Comments on Questionable Promotions!
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Questionable Promotions!
I notice we have a dearth of activity on this site.
With a relatively small number of active users, perhaps we can add a tab to the "Questions" Page. We have Activity, Age, Score as sorting algorithms. How about a "Lottery" tab?
Once a day, randomize the questions we have, and use that as the order for the "lottery" tab. Leave it up for the day; I think we can get new answers, or at least votes on questions.
I visit the site daily, as I did for SE, and (as my profile indicates) I pretty much exclusively answer questions. On SE, I seldom look past the "new questions" or "active questions". With not many users, those are dead zones; so perhaps in lieu of new questions, we can focus on "filling in" the content already created; particularly questions and answers without votes.
It would be nice to have something to do, here, and I think there are just not many questions (and I seldom have any...)
EDIT: I like Mark Baker's suggestion, instead of a randomized list, a tab of "On This Day" previous questions asked on the same calendar day (Jan 10). That would still amount to about a page's worth of questions, and could be constructed on the fly pretty easily, and would ensure all questions be shown within a year. (Well, Feb 29 gets the shaft).
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First: Allow re-asking of old questions. I've always felt it was odd to say "that question has already been asked--search the archives instead of asking it again." If someone has a question, they likely have a shading of their question that is specific to their individual story or project.
So, I'd suggest allowing people to ask whatever they like without the old culture of searching the archive first. I'm working on my sequel, and I'm coming across all sorts of issues--but I refrain from bringing it up here, in part because I know there are plenty of resources in the archives. But--I don't feel like trawling through five-year-old threads looking for ideas or answers. (I mean heck, publishing changes in that amount of time anyway.)
Sometimes the process of writing out the question helps me figure out my problem on my own anyway, and that can't happen if I feel like I'm discouraged from asking a question 'that has been asked before.'
tl;dr: Allow people to ask old questions, at least til the site has more activity.
And: I tried to log on a few times but could not. My password was forgotten (by my brain) and the recovery methods weren't working to get me logged in. It was annoying enough to make me question whether it was worth it to keep trying to gain access.
I doubt I'm the only one who ran into that issue.
And: more leniency toward conversation would be nice. I was not a huge fan of the Q/A nature of SE ('no conversation, please!')
Anyway, them's my thoughts.
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