Shouldn't there be more involvement in the discussions as well?

Question

Proposal: Mathematics Learning, Studying, and Education

There have been various discussions about

(1) Framing the site definition. (2) Discussing and voting for an appropriate name. (3) Determining rules for the types of questions best suited to our aims. (4) Expressing concerns about reaching beta stage too quickly.

And so on.

What concerns me now is that there don't seem to be that many people involved in those discussions and not very many votes being cast. Am I wrong to think there need to be more people involved in this aspect as well as just framing questions and hoping we'll get enough ten pointers to carry us over the first hurdle?

Answer 1

I agree that this is worrisome, although it's understandable now that the initial flurry of activity has died down.

Actually, this whole Area 51 process puzzles me a bit. It seems to me that the way to get a site like this off the ground would be to have people asking interesting questions and getting interesting answers. Right now there's nothing interesting about this site beyond its potential, so there's no real incentive for anyone to participate. (At least for me, if a website's not that interesting, it quickly loses its place in the rotation of web pages that I check every day.)

After we get over the first hurdle, I think it would be reasonable to advertise this site again on Math Stack Exchange, Math Overflow, and reddit, which ought to generate another flurry of activity, and bring us about halfway to clearing the second hurdle. But over time, the only real way to build up a consistent user base is to make the site interesting, with substantive discussion about math teaching, and that won't happen until we make it to the beta.