The results are in, and they're not pretty.
Out of 10 randomly selected questions, only one received a positive evaluation.
Granted, there were only 3-5 people reviewing each question, but that is a problem in itself.
So, what do we think we can do to improve this? What suggestions do you have?
The turn out for the self evaluation could have been better, but I'm not really that alarmed by it, I'll explain. When you see a number that indicates a lack of community self interest it should cause you to take a look, but doesn't always indicate that it's actually happened. I think folks are just used to browsing the site once or twice a week because question volume is low - and people just missed it. The fact that we're having this discussion is a clear indicator that there's still a thriving community here.
As you've probably noticed, a substantial number of questions come from brand new inexperienced parents finding their way with babies and toddlers. After you reach beyond that point and have grown your bond with your children, parenting becomes more instinctive and intuitive. You become less likely to ask for help and more inclined to simply figure it out along with your child.
At that point, you're probably going to be more inclined to answer than ask. Specific parenting questions require context that's very personal to people's children, I think many are rather selfish when it comes to sharing parts of their child's life, and of course wary. Beyond babies, questions surrounding parenting, but not really describing a specific scenario are probably going to be our on ramps - but there's a limited quantity of them that would fit.
With that being said, let's take stock of what's good here, which is quite a bit:
The site is strong when it comes to answering the types of questions that it gets, but needs users that have significant reach and influence evangelizing it after seeing those strengths in action. I think the question we should be asking is, how do we attract the sort of users that can send thousands of like minds here with a tweet?
I'm quite convinced that this site would finally reach a huge success if it just had a few well respected evangelists promoting it. I'm not talking Oprah caliber, just parents that have a substantial following. Who are these people, and how do we get them to notice us? If we come up with those answers, then we've come up with half a plan. The other half is discussing the idea of what people could ask here, if they're not really comfortable asking about the real world problems that they face.
What attracted me to stackexchange in general is that it purports to be building a library of questions and answers, and I believe in libraries. I liked the idea of a place where people could come and ask questions and others who have some expertise in the area or were good at researching might help answer them.
What I see happening on this site is:
While this site has potential, I think the general quality of answers is not where it needs to be, and it makes me uncomfortable in recommending it to parents (and I see hundreds of them in the library at children's programs every week). As @cabbey notes, our goal is to be an informational site, but we really are more of an advice site. Our aim is off.
The other thing we have to consider is very strong competition coming from the internet and actual libraries. There are many parenting websites out there - some quite popular with pediatricians and parenting experts on staff. Actual libraries are fairly ubiquitous, and they have children's librarians, research librarians, and stacks full of parenting books (plus magazines and databases full of articles). If we are not offering something different/better, then our success will be limited.
I can't seem to comment on Mary Jo's post, but I just want to state my agreement with it. I work as a Speech Language Pathologist in the birth - 36 month population and in the short time I've been here I've seen an exceptionally high number of answers which are inaccurate at best and dangerous at worst.
I think you need qualified curators if you want to grow into being a useful resource. There are plenty of places people can get poor advice, they don't really need one more. The problem with parenting is that it's not like programming where you just go try the solution and see if the code works, so there needs to be some sort of working vetting process. What I see currently is people who don't really know child development vetting the posts (thumbs up or down) of other people who don't know child development, which leads to a morass of conflicting bad advice.
I draw a strict line between experts and celebrity experts. I know some experts. They don't sell books, are not on TV, and you don't know their names because they spend their days working with kids. Those are the people you need to attract, not people with a monetary agenda behind their advice.
I completely missed this round, bummer! I saw the first meta post but then never got around to acting on it. I guess I have enough on my real-life plate already at the moment.
One thing that strikes me is that several of the titles are poorly worded. We made a huge effort once to go through all questions and rephrase the titles, and even some of the contents. We could pay more attention to these basic things again.
More to the point though, I feel we're stuck in a loop. Few active users = few new questions = few new visitors ... repeat ad nauseam. I recognize most steady contributors by their writing style before I even see their name card - doesn't that indicate that it's the same old suspects? The site is good and the content quality is excellent - there's just not enough traffic. We've been talking about the lack of new returning users since the site started, and I'm getting worried.
My own direct recruiting efforts have been rather limited because English doesn't suit German-speaking people well. I've shared post that were curious, interesting, or promising on two social networks, but frankly the linkworthy gems are too far apart to be useful as marketing ammo.
Like Torben, I missed the review... I also missed the announcement!
I think he's onto something with the rut we're stuck in. I'll have to admit I've given up on trying to recruit folks. The feedback I get is always the same.
Birth educators are violently against all online material, because there's so much of it that is so horribly wrong. I also think to a large extent it goes against their financial interests... they make money by having classes to teach new parents.
A lot of new moms and dads (or soon to be ones) looked at me like I was crazy when I suggested the idea of a stack for parenting... these were folks that are familiar with stack exchange. One put it very succinctly: "I barely want advice from my family, I sure as hell don't want advice from a bunch of random strangers on the internet."
Teachers... honestly I haven't talked to too many of them about the site, but those I have mostly fell into variations of the above, OR, the ever popular, "I went to school for 4 years to learn how to handle kids, and continue to go back constantly to take new classes and training and professional development, why would I want to debate this stuff with some random person on the internet that doesn't have any formal training?"
I honestly don't know how to fix this. I spent a lot of time trying to think of ways to do so, but nothing has come to mind. I can't even mentally defend the site against some of the things folks have said. (A lot of it IS false perception, and you can tell them it's not what they think it is... but not all.)
