Heh. Well, I'm glad to see a DIY advice site that's curated and has good questions and good involvement -- unlike most of the big DIY forums out there. shudder
I take it you surf those forums a good deal? Can you tell me more about them? I'm something of a layperson, so I just cycle through them for stats more than content.
@KarlKatzke That's one of the reasons Stack Exchange works so well. People want to get involved in helping the site (what ever the subject) stay on track. Don't be shy if you feel you can help with edits etc. Anyone can suggest an edit.
The biggest one is diychatroom.com -- it's part of a pretty large network of DIY/contractor websites. There's not much in the way of curation or way to filter wheat from chaff, though.
There's a lot of area specific ones. One of the ones I find the most helpful focuses specifically on tile (floors, showers, granite, etc.) is johnbridges.com/vbulletin ... it's great because it tends to attract a lot of professionals. You'll often find it as the first google result when searching.
Yeah, these days it is. I hung out at the diychatroom family of sites but they make my head hurt. I also contribute a lot to a local one that's for people in my neck of the woods. It's mainly helpful because the people already generally know one another.
I tend to think of the Stackexchange sites more like a big expanded ask.metafilter.com ... but the problem stackexchange has versus the diychatroom and the johnbridge.com is that there's no place for people to tell their stories as they're working through projects.
If you look at johnbridge.com, you'll see that the moderators go out of their way to keep an entire 'thread' going for people to tell about their projects.
These threads are among the most visited on the site, and also keep the users coming back to the site.
@KarlKatzke There could be a DIY blog attached to the site if enough people were interested. You could use use to tell the story of your project - especially if it linked back to questions you asked during it.
The problem is getting other people to come in and look at it, then.
I realize that this gets into features/coding type of thing, but -- what I'd like to see in that realm is a little icon on my user icon that says I've got a new blog post on my personal project journal
(That's the ideal, we can figure out what's reasonable)
@KarlKatzke The blog would be a site blog, but the posts would be attributed to the user. It's a WordPress blog, so I think we might be able to thread by user.
Would it help google search traffice? If we had blogs of projects, new users may find those during a normal internet search for "bathroom remodel" etc.
I think it probably would help google search traffic... that's one of the other big issues with traffic to diy.stackexchange. I don't see it pop up in search results.
BUT. This is actually really useful! Karl, auujay, could you two sort of bat ideas back and forth a little while I'm away? the more outlandish the idea the better. i'm all about starting giant ridiculous out of the box and then honing it in to be something more feasible
@ChrisF I think you're on the right track, the SE side is really a Q and A site, and it is very good at that. If you're talking about an entire DIY community site, the SE part is only a portion of it.
What would be useful though is links to various projects that are described and hosted elsewhere (eg, on other people's blogs ,or pages, or even pro pages). Having an organized and vetted list of these, possibly with voting somehow, which can be useful in answers would be a great way to tie it in.
For example, every entry would be a link to the site/blog/whatever, be tagged "tiling" "bathroom" "electrical" "retrofit" "carpet" "stairs" etc.. and then can be voted on so the good ones bubble up
When someone asks a question like "How do I ensure my 70-year-old floor is level before I tile?" you can provide answer to the specific question, and quickly find a relevant blog/whatever that talks about tiling in general and walks through the whole process
@SteveJackson That's a good idea- though each link really needs multiple tags (eg, it would be nice to see only links with tile AND shower tags..), and I think the voting would be useful to keep the higher quaility sites bubbled up
Yeah, there are a lot of those guys around, and I kinda think some of them might see DIY.SE as competition to their blog. If instead, it drives traffic to them it would be good
This essential question wasn't asked yet, so here we go.
This is rapidly becoming a hot issue
across the entire network: how to
promote your site and how to reach out
to the experts and pundits in your
industry. We can come up with budgets
and promotions but — more than any
other ...
I'm a StackExchange employee and I'm here to improve the quality of the site. I'm editing question titles to improve their readability and just generally working to make this site even more awesome.
If I edit a question title and you don't happen to like it, or you felt it was better the way it ...
@KarlKatzke laughs Good to hear it! I've grumbled about DIY a little -- you guys are so quiet! -- but I actually really do like this site. I learn so much with every edit.
I think the main problem with us being 'quiet' is that DIY is not used much. I would like to end that 'quiet' as well because I appreciate the careful hand with which the StackExchange sites are tended; I've been a member of ServerFault for a few years.
@ChrisF Awesome -- There was some really good discussion happening a few hours prior to the official start.
@KarlKatzke It's something we're seeing with a number of the newer sites. This site did graduate, so that means the traffic has been on the up. But @ChrisF mentioned that we've plateaued lately. That part needs to change.
We were talking prior to the official start about 'competitors' -- One of the 'challenges' that promoting the StackExchange concept over similar sites is that the similar (and successful) sites are mostly forum-type websites... the only Q&A type site that I know of that's similar is Ask.metafilter.com
Sorry - looking for code completion - the problem we noticed during beta is that it just takes longer to have multiple DIY questions, as opposed to programming or server problems
So the question is if we want to, as a community, ask for some of the same types of features that the forum type sites have in order to improve user visits. DIYChatroom and others tend to attract people that hang out, and, well, chat ... where diy.stackexchange tends to attract people who ask a question, get an answer, and leave.
@SteveJackson That part could change with more users, though, and more traffic. My thing is that I can't tell if we've got a huge turnover or just a click-through-not-stay kind of rate. yes those are the technical terms not
The good thing about the SE Q&A is that the "threads" are kept on track. You don't have to wade through potentially off topic posts to find the answer you're looking for.
@ChrisF - The kind of chat that I mean is the back and forth that happens over a period of days in blog comments or a forum thread; this sort of chat is more for a meeting.
@KarlKatzke But it doesn't have to be. That's just how we're using it right now. Parenting chat is almost always active and we talk about so much more than just site promotion.
A project-specific chat would be fairly costless to set up, as well. It's just another room.
Promoting it would be the bigger question. The current site chat link shows this chatroom. We could have it show the other as well. Doesn't SuperUser have something like that? Or Gaming or Photog?
@KarlKatzke Ah - more of a discussion around a problem. Well chat doesn't have to be real-time. With the @lert notifications you can spread it out and you can always create a new room for a specific question
@AarthiDevanathan That's true... I guess I'm not sure how it would look, since I haven't used chat much. I think of it more like an instant message chat room rather than something that persists.
Which might be a common misconception amongst users.
@KarlKatzke If that's true -- and it may very well be -- then we need to make it clear to our users that Chat's there for more than just site promotion talks.
Hanging out in threads might drive repeat traffic, but would it grow the site? Would I be more likely to think of a new question if I was already here?
One thing that I've had suggested is to have regular events in chat. We'd feature/promote them for the first few weeks, then let them live o ntheir own.
Yeah, but who goes to read the transcript? It's not on the front page, and there's no links between a user's profile and their chat participation, for instance. I guess I'm seeing the use of chat for other purposes as someone with a hammer (chatroom) thinking everything's a nail.
If there's anything you thing is wrong or missing from the site on a technical level please post a question on meta. The mods get a notification and the developers do look across the whole site. If something's important I will always raise it on Meta Stack Overflow if necessary.
Well if we want to spread the word to "users", I'd think getting on with HGTV or something would be effective, but I'm not sure how to reach the experts unless we set up a booth at the lumber yard.
Heh. @ChrisF, that links back to what I was saying about having a space to host project spaces. If it were ME, the way I'd do is find a way to give each user who is a DIYer like me a space to post their projects, sort of like a mini blog, that reflects in their user page. Then I'd add it to my sig line on all of the DIY sites I regularly troll, and users would end up finding it via that.
But that's sort of something we'd have to develop.
And it'd be cool if it could get tied back into the voting system and the badges system.
@AarthiDevanathan One of the reasons I asked about the top user swag earlier was thinking that it might be cool if it included cards people could put up in their local DIY stores. I know it wouldn't be major coverage, but it would be a start.
@KarlKatzke My only question about that is, well, i used to trawl forums too, and I often just turned off seeing people's custom sigs entirely. Would that really be a way to promote the site effectively? would sites like diychatroom feel like we were poaching if we did that?
@ChrisF Unfortunately, it's something of a catch-22; DIY needs to be bigger for us to get promo materials faster, but we can't be bigger until we have promo materials. Same thing is happening in Parenting.
Even if we did have swag yesterday, y'all couldn't receive it for 2mos
If it's the users posting "Come see what I'm working on: diy.stackexchange.com/userproject/karlkatzke"; then it's different from Aari Devanathan's account going "Visit diy.stackexchange.com!"
@KarlKatzke It would have to be a link from your profile rather than on the page itself. Actually if you go to your profile page now and hit "edit" you'll see spaces to enter links to Facebook, LinkedIn etc. The developers are working on how this will be displayed right now.
I learned about diy.stackexchange from being on SO. If I had not learned about it from there, I would think the only other thing would be google searchs for my actual questions. That is how I found the johnbridge site.
OK, so it's possible to give everyone their own walled garden where they can link to their involvement with the community. My only concern then is attracting users to the blogs from people's profiles. I don't read profiles that much.
I also do watch some of the home improvement shows on TV but I don't really read too many mags. I did get a few of the old house magazines from the library at the start of my most recent project.
I personally would LOVE to sponsor stuff with TOH, but I honestly have no idea how. They're so established that they don't really need external funding. Being here since '77 helps, I guess. wry grin
That can only help with searches. Include the correct technical terms - particularly in answers. You need to be a bit more careful with questions to make sure you don't make them redundant
@KarlKatzke - which is funny because watching his show makes me think 99% of pros don't do it right either. He is probably me main motivation to do it myself as I don't want some contractor cutting corners I don't know about.
The other thing I thought of was getting some sort of deal with the home improvement websites both in the States and Europe/UK. Get our ads on their sites in return for sponsored tags.
@auujay I know ... he says in all his books that he'd rather people hired GOOD pros rather than DIY, but I've not yet been able to tell good from bad until I'd tried the job myself and learned enough about it to actually do it right.
@ChrisF Sponsored tags is something I'm nervous about; we'd have to talk to Community Team, Dev team, and maybe a few other estab'd mods to work out the logistics of that. my opinion only
We shouldn't forget that DIY is apparently HUGE in Canada
Half the builders' trade shows are in Winnipeg or Toronto
@AarthiDevanathanΨ Agreed. I know there was all sorts of outcry on Stack Overflow when some of the more generic tags got sponsored. Just an idea I was throwing out there.
@AarthiDevanathanΨ I was thinking that by offering sponsored tags we'd in turn be able get our ads on their sites at better rates and in better places.
@auujay As moderators we have the location you entered (if any) into your profile. We can also see IP addresses but only on individual users. I think we'd have to talk to the developers to get totals.
@AarthiDevanathanΨ Yes, any of those. I was thinking cards as a lot of stores in the UK have boards where local businesses can put up a stack of their cards for customers to take. As I said it would be hit and miss where they went up, but people could hit all the stores in their area.
Re Habitat for Humanity, I've spent I don't know how long trying to get the guys there to just use a mailing list rather than cc'ing everyone on an email. That was for the experienced who tend to be old retired guys.
For the rest, I imagine the biggest barrier is that they just want a quick answer and may not be willing to take the time to create an account.
We could sponsor builds in different parts of the country/world; that might help drive traffic our way. But the bounce rate is something to consider, yeah.
@BMitch Right now? I don't think we do any Google spending. Google finds us on its own.
People type in keywords and usually we rank up in the searches. 40% of DIY questions (based on a random sample) are on the first page of google, usually in the top 5 spots
I did that measurement myself. Feel free to ask about it.
When you search for a DIY topic, you'll usually turn up johnbridges & diychatroom and a few other sites -- I have never seen diy.se on the main page of google results.
(And I spend a lot of time searching for DIY topics... :D )
Now that Stack Exchange sites can have a blog associated with them, is it time for an Home Improvement blog?
Explanatory blog post
Guidelines for getting started.
Kinda out there, but I'm thinking along the lines of how Careers relates to SO: Can we set up some sort of location based rep system that would encourage contractors to join the site? So contractors have incentive to give answers and provide expertise because it will drive work?
In my dorm room closet, there is a junction box with a blank plate (no outlet). Inside there are three wirenuts (hot, neutral, ground).
I know it is generally unsafe to do any work on a live circuit, so I will see if I can set the circuit breaker. If I cannot, is there a safe(ish) way to perfor...
it shows up in Google searches as electrical - How do I ...?
Actually, speaking of blogs: if until we got the blogs set up, we did a regular chat day in a DIY room, like a "Project Promotion Thursday" type event, would that suffice until the blog went live?
As in, a weekly, all-day "event" where we have people posting pics and comments and updates in chat.
Something else we ought to look at is getting the unanswered questions total down. If most questions have answers people will be more willing to post their own (hopefully). Nothing turns me off a forum more quickly that seeing unanswered posts.
A high answer rate is good, but as Shirlock says, if you don't know what you're doing, don't give advice since you could injure someone (or just make the problem worse).
How much load can a board support, if it is supported only at the ends?
At the moment my specific problem is hanging a tire swing between two trees, and depending on which trees I choose they could be 10, 12, or 14 feet apart (center to center). If I securely attach a 2x4 to the trees and hang ...
Bunch of good things in here -- I will be interested to see a summary if someone could post one in Meta. But for now, I am burning daylight and have tile to lay!
It may be blasphemous to say, but one of the key groups to attract here are contractors, and they are doing this for money. Maybe we should make the site more attractive to those that are looking to get more business.
Anything else we can do to make this more attractive to contractors? I'm thinking about a find a local expert link, which right now would only point to Shirlock :)
@BMitch I would LOVE to see @shirlockhomes in here. I totally want to pick his brain. I bet he'd have some great ideas to being professional contractors in
my name is Bruce and I work with VELUX. I would like to provide you with some insights into our SUN TUNNEL skylight products.
The reflectivity of the tunnel material used by Solatube is 99% reflective, while the tunnel material used by VELUX is 98% reflective (rigid tunnels). However, the VELUX...
@AarthiDevanathanΨ One of the good things about DIY is it's inherently geographic: unlike say, a consultant or contract programmer on SO, a contractor answering questions on SE is not hurting their business
It may also be helpful to make the favorite tags easy to understand and have a simple way to notify users of tags they want to be notified of in a periodic digest. Or perhaps have it only send a notice if the question has gone unanswered for too long. There are a lot of pros out there that don't want to keep refreshing a website.
@AarthiDevanathanΨ So that's what we were talking about earlier, prior to the start of this chat. In response to a question like "How do I mitre my joints so they don't open up?" it would be great to answer the specific question for the scenario, and then post a link to homeconstructionimprovement.com/…
what we were discussing was having a list of such links, that could have tags and votes, for reference. So when you're answering a question, you can quickly search for links tagged as "mitre" and find that link
tag wikis are not enough though, imho. Eg, a link about how to do tile backsplashes may be tagged as "grout, tile, backsplash, kitchen". clearly I don't want to edit 4 wiki pages and put the same link ,and theres no way to search multiple tags
@gregmac If there already "reference" answers then we should be using them in our answers. Summarise the information and post a link to the best page on the web.
to be effective, the search needs to show something more like 5-10 possible relevant links. Kind of like the search that appears below your summary when you're making a new question - I find that is very effective
When you post an answer, a box can come up and say "Here's a list of possible sites that can help answer this question: ........ Have another one to submit? click here", and list the sites based on question tags, keywords, and sorted by highest votes
Well my time is up, so I'm going to call an official halt to the chat. Feel free to carry one. I'll create bookmark of what we've discussed so far and post it in an answer to the meta question.
I've really enjoyed having everyone in chat tonight. This has literally been the single most productive conversation I've been able to have in here, haha.
As such, I'll be around most of the day tomorrow as well. I would love it if people wouldn't mind, well, "knocking" and coming in and we can expand upon any/all of the ideas we mentioned in here together.
Plus, most of the day tomorrow, CHAOS team at large will be around me. Six other voices added to the mix can't hurt.
As far as bounce rate, yes, it will send people away from the site. But the point is that if you're doing a complete kitchen reno, and posting about it, a blog is the place to do that. When you answer, you can say "I ran into that problem to, try doing blah blah. Here's a link to how I did this whole thing... "
The chat happened.
You can see what we discussed by reading the transcript.
Please add anything else you can think of as answers to this question or this older question.
My hope would be that in doing that, you get more hits because the answers are more effective, and as we discussed, the pro bloggers are more likely to use this as their QA site if they can drive traffic back to their own sites
Anyways, thanks guys. nice to actually use the chat. :)
I had to put that on a sales guy's door years ago. He would come in, say hi, go into his office and take calls until lunch, 5 feet away and hardly saw him :)
Okay y'all, this has been awesome, but I have to go home some time. So I'm going to peace out. Thanks so much, again, for coming in and participating. This was seriously awesome. For realsauce.
This essential question wasn't asked yet, so here we go.
This is rapidly becoming a hot issue
across the entire network: how to
promote your site and how to reach out
to the experts and pundits in your
industry. We can come up with budgets
and promotions but — more than any
other ...
Now that Stack Exchange sites can have a blog associated with them, is it time for an Home Improvement blog?
Explanatory blog post
Guidelines for getting started.
In my dorm room closet, there is a junction box with a blank plate (no outlet). Inside there are three wirenuts (hot, neutral, ground).
I know it is generally unsafe to do any work on a live circuit, so I will see if I can set the circuit breaker. If I cannot, is there a safe(ish) way to perfor...
How much load can a board support, if it is supported only at the ends?
At the moment my specific problem is hanging a tire swing between two trees, and depending on which trees I choose they could be 10, 12, or 14 feet apart (center to center). If I securely attach a 2x4 to the trees and hang ...
I've seen a number of users with a PSI character in their names doing strange mysterious things on some Stack Exchange sites. What does it all mean?
my name is Bruce and I work with VELUX. I would like to provide you with some insights into our SUN TUNNEL skylight products.
The reflectivity of the tunnel material used by Solatube is 99% reflective, while the tunnel material used by VELUX is 98% reflective (rigid tunnels). However, the VELUX...
The chat happened.
You can see what we discussed by reading the transcript.
Please add anything else you can think of as answers to this question or this older question.
