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Electronic Gadget got shut down for several reasons, partly due to lousy stats

stats from the failed electronic gadgets beta

How're WE doin'?

As of Sept 30, 2010:

* 585   questions
* 1,187 answers
* 79%   answered
* 557   users
* 997   views/day

stats from ae as of sept 30. yes. alongside text.

As of October 9:

alt text

My observations:

  1. Our number of questions is excellent
  2. Our question:answer ratio needs some improvement
  3. Our user-count needs improvement, but Gadgets represented two months (plus?) of public beta; we're at only three weeks, and users keep getting added. So no worries.
  4. Our views/day is dropping? Does anybody have actual stats tracking, instead of these two, random snapshots?

Caveats:

  1. Android-related questions/answers imported from failed Gadgets beta
  2. Are these QUALITY questions?
  3. Are these QUALITY answers?
  4. At least we ain't Programmers.SE !!! (they've got great stats. Quantity over quality, I guess)

What can we do better?

What do we need to do to help avoid the fate of Electronic Gadgets, and wake up one morning to find all of our content was ported over to Programmers in the middle of the night?

  1. Meta participation -- this question excluded
  2. Policing of questions/answers - editing, retagging, flagging - this IS happening, and election of moderators will only help moreso
  3. Site promotion? Click those "share this" buttons, folks! Plus, the twitter-feed that one enterprising individual set up
  4. Steal underpants
  5. ???
  6. Profit!!!
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  • Crappy title. Feel free to edit ("Site Stats" was too short, but also crappy).
    – Michael Paulukonis
    Sep 30, 2010 at 17:43
  • "Programmers" has a lot of quality material. But it also has a lot of non-quality material. And I have no clue why it isn't StackOverflow, except that some people wanted to ask questions like programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/… (notably, the only question I've attempted to answer, and since closed, Thank G-d!)
    – Michael Paulukonis
    Sep 30, 2010 at 17:44
  • I agree, it looks like we're doing good, we just need more users.
    – Bryan Denny Mod
    Sep 30, 2010 at 19:48
  • I edited the title. It doesn't exactly flow, but I think it capture what you were trying to say with the post. I was going to make it a question: "Android.SE is on a good track, but what can we do to make it better?" but I didn't think that conveyed the urgency that we need to actively build the community to ensure we survive the Beta.
    – Matt
    Sep 30, 2010 at 21:31
  • Thanks, Matt -- you captured everything except the underpants. Which was more the result of chugging my coffee...
    – Michael Paulukonis
    Sep 30, 2010 at 21:34
  • BTW, good "question."
    – Matt
    Sep 30, 2010 at 21:37
  • We survived the beta, so I'm going to close this.
    – ale
    Apr 11, 2011 at 20:32

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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We should email a some of the big Android Blogs an let them know about Android.SE, invite them to join and share their expertise and encourage them to share it as a resource to their readers. I was going to just do it but maybe we should discuss a game plan.

These are the android sites I frequent:

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  • 1
    Getting mentioned on any android podcast would also be awesome
    – Bryan Denny Mod
    Sep 30, 2010 at 22:21
  • I sent out a message to androidandme.com, talkandroid.com and androidica.com to test the waters. Hopefully they write something up. We should make sure to be active and make sure questions get good answers. Those of use with rep to spare can drop some bounties to help spark participation.
    – Matt
    Oct 4, 2010 at 22:54
  • Ok, I got one reply that's not so promising: "The Stack Exchange is a major competitor to XXXX, because its a combination tips site and "forum" model roled into a Q&A engine, and I would hesitate to do anything like promoting them." It turns out that I was accidentally cc'd on the inter-site email. I removed the name of the site and the people out of respect for the clumsy reply'er
    – Matt
    Oct 4, 2010 at 23:24
  • Just sent an email to ReadWriteWeb about android.SE. They've written in the past about the apple.SE. Hopefully they'll pony up and give Android the same love they gave Apple.
    – Matt
    Oct 5, 2010 at 21:02
  • Also, anyone that regularly uses Lifehacker want to sent them a tip? I've sent them links to articles on my own sites and they've published it. One of the articles sent about 20K people in a day. I'd do it but I cant seem to figure out their new tips/"apply to comment" thing.
    – Matt
    Oct 5, 2010 at 21:06
  • droid-life.com is another big blog we can try
    – Bryan Denny Mod
    Oct 19, 2010 at 20:06
  • I am/was somewhat involved with XDA, I might invite some specific people ... but I'm not going to invite the whole lot. That site is 95% trolls and jerks, not exaggerating. Apparently it used to be better ...
    – Matthew Read
    Dec 17, 2010 at 0:22
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    @Matthew Read: Great! We'd love to have more knowledgeable people like yourself join the community. Also, I don't think we'll miss the trolls and jerks.
    – Matt
    Dec 18, 2010 at 21:16
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We might also find great benefit in sharing this with Motorola, Samsung, HTC, etc. on-line communities and forums. I think it would be a great opportunity if we started sharing answers, links, etc. at these places! The idea would be to attract users without harming what they have going on already.

What's the best way of doing this? Any other suggestions?

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    Its kinda spammy to be making posts about A.SE but if anyones alreadu active in the community it would be appropriate to direct people here for specific answers
    – Matt
    Oct 1, 2010 at 5:51
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    We ccould also appeal to the mods and ask them to come share their expertise over here.
    – Matt
    Oct 1, 2010 at 5:53
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One way to help us reach the suggested goals is to keep on voting.

We've each got 30 votes per day -- let's use them!

Okay, I've never cracked my vote-cap on Android, and only done it once on SO itself -- it's sooooo much easier when there are a ton of questions. Which also suggests... aks more questions....

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  • I've hit my cap once but I'll get on it more.
    – Matt
    Nov 30, 2010 at 17:50
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Is it possible to buy sponsorship/ads on Android podcasts or websites? Does StackExchange give the communities any sort of money to do such a thing?

This meta.SE questions seems relevant.

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    Two thoughts on points in that thread... 1. While I think adwords would be a waste of money a display ad on a good Android blog might be affective but I think we should focus on courting blogs to just write about android.SE, or link to us in articles. We may even be able to get smaller blogs to just post a banner link for free, as a resource to their readers. 2. We should wait on a Facebook page until we settle on a domain/name as you can't change it once it's set in FB.
    – Matt
    Oct 1, 2010 at 18:36
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Another thought: I alway link to Appbrain for apps and I'm not going to stop doing that but if you find a solution on another website like Lifehacker, putting a link to the article would be a good idea. If those sites start getting referrals from android.SE and/or see the back links they may take notice quicker.

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