Proposal: Personal Manufacturing
At the moment, there is a relatively strong interest in this proposal (246 of 200 committers in total) however there is still too little interest from established stack exchange users (75/100 committers with 200+ rep on any other site).
Unfortunately, while we can see the graph of committers over time, I can't find a graph of experienced committers over time. It feels to me like we have stagnated though.
As far as I see it, there are two main ways to get out of the doldrums:
- Recruit more experienced stack exchange users (200+ rep on any other site).
- Encourage existing committers to gain more experience.
There are, however also ways to combine the two.
If you ask questions on other sites about personal manufacturing issues, mentioning this proposal, then we get the dual benefit of bringing this proposal to the attention of more experienced stack exchange users who are interested in the topic, and improving the reputation of less experienced stack exchange users. If you use your referral link, i.e. the Share This link you see when you visit the proposal Area 51 page, then you will be credited with every person who uses that link to find the proposal.
Most proposals have some overlap with other existing stack exchange sites, and for Personal Manufacturing the obvious ones are stackoverflow and electronics, so these are great places to ask questions about the programming and control aspects our proposal. There is already a strong Arduino community of electronics for instance (currently around 800 questions tagged as such).
Even if you can't think of Personal Manufacturing related questions to ask on other sites in the stack exchange network sites, you can still improve your personal reputation on another site by asking questions relevant to that site and answering other peoples questions - Pick a topic that interests you and hang out there for a while.
For instance if you are interested in Science Fiction and Fantasy or Roleplaying Games, ask and answer questions on those sites. Ditto if you are a parent or interested in sports. There are plenty of sites where you can pick up a some reputation and 200 really isn't difficult to achieve once you get started, no matter how difficult those first few points of rep might appear.
So, those are my ideas for getting us into beta. What other ideas do people have to promote this proposal?