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Proposal: Game of Go

Go clubs?
Authors of popular Go blogs?
Facebook?

Let's send e-mails to anybody we know or to Go "celebrities".
(Note: I asked Alexander Dinerstain to advertise this SE on his goama mailing list, and he did, so it is not difficult)

Feel free to brag about your successes in this area :)

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    Simple committers aren't out main problem. 200+ rep committers are. – CodesInChaos Feb 7 '11 at 19:44
  • Wow. One comment and 3 downvotes for what I consider a good question. Whoever downvoted this without leaving comments acquires bad SE karma. – ixtmixilix Feb 17 '11 at 15:23
  • Committers are not the poblem. The problem is to get active members on other SE sites. It's difficult since even Lukasz who proposed this site hasn't been seen in almost 6 months... We're already at 100% committers. Be active!! – user34666 Aug 1 '11 at 2:23
  • considering how popular go is amongst programmers, this shouldn't be to much of a problem... – nus Aug 14 '11 at 23:03
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It's fine to advertise when given the chance of course, but I strongly disagree with spamming. First of all, spam of any kind is bad. Secondly, many people brought here by spam simply click their way through without reading or understanding anything about the site and proposal - they are less likely to come back and actually improve the site experience for everyone.

About your actual question: I sometimes hint to this proposal on my personal blog, where I often write about Go. I also posted links on facebook and twitter once or twice. Notifying people at your local Go club is also an obvious way to go. Some of those reached this way actually followed and/or committed to the proposal - and I'm of course happy to see this happening.

And since it is totally obvious: My blog's located at http://blog.mafutrct.de

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also hint to the proposal in discussions on Go servers like KGS when the topic revolves around Go sites. But that should be self-evident. :)

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  • I don't read german, but I like mushishi very much :) ... I agree that spam is both evil and not effective in this case. And indeed the key is to get people tu understand the value of this site. – Łukasz Lew Feb 18 '11 at 11:13
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I had a major breakthrough getting people to commit by contacting my local go association, which is tied to the EGA. The head of the go club understood my point about promoting new ways of discussing the game that borrow from tried and true methods in other complex topics such as mathematics. Through his guanxi, I was able to promote the site to 20+ interested folks.

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  • That's a good suggestion. I'll contact the German Go association. – mafu Feb 18 '11 at 12:10
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The most effective way is to get people interested in Go to boost their reputation on whatever Stack Exchange site best matches their interests. On a busy site, you can get 200 reputation in two hours or so, just having fun answering questions.

So the right question is now "how can I get more involved committers" but "how can I get committers more involved".

If you committed, but don't have rep over 200 on any SE site, pick the site that best aligns with your interests and spend two hours or so using the site. Answer questions, vote on things, be helpful. It'll be fun. And before you know it, 200 reputation will be yours. Don't be discouraged if you don't see your reputation going up, it will take some time for people to upvote your answers, so your reputation will keep growing even when you take a break.

This will also help with the commitment score. So don't think it doesn't matter once you have enough committers with >200 rep.

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  • When I got involved in an effort to create a SE site about Digital Preservation, I thought it was great that this was a free service to the community and that I could promote it to my colleagues. Now that we've reached the commitment phase, I understand that it is not a free service. If I ask my colleagues to commit, I will also have to ask them to work on other SE sites in order to raise their reputation above 200. "But it will be fun, you say." Perhaps for me, I already joined another SE site. But I cannot ask my expert colleagues to go do work for SE unpaid. Can you say "bait and switch?" – Micah Beck Apr 24 '12 at 21:23
  • Frankly, even if that level of devotion is there, the site will still likely fail. Making a successful SE site is hard and the topic has to be of mass interest or the site will wither. If you have to push that hard to make it happen, honestly, you probably shouldn't because it won't succeed. – David Schwartz Apr 24 '12 at 23:03

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