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Proposal: Genealogy & Family History

To make beta, genealogy needs to excel in 3 areas:

  • committers - currently 159, needs 200. Other discussions (eg Would someone draft a blurb I could use to help get the word out on new Genealogy proposal? addresses. Read them, vote them up (why - see answers to this question) and do what they say
  • stack exhange experience - currently 52, needs 100 - how do we do this? That is the gist of this particular discussion
  • committment score - currently 73, needs 100 - save this one for another discussion but I believe if we keep this fresh (visit this site every day, visit other sites every day, ask/answer questions every day), it will take care of itself.

So the question is: How do we get more experienced committers?

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  • If you are already committed - and then get a rep of over 200 in a site, will it count here?
    – Jeni
    Sep 21, 2012 at 19:10
  • My understanding is yes. That's what some other sites that went betat say they did to get there.
    – Duncan
    Sep 24, 2012 at 10:14

2 Answers 2

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I've shamelessly reused from other area51 and beta sites who had the same issue. The other non-tech sites which were successful (Parenting and Writers) were particularly helpful).

I couldn't find a direct Q/A on why 200+ rep of 100 users. If someone knows of one, please edit this and add it. My understanding is there were many failed proposals in the early days. The 200+ rep evolved to ensure enough participants understood the subtleties of good Q&A.

Paraphrasing another discussion this splits into 2 potential answers:

  • "how can I get more involved committers"
  • "how can I get committers more involved"

This answer addresses the second point.

Since if you are reading this - it's likely something you can do yourself. You need to boost your reputation on whatever Stack Exchange site best matches your interests. The author I paraphrased earlier claims: "On a busy site, you can get 200 reputation in two hours or so, just having fun answering questions." Other answers point out it might take time before you see the results (if nothing else, it takes time for everyone to see your questions and answers and vote on them). Don't get discouraged if it takes awhile or someone votes down your q or a. See having-a-bad-start-is-that-normal

Note you get a 'association bonus' of 100 points on each account if you link your accounts and the total across sites reaches 300 points.

What should you do?

Find other stack exchange sites that interest you. Parenting? SciFi? anything geeky has it's own site or fits in stack overflow. Scan the list of sites. Do searches on the list of sites (it's a long list so they don't all show up on the earlier link - the link only shows the top sites).

Participate! Ask questions. Answer questions. Vote questions and answers up and down.

Sidenote: We should clear the air with respect to 'gaming' the system. The existing rules on moving to beta were put in for valid reasons. We should be encouraging behavior consistent with those reasons. Encouraging genealogy enthusiasts to participate in other stack exchanges to build their rep is not gaming the system. They will make valuable contributions to those other exchanges (otherwise their rep won't go up). Since their reps are not high on other exchanges, that implies they are new to stack exchange. So they will be learning the system as well. Note I should be using 'we' instead of 'they' since I'm a newbie myself.

If you find this answer helpful, please vote it up. That is one of the ways how reputations (both yours and mine) are built. If you did not find this answer helpful, make comments, write your own answer, etc. This also helps your reputation. If you find this answer objectionable (see this stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site), vote it down - but please put in comments on why so we can all improve.

If you did find this answer helpful, in addition to voting up this answer, please visit the following links from which I derived this information. They deserve your up vote as well. Many of them are other beta sites with users just like yourselves with the same issues. Help them out by visiting and voting.

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  • "That is one of the ways how reputations (both yours and mine) are built." Actually, it's not. At least, not here. The discussion area of Area51 is like a meta-site: you don't get rep for votes. Sep 17, 2012 at 22:56
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Looking for tips on gaining reputation? Here's the link to a Meta Stack Overflow question, "6 simple tips to get Stack Overflow reputation fast."

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/17204/6-simple-tips-to-get-stack-overflow-reputation-fast

Although the Q&A refers to Stack Overflow, the various tips seem relevant to Stack Exchange sites generally. --GeneJ

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