What can we do to make this forum busier?

Question

What happened to this forum?

It is just too queit around here recently! Where is everybody?

Where are the great developers used to make themes every now and then? New great- bug free plugins

What can we do to make this forum busier?

Comments

Haha, isn't that the $64k question for every forum?

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Hello, I asked an question 2 days ago and I was told that it would be moderated but i cant see any progress on that question no even a link on my account. Pls approve it.

Answer 1

I think the answer to this lies in understanding the user base a little more. The forum for Q2A targets a very niche market. This already limits the number of active users at any given point. Also, the Q2A product has a fairly limited scope, meaning that once users who only want the features that come "out of the box" are satisfied, they'll move on. To give you an idea of that, according to the site statistics on the side bar, there are over 7,800 registered users. I've been a member for 4 weeks and I'm already ranked #115 (which will probably change once I post this answer). So realistically, you're looking at less than 100 active users. I could be very mistaken and the web master could certainly tell you unique visits per day/week, but this speculation is based on experience.

I just started a new forum, geared for an even more niche market and open to registration only by invitation, and after only 2 weeks it's already stalled out a bit. People asked a lot of questions right away, got their answers, then moved on. Only the power-users are active on a regular basis. Same thing goes for this site. I see the same dozen or so names pop up when I'm perusing the questions here.

Many users probably don't feel that they have much to contribute, either because they're not programmers or power-users or because they assume someone more experienced than they are will answer it properly. Doing an email subscription or push every couple of months may help get some users who haven't visited in a while to return. It's always a fine line of reminding users that the resource exists and risking being ignored because of "spam" emails.

Comments

I agree. In addition, core developer should announce milestone, progress and goal about development more. Community site is not activated only by posts of participant. The site not to send information to regularly will be forgotten.

Answer 2

There are 50 questions on the front page, going back 12 days. That's about 4 questions per day which is a reasonable amount.

This forum is for question on how to use Q2A... if there are not many questions I guess it means very few people are having problems using Q2A! :)

Comments

I started website using q2a with very less knowledge and last four five months I could improve my knowledge and website using q2a forum. Thank you and all experts for this and still I have some problems. However, as Waterfr Villa mentioned in this question I have also observed quick collapse and less of experts activities of this forum last three or two weeks. As I think "very few people are having problems using Q2A" is not true because there are lot of unanswered questions on this forum and lot of development requests. I thank you again your help and please consider this issue.

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The problem with not having problems is that the experts will start visiting less frequently leaving new questions unanswered. How do you retain the experienced Q2A users and programmers during the slow times such as between major versions?

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Once we were almost have the next version of q2a and next version of snow theme. But now those are postponed. Hope things will normal very soon.

Answer 3

I believe one missing piece of the puzzle is that

We need to learn to pay, developers need to learn to test

Developers need some incentive, something to keep them a bit happy, something to give them the feeling that their work is appreciated, tell me if am wrong!

On the other hand developers need to test their work too, I have noticed even on paid plugins there are a heck lots of bugs. If only the developer bothered to test his work once:

1- in various browsers ( Chrome, notaries IE, etc)

2- via various users (newbie, admin, user with score of 1000, etc)

3- in local copy (local host)

4- qa installations at: www.domain.com, domain.com, sub.domain.com, domain.com/subdir

 

We wouldn’t have to exchange 100s of emails!

I spent lots of money on creating a QA that haven’t even make a single dime, and paying for more paid plug-ins really scares me. I don't really wanna spend hours and hours to test bugs which could have been fixed just by simple code review.

Dont get me wrong, I am a developer too ( only Java desktop) , all I am saying it that we should do our best to keep this community alive. Or if it is gonna die let us know now!

To developers:

What happened to great developers? Why they are gone? Why they promiss their work to be completed by someday but that day never comes? This gives impretion to the users that they no longer develop/improve their plugins, no support scares us!

To users:

It is a good idea that we pay some donations to the free plugins that worked great. Even $5! what we pay for a thank you card!

 

 

 

 

Comments

q2apro donations for free plugins are available for 0.5 years. Donations spent until today: 0 USD.

http://www.q2apro.com/plugins/ (click one of the heart icons)

Answer 4

There may be method to initialize the point of all users to 100. We can do it with very simple query. 

Comments

Instead of bringing all members to 100 points again, try to make a system for the users page where the users can be sorted on weekly, monthly, yearly and all over participation. In that can those users who are new to q2a can also take part more efficiently by seeing them in the top list whether that list is of top users of the week.
This feature is already on http://stackoverflow.com/users have a look at this.

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I think experts do not worry about these points specially in this forum.

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Of course I thought about that feature (weekly, monthly ranking). However, it will be effective in the active site, but is lacking in impact in this spiritless site. I think that there is not a sense of fun at all in this site. In addition, this site has few benefits to the participant including respondent. Therefore the motivation of the participant including respondent does not go up. It will be necessary to increase more pleasant topic and interesting matters. It may be effective to add category such as "Off topic".

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What I think of this forum is that, it is a product related forum (q2a). If the product is going good and fulfilling everyone's expectation then naturally won't post most queries or everything will become calm. On the other hand if it is not going good then there will be a lot of complaints and queries and those have to be sought out by devs of q2a. If they fail there then there will again be silence in this forum and people will start leaving it. Product related forums are like this only, but if still you all want it to be more active and happening then something extraordinary has to be done which can increase the involvement of users as well as more dev should be encouraged to join q2a instead of the current devs becoming a blue moon.
This is my personal thought, so no offence.

Answer 5

I think currently q2a flat foam is one of a greatest open source website builder on internet. Founders of q2a had done marvelous job to give this valuable site builder programme free of charge and they have done all the major developments. Many other experts also did their best to develop this site time to time. Presently I have observed that users have several major problems/questions and those problems remain long time without answers. For example, develop an option to asking MCQs. I am also very interesting of that option and several other users also have mentioned this requirement several times. Finally I observed that user “Waterfr Villa” had invited developers to develop this feature and still I did not see any positive answer.

The main thing is many users here because this is an open source programme. Because of that reason the truth is developers are not paid good amount for their work. But we desperately need to keep this great programme in competitive level for a long time.