The Axon Terminal

In the early days of this site there were many discussions on site-promotion. I was wondering, now that the site is almost a year and a half old, whether people had any new ideas for site promotion. Alternatively, this post might act as an impetus to implement some new site promotion ideas. Thu...

Jeff

4:31 AM

@JoshGitlin @jonsca @BenBrocka @StevenJeuris @ArtemKaznatcheev @H.Muster @ChristianHummeluhr @Mien please vote on a possible name change: meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/537/55 thanks!

Meta Cognition

0

Q: What should we change the name of our site to, if anything?

There have been many other threads that discuss a possible name change. "Management" has suggested we focus on growing our community first before considering a name change. This logic seems to ignore the fact that our site's name has consequences for the audience we attract and participation rat...

discussion name

Christian Hummeluhr

8:32 AM

@Jeff Could you please add "Mind and Behavior"?

Er, nevermind!

Bio Perception Questions

12:38 PM

1

Q: What is the brightest color a light source that only emits blue frequency light can achieve?

Let's say there is a luminous light bulb that only emits blue light, and you (or a camera if you prefer) look at it from a close distance. Will the maximum brightness perceived not have any "white" to it? Because there is no white light if it's all blue. Probably the brightest it could be would b...

vision perception

Josh Gitlin

2:16 PM

@Jeff I've heard from two Stack Exchange employees that they don't feel the name is our primary issue at the moment. They feel that people will use or not use the site based on it's content: how many fresh questions there are, and how likely questions are to get answered

They did not say they're unwilling to change the name. They just said that it should not be our focus right now, we have more important issues we should be addressing.

This was also in the context of my asking how the mods were doing, so, while I personally am backing off from the name change to focus my attentions elsewhere, those of us who feel the name is the #1 concern should express yourselves

As you did with that question @Jeff

@Jeff the issue implies there's only one. There is more than one issue. One of the issues preventing us from changing the name is indeed the fact that we have no clear consensus on what the new name should be.

@Jeff I can't share specifics but yes, our visitor rate has declined somewhat

@Jeff Please vote to close and flag any old, unanswered, borderline questions. That's one area I can actively help in is improving or closing those.

@StevenJeuris Closed questions do not count against our answered %

Christian Hummeluhr

@JoshGitlin I think management's concerns are valid and agree that the name is not a primary problem. However, it is causing a lot of internal discussion, so it should be handled even if we have no intention of acting on it in the short term.

Josh Gitlin

@ChristianHummeluhr great point

@jonsca haha. It was also a "pop-psych" question which Artem's always telling me will attract the wrong crowd. But I feel it is useful to ask question about currently trending topics, because it's great Google fodder

@jonsca hey! I just like to make sure that everyone got a chance to have their voice heard! I've deleted my share of comments, although yes, it's better to ask Jeromy than me when you want comments deleted, he holds the record

</wall-o-text>

Christian Hummeluhr

@JoshGitlin The unhealthy obsession with avoiding "attracting the wrong crowd" seems like a much bigger obstacle than the name.

Josh Gitlin

2:31 PM

Yeah I am not personally concerned with "attracting the wrong crowd"

Which is why I keep on asking questions based on Psychology-related segments I see on television

Having read through some of the backlog of these discussions, it is clear the discussion reaches an impasse every time it becomes obvious that the site does not have the necessary core of experts to maintain a stable influx of interesting research questions, and that it therefore cannot attract more experts, thus the chicken and the egg. The first step to growing this site is to accept that it is not within our power, given what we currently have at our disposal in terms of time, effort, activity and membership, to make targeted efforts at attracting experts. — Christian Hummeluhr 5 hours ago

I agree with that statement

Going to grab some breakfast now, but I'll be back shortly

Christian Hummeluhr

Yeah, I'm going to take a page out of your book with respect to that. I don't watch a lot of TV, but I run into science reporting all the time that essentially begs for an SE-style dissection. I barely remember the last time I saw a correctly reported finding.

Christian Hummeluhr

3:05 PM

@JoshGitlin As someone who is not familiar with the SE process, could you explain what the path from a Meta discussion to practice is? At a glance, a lot of the CogSci Meta discussions seem to have a worrying tendency to peter out or end in a mod/high-rep comment to the tune of "it's a great idea if Someone does this," then the topic resurfacing in a new question months later (suggesting it was not implemented).

Steven Jeuris

@ChristianHummeluhr True.

We are basically dependent on Stack Exchange, so we can't simply change anything ourselves. We have to make a strong case which we can present. As you stated earlier we never really had a big enough core userbase to do that.

However, some parts we can change, like parts of the FAQ.

But all discussions are available to extend on them over time as new users show up (like you).

Be sure to leave behind your input on them if you feel you can contribute, or simply bump the topic or mention it here if you want to resurface it.

Christian Hummeluhr

@StevenJeuris Thank you, I certainly will. What I mean is that I think it's problematic if standard practice is to consider discussions open indefinitely, though. I'm not suggesting they ought to be closed or new topics could not later be started on the matter, nor anything like that, but rather that an efficient discussion ought to end with a decision, even in a decentralized setting.

As a new user, I think it's encouraging that even something like the site name is still open for debate, but I also think it's worrying that the established users are not in reasonable agreement about the matter.

Steven Jeuris

3:22 PM

@ChristianHummeluhr But what constitutes a decision? Agreement among 6 core users?

On the upside, some things were decided on though, like the required minimum effort I believe much of us look at in the same way.

Or the proper way of referencing.

As a sidenote, it's great to have new users like yourself being so invested in the site! It's exactly what we need. ;p

A big warm welcome!

Christian Hummeluhr

@StevenJeuris If there are six people participating in the discussion, those six people are free to decide what constitutes a decision, whoever they are. If they can't decide on that, they have no real reason to discuss anything with each other in the first place.

Jeff

@JoshGitlin that makes sense. it just sort of irks me because their response seems like a name change takes lots of effort on their end, but i refuse to believe that's the case. i think we've all taked about it before, let's either do it or not do it and move on.

Steven Jeuris

@Jeff And it might be a first (should be easy) step towards bigger consensus building. :)

Christian Hummeluhr

And thanks! I'm very excited about a Stack Exchange for mind and cognitive science research.

Jeff

yes =]

people will "use it or not based on content" is only true once they actually get to our site. but consider the 100+ questions on bio.SE tagged [neuroscience]. i think a lot of those questions might've ended up here if we had a more appropriate name

Christian Hummeluhr

3:30 PM

@Jeff Why?

Jeff

@ChristianHummeluhr many neuroscientists don't consider themselves cognitive scientists-- probably because of branding (cogsci the conference and cogsci the journal generally have nothing to do with the brain at all)

i think non-experts tend to have the same impression though

(that cogsci is for the mind, and biology/neuroscience is for the brain)

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff I think that may be a factor in some cases, but overall I think it's a lot more random than that. The main reason that they're on biology and not cogsci, I think, is that biologists already have a much more firmly established web presence, and that tends to lead neuroscientists there instead of here.

There are more nodes connecting neuroscientists to where biologists congregate on the web than there are nodes connecting them to where cognitive scientists do so, and that leads them to where the biologists are.

I think the name has limited impact right now because most people in our target audience just aren't seeing us at all.

Jeff

@ChristianHummeluhr i disagree. most of the questions on bio are not related to the brain, and going to bio.SE it's not entirely clear that there are neuro questions there unless a few happened to have been posted recently. it's only 6% of their questions.

but don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to argue that a name change is the solution for everything. as you say, it's only a factor

but considering there were 5 posts about a name change on meta before mine

let's just take care of it and move on

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff I agree with that. In any case, if what you say is true (I'm new to SE and essentially only active here), we might want to try to cross-pollinate with Bio by setting up some neuro questions ourselves and drawing people to here with those.

It does fall within our purview if it relates to behavior, so I don't see any reason that's not fair game.

Steven Jeuris

@ChristianHummeluhr Don't quite get that.

You mean answering their questions here and linking to them? :/

Jeff

3:42 PM

@ChristianHummeluhr it's definitely chicken and egg. i have posted this site's link to several popular academic newsletters. i think it helped us pick up a few users, but not many. so even after exposure, some people seem reticent to participate. and i think part of it is the name. could be a small part, but honestly even if it helped us attract a couple of active expert users, it could make a big difference for the content of the site

Ben Brocka

@ChristianHummeluhr I think a better way to cross-polinate would be to have a community ad on bio....but I don't think we can since they're not graduated right?

Christian Hummeluhr

@StevenJeuris No, that would be awkward. I figure that every once in a while, a neuro question must get asked and answered here that might later be relevant to a question on Bio.

Steven Jeuris

Ah, okay. Thanks for clarifying.

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff I think it matters more how you were promoting the site. Did you make a generic recommendation or did you highlight a specific question in connection with a related discussion?

I just think it's more likely they won't give us the proverbial time of day than it that they are actually considering and rejecting us, whether based on the name or not. I'd wager most don't even look at the site at all.

Jeff

@ChristianHummeluhr the latter.

IMO, the number one detriment to our site by far is the quality of questions and answers that people see on the front page. there are a lot of people here providing quality answers, but an even larger segment who post popsci questions. it turns academics off.

but there's no magic switch for that

to get better questions, we need experts

and to get experts, we need to recruit people in spite of the content

Christian Hummeluhr

3:52 PM

@Jeff I agree that's probably the main problem for the group of people who actually make it to the site. I just think that group of people is not very large.

Jeff

@JoshGitlin does the SE team grant you access to more sophisticated analytics, such as where are visitors are coming from? that stuff would be very useful.

Christian Hummeluhr

Agreed, that would be very useful.

Steven Jeuris

We do ... but unfortunately there is a big red "analytics data is intended for moderators only; please don't share the specifics of this data in public" on top.

Who knows, perhaps I'm not allowed to mention that either. ;p

Jeff

haha

Steven Jeuris

But as any other SE site I presume, our main visitors come from search engines.

Jeff

3:59 PM

what a joke: "employees, we need to raise our profits!" "who are our customers?" "um, er, can't tell you that-- just do your job"

Christian Hummeluhr

@StevenJeuris Specifics are relative. :V

Jeff

@StevenJeuris i'm not really interested in the largest sources of traffic so much as the smaller ones

the largest ones are presumably already working

the smaller ones need to be exploited

some of our users have posted links on blogs, newsletters, etc

but which of our "campaigns" has worked?

Steven Jeuris

We can't see those .. :/

Jeff

hmph

Steven Jeuris

However, at the time we could notice big spikes in traffic though.

That's what Jeromy mentioned in his meta post: meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/536/21

It definitely does work, which one works best, I don't know.

Christian Hummeluhr

4:06 PM

It's good to know that there is an effect when people make an effort to spread the word. That suggests to me that people do pick up on the site when it's promoted, at least.

The most cost-effective thing to do in terms of effort is probably to work in links to the site in our regular online communities. They don't even necessarily have to do with the mind, even entirely non-contributing users who just bookmark one question are useful, because they keep spreading the word and increasing the chances that experts will discover us.

Jeff

@ChristianHummeluhr i think exposure is great, but audience is important. i don't want to get flooded with questions like that of the Mind proposal. i think that would do more harm than good

i'd like to grow the user-base without lowering our current signal to noise ratio of expert questions

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff That seems to me like a largely hypothetical problem. Even if 100% of our questions were noise (and it's still not quite that bad, after all), at the current rate, they would still be well within the ability of 2-3 moderators' ability to just close. Everyone would like to grow the user base without lowering the signal-to-noise ratio, but given the current question rate, I see no reason that can't be done at the policy level instead of the recruitment level.

I am also not clear on what reason to think indiscriminate promotion would significantly lower the signal-to-noise ratio we have in the first place.

Josh Gitlin

@ChristianHummeluhr Sure; as a long time Stack Exchange user I am familiar with how these sorts of things work. @Steven gave you the just of it: Most changes the team needs to make, and if we want things like our name changed we need to come up with a consensus to show them what we want done.

In my experience the Stack Exchange team does what the Stack Exchange team wants to do.

Now, what they want to do is build strong communities, so they try to do what they feel is in the best interest of those communities. However sometimes what they feel is best is not what the community feels is bets.

Christian Hummeluhr

@JoshGitlin Must've been a feast of a breakfast. ;)

Josh Gitlin

Regarding the lack of action on many of our Meta posts, I feel that's due to the fact that we have a small user base right now, and an even smaller Meta user base. So we get a small group of people agreeing to a change but nowhere near enough to form a strong consensus on most issues.

@ChristianHummeluhr Breakfast, cleaning up kitchen, planning out my day, etc :-)

@ChristianHummeluhr Fried eggs, bacon, toast

Jeff

4:19 PM

@ChristianHummeluhr well i don't want to make our mods work harder than they already do, but in general im not referring to questions that are clearly off-topic (mod-close-worthy). I am referring to questions that are vague and lack initial research, particularly those that don't cite scholarly publications. these questions sometimes don't get closed quickly, or at all, but just flounder.

however i don't mean to dissuade you from promoting the site; i'm simply saying that we should be cautious, monitor how are content and visitors are changing, and react accordingly

Josh Gitlin

@Jeff I haven't personally gotten the impression that they're reluctant to change the name because of the effort it would take. The impression I get is more "you're focused on the wrong issue, refocus and work on other things first"

Jeff

@JoshGitlin now i'm hungry...

Josh Gitlin

:-)

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff Me too. : [

Josh Gitlin

@Jeff Yes. But we're not allowed to share the specifics of those details in public

@Jeff and @StevenJeuris, we can see some of that by looking at who got which bdges, E.G. Announcer

Jeff

4:23 PM

@JoshGitlin true, but saying "you're focused on the wrong issue" to me is not a tactful response that indicates willingness on their part. perhaps they should say "sure, we'll change the name if you have a good alternative, but i don't think it's your problem..."

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff Anyway, I just don't understand your rationale for advocating caution. I don't see the mods complaining about their work load anywhere, and their work load with respect to closing questions has got to be fairly minimal as it is anyway, given the amount of total questions we get. I could close both our daily questions even if they were horribly mangled and unresearched piles of waste, no problem. ;p

Jeff

the point is moot if they're willing to change the name anyway, its just not the impression i got from what you had posted earlier

Josh Gitlin

Possibly what might be helpful would be for me to coordinate a time for the community members to chat directly with the community team about these issues. Please star and/or reply to this message to let me know if you'd be interested in that.

2

Jeff

sure

Christian Hummeluhr

Right now, I'd much rather we let in 99 riffraff if it gets us one expert than exclude 99 riffraff and one expert.

Jeff

4:27 PM

@ChristianHummeluhr in time, maybe you'll grow bitter like me ;]

we have had some problem users in the past

one in particular, whose name i'll withhold

who likes to post garbage

Steven Jeuris

Garbage wasn't on topic was it?

Jeff

haha

"What effect does garbage have on the brain?"

anyway, said user gets downvoted into oblivion but in the meantime it makes our site look really bad

haven't seen him in a while though

Josh Gitlin

@ChristianHummeluhr and @Jeff, I am able to handle more work from this site, I can't speak for Steven and Jeromy though

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff So close it, and make the site look like it's actively handling bad material.

Steven Jeuris

@JoshGitlin At the moment I'm loaded in work. (Perhaps I shouldn't be talking here ...)

Jeff

4:30 PM

@ChristianHummeluhr it's not that simple. it's like opening up the new york times and seeing an article written by 5 year olds

Steven Jeuris

However, I gladly free up some time if activity like this occurs.

Jeff

maybe i shouldnt be comparing our site to the new york times, but still

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff I don't think--yeah

Jeff

i think it turns off first time users

its not like we dont get any users coming here

we have over 500 unique visitors a day

Steven Jeuris

Paper deadline 5th of April ... looks like I'm not going to make it. :-(

Jeff

4:31 PM

@StevenJeuris ICCM?

Steven Jeuris

UIST

Jeff

ah

Steven Jeuris

Not giving up on it yet though ...!

Jeff

hehe

just writing left to do, or analysis?

Steven Jeuris

Short re-evaluations of the new features I implemented in the system with users that did the full user study previously.

And then still plenty of writing.

(I'm in Belgium at the moment ... not much a visit, more 'working a week in Belgium' really) :)

Christian Hummeluhr

4:34 PM

@Jeff I can only speak for myself, but as a new user, I don't think a bad question makes the site look bad as long as it's got [closed] at the end of it.

Steven Jeuris

@ChristianHummeluhr And if it truly looks bad, flag it and we can delete it even.

Christian Hummeluhr

@StevenJeuris Oh, really? I somehow got the impression that practice was to close. Even better!

Jeff

@ChristianHummeluhr questions don't get [closed] very quickly on here without a mod-hammer. we don't have a lot of users that can cast close votes, and we try to encourage editing posts especially from new users

but as Steven said, if it's flagrant, then it will be closed quickly

Steven Jeuris

Closed questions generally are meant to let the OP know they should improve it, without attracting any further community effort into that question.

Deletion means it's entirely unsalvagable.

Christian Hummeluhr

@Jeff Those goals seem conflicting. We can't both "encourage new users who make bad posts to edit" AND "keep the riffraff out."

Steven Jeuris

4:37 PM

@ChristianHummeluhr We can .. by rapidly closing.

Christian Hummeluhr

What does it take to cast a close vote?

Steven Jeuris

You'll get there quickly ... 500 reputation.

Hey, just notice you are from the Netherlands by the way!

Jeff

@ChristianHummeluhr new users don't know how the sites work. we try to encourage editing from the OP, but if not sometimes editing for them shows them how it works

Christian Hummeluhr

@StevenJeuris Well, okay, haha. I've been using it in the sense of "not promoting to non-experts," and think that a policy solution is preferable to that.

@StevenJeuris So I am! Well, I'm actually from Denmark, but "somehow" I ended up here (it was a girl).

Josh Gitlin

Hey there @H.Muster!

Jeff

4:40 PM

anyway, time for breakfast tacos, then running subjects

see you folk later

H.Muster

@JoshGitlin Hi

Josh Gitlin

Later @Jeff! Thanks for taking such an active part in these discussions!

Steven Jeuris

@ChristianHummeluhr Haha, I'm in Denmark (well not now), but I'm doing my PhD in Copenhagen.

And it's always a girl ....

I'm in Denmark mainly because of a girl, ... otherwise I would have been in England. (where the girl is now) ;p

A dutch girl at that.

They mess with your mind I tell you! :)

Christian Hummeluhr

Ah, but in the best way. Speaking of, I better get prepared to move myself to a restaurant before I end up in the doghouse instead.

Steven Jeuris

@ChristianHummeluhr Enjoy dinner!

Josh Gitlin

4:46 PM

@ChristianHummeluhr Take care! Thanks to you also for your participation; it's through active community involvement like this that we'll grow our site.