. When your moderators are doing more moderation than the users, you lose this strength and you disenfranchise the users.

In addition, the specific outlook of the moderators also greatly limits the usefulness of the site. I see two specific problems.

(1) The moderators don't want medical questions. Negative moderator comments are posted and questions are closed if the moderators believe the question might be more appropriate for a medical practitioner.

(2) The moderators don't want answers that disagree with published recommendations, even if those answers are based on personal experience. They only want consensus wisdom.

Why are these problems? Because they prevent the site from offering any added value over a web search. If the answers are going to agree with what's found elsewhere on the web, it's easier to do a web search than write up the question here. And the medical questions that medical sites might shy away from answering due to liability reasons aren't allowed here. So why bother asking?

What this site could offer is a way to draw on the combined experience of many other parents, to provide a diversity of suggestions that might present a solution even when published data - and in some cases medical practitioners - have not presented such a solution. But the way the site is currently being moderated, none of that added value is available. Several times I've had questions where I'd value the opinions and experiences of other parents in similar situations. This ought to be an ideal site for such questions. Unfortunately, I know that I'd actually only get the moderator approved opinions, and I can get those more easily in a web search.

Your question basically says you've got plenty of moderation and not enough participation, especially in the form of asking questions. Well, tell your moderators to spend more time participating and less time moderating. If a moderator disagrees with an answer, have them post their own answer and why they think it's right. If a moderator thinks the right answer is, "go see a doctor" - which may be the right answer in many cases - have them post it as an answer rather than closing the question. And if there aren't enough questions to answer, have them post a question regarding their own parenting - they're all parents, too, I hope?