The Locker Room

Lauren

18:40

@MattChan @IvoFlipse we could do a giveaway of sorts

we've already sponsored a Mark's Daily Apple 30 day challenge

with a fitbit

we could try to do another sponsored post on his blog, or a giveaway to our own users

whatever you guys prefer

Ivo Flipse

Just need to come up with an interesting twist

Lauren

has anyone reached out to him about doing the interview yet?

Ivo Flipse

Not yet I think

user11126

i have not

Ivo Flipse

Perhaps I'll be able to do some of this stuff next week when I'll have a week off

Lauren

18:42

sounds good

let me know if you need help with anything

user11126

what do you guys think of the question list so far?

Ivo Flipse

Well you could start by becoming a mod on our site ;P

Lauren

i dont think any chaos people are mods anywhere lol

questions look good

we need to come up with some from our site we want him to answer

Ivo Flipse

@Lauren Well there has to be a first for everything :P

user11126

mark's a paleo kind of guy? that's the impression i get so perhaps the questions could be tailored a bit towards that

Ivo Flipse

18:45

I wish we got more users in here, so the questions would actually come from our community

Lauren

we should prob read through some of his content to see what he tends to write about

Ivo Flipse

I actually remember reading his blog for the first time, right when this site launched

I was curious about his diet suggestions

marksdailyapple.com/…

I want his advice for how to moderate my running, for everything I know about running and the human body, the estimations of my own fitness definitely suck

We can ask for his take on our top 'palio-ish' questions (or at least those the search brings up)

17

Q: How can an overweight engineer get back in shape?

At the worthwhile suggestion of many experts, I have made my question much more consice, and focussed on the question I really am interested in! I am 46 yrs male, 6', good general health, but have FAT - basically a great big "beer gut". FTR I was the chubby kid in primary school, and then from ...

5

Q: Experience and references about intermittent fasting

I have read about and tried intermittent fasting in the past few months with some great results. The only hiccup was getting sick for about 3 weeks and losing that will to continue with it, until I restarted it recently. I was wondering what others experience were with intermittent fasting and al...

diet weight-loss eating-habits intermittent-fasting

I wonder what his take is on intermittent fasting

5

Q: Is Paleo A good marathon training diet?

I've been doing strength and conditioning training for the last 4 months whilst adopting the Paleo diet from the outset, this has yielded positive results and I'm very happy with how things have gone. I will soon be starting to train for my first marathon (eek!) and when I do my training regime w...

running diet paleo-diet

Or rather: for whom would paleo be a good diet?

5

Q: Where do I start when finding/creating a fitness program for myself?

I'm a senior in college studying computer engineering, so I spend a lot of time sitting in class and/or in front of a computer. I want to commit to a fitness routine before my sedentary lifestyle starts affecting my health. Now is a good time to start since I have free access to my institution's ...

diet strength fitness workout-routines

We get questions like this OVER and OVER again

Note to self: perhaps we should give it a more kick ass answer

user11126

19:14

are other sites in the SE network struggling with questions and users?

Lauren

@MattChan you mean in terms of getting users to be active?

/ just not having enough content

user11126

both

Lauren

yeah

of the ones i'm working on

history, philosophy, linguistics

all pretty small

user11126

do you know reasons why? are they too niche?

Lauren

just not very many users

haven't been very successful at pulling in experts on those topics - mostly just people who came over from other SE sites

plus they're new

Ivo Flipse

19:25

Personally a big issue is that I want my questions to be legitimate, so I have to encounter a problem in order to ask a question about it. This severely limits the amount of questions I ask on sites like Movies (well its in private beta but meh), Scifi, SU, SO and even Fitness

user11126

yeah, i'm trying to postulate why we're lacking users

user11126

i figure 1) they've already found an answer or 2) they're already doing something that works for them

Lauren

or people don't know about it lol

Ivo Flipse

Its hard to tap into completely new users, because our only entry point is Google. So they have to find us organically and be wanting to be part of our community

user11126

@Lauren haha that too

Ivo Flipse

19:29

@MattChan that's assuming they want to stick around, most are hit-and-run. They come to our site and are gone, never to be seen again

user11126

that makes sense, that's what SO is to me

Ivo Flipse

In part, because we're not 'social' means its also not clear that there's all this stuff like chat and meta around it

user11126

just looking at mark's daily apple or nerd fitness, those two sites already seem to have existing communities

user11126

i wonder if any experts (i.e. nutritionists, personal trainers) feel "threatened" by fitness.se

Ivo Flipse

If I were them I would start answering some questions with awesome answers and link to my blog for more information

or rather, summarize a blog post as an answer, then linking to my blog for more details

Lauren

19:37

@IvoFlipse yeah you'd think it would be a good marketing opportunity for experts

nutritionists, trainers, etc

Ivo Flipse

I think SO in particular has been rather 'unwelcoming' in some cases towards people who 'advertise' their expertise and that attitude resonates through all sites

Just like if I were Polar or some other fitness gadget vendor, I'd love for people to talk about my products

though in this example, I can't blame them for not knowing about us

user11126

well we have had experts try to market themselves before, but they didn't even bother answering the question

Ivo Flipse

but those are the wrong kind of experts

user11126

more like "i'm an expert in $SUBJECT, visit my site!"

Lauren

i think the only successful attempt at getting experts to answer questions (at least that i know of) was with nutrition diva

but she only answered one question i think

Ivo Flipse

19:41

because they think they build a reputation through linking their site everywhere, but our links are blocked (or what's it called again)

Lauren

maybe we should tweet some more questions at her

user11126

rel nofollow?

Ivo Flipse

that's the one

so not only does spamming their link not do what they thought it would, they also get the inverse reaction from our community, because we delete their posts rather than follow it :P

@Lauren That would be an idea

user11126

our scope was in a huge debate over the summer, but i don't think that's so much a problem anymore

user11126

i wonder what fitness clubs do to get more people in

Ivo Flipse

19:43

Advertise

user11126

someone told me the turnover rate of customers is high

user11126

like doing a "new year's" promotion

Ivo Flipse

though honestly, fitness clubs serve a purpose, you go there to exercise, but they don't "have" to come here

fitness clubs are one of the few indoor activities you can do on your own if you don't own material yourself

user11126

"read/write" also isn't really as physical as doing exercise :P

Lauren

thats true

the sites that tend to be big are ones where the target audience spends most of their time on the computer

Ivo Flipse

19:47

What's frustrating is not only that among those millions of SO visitors there must be a ton that like physical activities

they just either don't know about us, don't care about us or have the wrong image about our site

while I don't have any numbers, I feel that Stack Exchange's internal marketing doesn't do a great job of attracting new users

user11126

i was listening to the SE podcast #29 this morning

user11126

i forget who mentioned it, but he was saying something about the niche SE sites that are low in users or whatever metrics you want

user11126

it's small but it serves a purpose so they don't want to take that away from them, it's not a simple judgement call

Ivo Flipse

Of all the beta sites, we're among the 'top' ones, so I'm not worried about getting shut down

unless Jeff really thinks we don't add any value

Lauren

i dont think thats an issue

Ivo Flipse

19:52

Jeff could use some exercise, perhaps someone should tell him that :P

user11126

maybe users don't have enough guidance on this site?

Ivo Flipse

in what sense?

user11126

that seems to be the model when people want to get fit and do exercise

user11126

they're probably expecting or want a program... like what other sites might offer

Ivo Flipse

perhaps we should try and make write a few kick ass answers

not sure if we should hijack existing posts for it though, if only because of the clutter of less awesome answers

but we could make some Fitness 101 questions where we try to write up a compilation of sources to give them the best guidance possible

user11126

19:56

and create tons of fake accounts and upvote them :P

Ivo Flipse

and suggestions on what the do next

we don't need that, we have Lauren and the Stack Exchange accounts

if the post is awesome, it'll get its attention

but I think we should write it on Google Docs or something of the like

because we don't want to people to come and see an early version and mentally check out, meeh don't care

user11126

fitness 101..... maybe intro to paleo, crossfit, starting strength

Ivo Flipse

For instance

user11126

how many times has berin paraphrased his starting strength write-up in his answers?

Ivo Flipse

I don't know, but we can ask him to proof read it to make sure he agrees

Lauren

19:59

fitness 101 sounds interesting

Ivo Flipse

and Greg

Lauren

would you want to do a series of blog posts?

or make it in the form of questions

Ivo Flipse

I would post them as actual questions, so we have to be a bit Jeopardy about it

Lauren

yeah

Ivo Flipse

and we could always reblog the one that get's the most attention

Lauren

20:00

a good way to do it would be to come up with a lis tof questions that would be good for that

and tag them all "fitness 101" or whatever

Ivo Flipse

getting mentioned on blog.SO helps, but it has to be worth the attention

Lauren

and then write one blog post about what Fitness 101 is

Ivo Flipse

Good point

user11126

that sounds like a good plan

Ivo Flipse

Perhaps I should spend my week off thinking about this, trying to come up with some drafts

hi @SimonSheehan :)

Lauren

20:01

like "we're developing this Fitness 101 program... it will be in the form of a series of Q&A... all posts in the series will be tagged Fitness 101"

@IvoFlipse sounds awesome

user11126

other sites kind of have that "getting started" kind of thing

Simon Sheehan

heya @IvoFlipse :)

Lauren

@IvoFlipse and we can all help ask/answer

if you want to start another gdoc

wher ewe can throw out ideas

Ivo Flipse

I mean how many users have we had that used Couch25k, but it would be great if they had the extra info that a running coach would tell you

Lauren

yeah for sure

Ivo Flipse

20:03

Here's the doc where we can gather up idea's for Fitness 101

Lauren

we could go through some existing questions and tag them fitness 101 as well

Ivo Flipse

Perhaps in the beginning we can just compile some posts at the bottom of that doc, we can always move them to separate ones later on, but it helps give everyone an idea

well I would first come up with an kick ass answer and then deem it worthy of the tag

just to prevent a chicken-egg problem from occuring

Lauren

yeah

i added the getting started question

we could paste in get fit guy's answer to that

maybe we should identify questions that would be good for fitness 101 and ask those of mark sisson

Ivo Flipse

5

Q: Where do I start when finding/creating a fitness program for myself?

I'm a senior in college studying computer engineering, so I spend a lot of time sitting in class and/or in front of a computer. I want to commit to a fitness routine before my sedentary lifestyle starts affecting my health. Now is a good time to start since I have free access to my institution's ...

diet strength fitness workout-routines

This question is a mess though, its clear that a programmer asked it

but it illustrates the type of question we want

Lauren

maybe step 1 is identify all these questions, and then all pitch in to clean them up

answer them if we can

ask the others in the mark sisson interview

or reach out to people who could answer them

Ivo Flipse

20:12

We have something similar on SU: superuser.com/questions/tagged/community-faq

user11126

so with fitness 101, are we running with "how to get started with fitness?" and the moving on to "getting started with weighlifting/running/capoeria/etc."?

Lauren

interesting

Ivo Flipse

8

Q: How do I troubleshoot hardware issues related to a computer freeze/crash?

What are some common guidelines and issues related to hardware being the issue of a computer crash? What should I look for and how do I troubleshoot these problems? What are some tools that are useful in diagnosing these hardware related crashes? I am looking to be able to isolate the proble...

troubleshooting crash freeze community-faq

Lauren

@MattChan i suppose we should start with a general topic

like "getting started with fitness"

and then decide as we go what topic we want to address next

Ivo Flipse

I guess that question would address the choices you have to make when picking a type of exercise

Lauren

20:13

and the future topics could be tagged "fitness 101" and also "weightlifting 101" or whatever

Ivo Flipse

and from there we can link to new questions that we come up with, like "getting started with running"

user11126

i like that progression, it's what i was thinking also

user11126

i really like berin's answer of getting started:

user11126

10

A: How to get started with exercising without any previous experience?

The biggest concern with any exercise program is finding something you want to stick to. Some of that is motivation, but a big part is what motivates you. Depending on your age, you may want to talk to your doctor first (typically for people 40 and over). You mentioned doing squats, are they b...

user11126

finding something you enjoy and defining your goals are probably the best ways to figure out what to do rather than a "have at it" attitude towards it

Ivo Flipse

20:17

True, but the other answer also has some good point

and in true community wiki-ish style, it would be great if there was just one kick-ass answer

The biggest problem I think a lot of these questions have is that they lack focus

The advice you give to an overweight runner is completely different from someone who wants to deadlift 200 kg or a skinny guy who loves crossfit and climbing

Lauren

we could always have two separate answers in those cases

for questions that largely depend on circumstance

it's hard to anticipate every circumstance though

Ivo Flipse

@Lauren I'd make the questions more focused, because they appeal to different users (and probably should be formulated differently too)

Lauren

good point

Ivo Flipse

Well we want people to come to our site and get a click: "this is exactly what I'm looking for"

if the fitness jocks upvote the weightlifting answer over zumba, then the zumba ladies click [Back] before reaching the answer

That's my entirely unfounded hypothesis though :P

And also a reason why we should focus on things we like, because the love for the topic has to resonate from the post

Just like how every Paleo blog posts makes you want to change your diet completely

Lauren

20:37

@IvoFlipse makes sense

it may be a narrow scope then but gotta start somewhere

Ivo Flipse

perhaps that's a good thing, because it leaves the option open for others to ask their own version

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