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A picture says more than a thousand words, go look on Area 51 if you don't believe me...

Our site really needs some work, in order for our community to survive and be released to the mass.

Remember that when we started back these days, that we easily got around 6 questions per day.
We've been put back to merely 1 or 2 questions per day and the visits haven't been increasing either...

We need to promote our site, so we get near the requirements.

Remember: You get the site you shape so it's starts with asking good questions and sharing them online.

For comparison:

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When is the next evaluation, if any? – Vic Goldfeld Dec 5 '11 at 17:27
@VicSzpilman: Undetermined, I think it's checked on a regular basis though or even automatized. While the middle entries seem improved we need to work on promoting and asking more questions... – Tom Wijsman Dec 5 '11 at 23:16
Yeah, user-wise it's been nearly doubled and we keep answering everything that comes around and well so. I think veteran users should make a conscious effort to come up with quality questions now and then, instead of mostly answering. It's not forcing it, just directing attention to it and something interesting may surface. – Vic Goldfeld Dec 5 '11 at 23:21
The metrics do not appear to have change much, might have to be accepted as the natural course of things – prusswan Feb 13 '12 at 16:23
@prusswan: No, certainly not. If we aren't aiming to improve these, we might have the site closed in the long end. It's a simple indication that we don't have a very high quality yet and aren't attracting enough people. Please don't just accept our low amount of people, I've seen the amount of questions that scroll by on the front page improve so that's a good thing and I certainly think we shouldn't stop now to improve anything even further. Let's aim for a better community, not to sustain the one that we have now... – Tom Wijsman Feb 13 '12 at 16:49
I think the quality of content is no worse than existing sites I have been to, only issue is with the volume. – prusswan Feb 13 '12 at 16:52

2 Answers

up vote 12 down vote accepted

Asking questions you encounter in your day to day work and sharing those questions with Twitter and Facebook and blogging is really the best way to bring new users to this site.

But… the end game is to attract more user, not simply to ask more questions. The only way that happens is when you ask particularly intriguing questions about problems you actually have… questions that other people will look at and slap their head "Yes! I've always wanted to know that myself!"

This site appears to be running out of interesting things to talk about. You can tell by the lack of specific, personal questions being asked and the more generalized, boring "would blah blah make me more productive?" questions this site seems to be falling to. You are veering steadily towards random imponderables and broad discussions about the office windows and temperature and better computer equipment… an nobody on this site seems to have even noticed.

This is not going to be a terribly interesting site if you have nothing further to talk about.

The users you attract will imitate what they see on this site. This is the only chance you have to build up a body of questions and answers which will encourage more of the same. It is much more important to keep the quality high and not fall into the trap of letting a bunch of lame, half-assed questions slip under the radar because you've become tired working towards quality. Accumulate all the questions you want, but if those questions are not interesting to others, that's when this site will fail.

It is the quality of questions that will ultimately decide the fate of this site — not the quantity.

Does this site have a chance of succeeding?

Asking the first questions

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up vote 1 down vote

Full Ack to Robert answer. Additionally i also saw the rise of some life coaching questions here recently. I dont think they fit the productivity topic very well. We should concentrate on proven and common methods to rise productivity for personal and/or small group purposes (time-managment/saving, mind-mapping, information overload, filtering, researching information, staying up to date, creativity & mnemo techniques, getting things done, health-nutrition, self-managment, weekly organization of household, project managment, setting up intermediate target points, hire personal assistant/secretary...)

The life coaching questions often ask how can you yield 140% human power, do several projects at the same time, stay focused in a lecture, avoid lazyness... Well, if you are not interested in a study course or your work is more important than family, thats a decision you have to make on your own. Thats not really something we can give on good and objective high quality advice here or is really related to productivity improvement imo. Those questions maybe better answered by a psychological consultant/life coach.

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