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Proposal: Genealogy

We are very close to getting the required number of followers (thanks Louis for starting the train of blog posts). But we are pretty far from having enough questions with a score of 10 or more.

Most, if not all, proposals run into this same problem. The most common solution is gathering an excessive amount of followers until there are enough people who vote and provide questions. That's because there's no way to contact the people who are already following to say, "Hey, come back and vote."

Will our proposal suffer the same fate of languishing until we're saturated with non-participating followers?

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  • It will if I'm the only one trying to get the word out. The key to getting the followers involved is getting this site into Beta ASAP. So lets try to get everyone working to get this going.
    – lkessler
    Commented Aug 30, 2012 at 3:22

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I know all the info is there - somewhere - but for newcomers (especially ones not used to this type of forum) what about having a Introduction that very briefly explains how to register, how to get a gravatar, how many votes you have, why it's important to vote, how many questions can I add, etc?

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  • I put up some instructions on Google+ at: plus.google.com/106257958448273208907/posts/GAYKVrtMWGH - We really only want the essentials now, because we're just really trying to get into Beta mode. Then our site will be able to write it's own FAQ and put up all the necessary info.
    – lkessler
    Commented Sep 3, 2012 at 14:03
  • Whoops. There goes your announcement, @JustinY, which explained what to do. Our Area51 moderator doesn't seem to like us using that venue for it.
    – lkessler
    Commented Sep 3, 2012 at 21:30
  • @lkessler Yeah, which is odd because a lot of the other proposals that are in the definition stage do the same but don't get shutdown like we do.
    – user42535
    Commented Sep 3, 2012 at 22:01
  • @JustinY - Well it may be that it just takes him a few days to get around to it. But I'm trying again. ;-)
    – lkessler
    Commented Sep 4, 2012 at 1:17
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I did have the announcement up about that, but the Area51 moderator apparently didn't want it there.

We'll have to make sure in all communication about the genealogy proposal, to ask that people do 3 things when they come:

  1. Sign up
  2. Ask 5 questions
  3. Upvote 5 questions that currently have less than 10 upvotes.

Note: If you've upvoted a question that has more than 10, you can remove it and put it on one with less than 10.

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    I must say, Area51 makes it difficult to communicate and therefore organize a solid effort behind a proposal.
    – user42535
    Commented Aug 31, 2012 at 15:46
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    If I am interpreting the metrics correctly, then just shy of 70% of our followers are either NEW to Area 51 or Area 51 users only following THIS proposal. Perhaps the moderator would communicate with you, JustinY, or Louis--it would be nice to know if he has considered this "new user" factor.
    – GeneJ
    Commented Sep 4, 2012 at 20:35
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We do have the ability to contact most of our followers since they came here through blog posts. We could put out another blast of posts talking about the need to provide and vote on example questions.

Of course, we wouldn't want to do it right away. Perhaps in a week or two.

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    Probably a good time to do that would be after we get through the Definition phase (26 more question of 10+ votes needed as I write this) and get into the Committment phase.
    – lkessler
    Commented Sep 1, 2012 at 15:54

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