The PMSE Notice Board

jmort253

1:28 AM

@TiagoCardoso - Congratulations, and thank you for volunteering to help out! :)

Tiago Cardoso

Hey @jmort253, thanks! I'm still getting up to speed, and any tip and suggestion is more than welcome!

jmort253

You've probably seen the flag queue

It doesn't really go off all that often

The flag workload is really light.

Tiago Cardoso

Yeap, I saw... one thing I mentioned to Aarthi when I got contacted about the mod position was that, besides having great mods (yeah, I told it :P) is that our community is quite mature, so we don't see those freaking spams and random comments we have @ SO

jmort253

Spam has really never been a huge problem here.

It exists.

If you look hard enough you'll see things that should probably be deleted. But I figure unless it's really outrageous, I'll wait for a flag or a delete vote.

Lately, I haven't been closing as much. It seems like we do have a few more users who are doing things like that, and leaving comments. So I don't intervene unless I feel it's necessary.

Tiago Cardoso

Exactly... that was one of the 'moderator modus operandi' in that FAQ... to empower the community and letting them doing the 'moderation'

jmort253

1:42 AM

Exactly ;) That's why we try to hold discussions publicly, in meta, or in this chat, so that people will get involved. That's one of the mistakes we made early on IMHO.

I did send you a chat invite though, not sure if you got it

So, yeh. We're doing great though.

We're growing

@TiagoCardoso - We're doing things right. Quality is pretty good, and we're growing.

Tiago Cardoso

I saw that one of our bottlenecks to go official is the rate of questions / daily

jmort253

That one will take some time.

Tiago Cardoso

that's something I believe we'll only improve nurturing our new users and sharing pmse questions

jmort253

As more and more people join, and as more and more good content is created, more and more people will find their way in from Google.

Tiago Cardoso

yeah

and I'd guess that google might be the front door for most of SO users

jmort253

1:48 AM

At this point, I think it's all about sustained growth. It will take time, but we are productive, and beta is a good place to be as it lets us grow in a sustainable and manageable.

Tiago Cardoso

well, Google is the front door for most of the great things on internet

jmort253

Yeh, most of the SO traffic comes from search engines.

So, in other words, most of the people on SO don't post.

They are just drive by readers.

and eventually some, like me, eventually create accounts.

Tiago Cardoso

yeah

I'd say that maybe some people may feel reluctant on expose themselves on a pm community

jmort253

I did because an answer that helped me on SO got downvoted, and I wanted to upvote it, so I went and answered a question to get the 15 poitns to upvote it.

Tiago Cardoso

haha, that's a good story

jmort253

1:49 AM

Yeh, that's sort of why I suggested focusing on moderating answers more than questions.

Because A) it's tough to ask questions, and B) most people answering know what makes a good answer.

Tiago Cardoso

that's a good point

jmort253

and most questions are from newbies.

Tiago Cardoso

yeah

jmort253

So the way I see it, as long as the question gets good answers, we can usually fix whatever problems are in the question.

One of the reasons I backed off closing stuff a bit.

Tiago Cardoso

I see you edit quite a lot of questions.. like 'fixing a broken toy'

it's an amazing job, congratz

far better than straightly close them

jmort253

1:51 AM

lol, right. Thanks. I've become quite good at fixing questions.

Tiago Cardoso

yeah, you are quite good on it!

jmort253

Yeh, closing should really be a last resort, IMHO, after editing. Editing can clear away the fluff so you can know for sure.

Tiago Cardoso

yep

and besides, there are some questions that, once asked, although could be pointing to somewhere else, 'triggers' new questions

jmort253

What do you think we can we do to promote the site more?

Tiago Cardoso

that's a question I've been thinking since our conversation about the voting event

one thing I'm doing is sharing some questions @ Facebook

mentioning specific friends

sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't

but to frequent a forum is something cultural, I believe

jmort253

1:57 AM

yeh... for sure

I tweet questions every now and then.

I'm trying to remember to do that more.

Tiago Cardoso

I started to look for communities only after I had some trouble with a peer from London... who asked me 'what are the communities you're used to frequent?'... and I had to answer 'none'.

jmort253

I'm thinking of writing a user script that reminds me to do that ;)

Tiago Cardoso

hahahah

lol

another thing I've done a dozen times was to share some questions in our company's board

especially the 'financial related' ones

but again... not everyone is 'social'. I know a lot of people who don't give a damn for communities.

wouldn't it be a problem for IT PMs? Usually IT people are kinda 'unsocial'

jmort253

yeh

programmers too sometimes.

I don't think too many of my colleagues are on here, or SO.

Not everyone does SE.

Maybe a couple, but I don't know what their usernames are. ;)

Tiago Cardoso

Exactly

same here

So, the first barrier is to know how we could 'promote being social'

in a broader vision, as I believe the problem isn't specifically with SO, but with communities in general

jmort253

2:04 AM

I figured PM's would be social, with all the communicating we have to do ;)

Tiago Cardoso

Yeah... but also afraid of expose themselves

jmort253

for sure....

Tiago Cardoso

one thing we could use is the PMP PDUs... for PMP friends, of course

if I'm not wrong, visiting often pmse grants some PDUs... for free

jmort253

Yes

There have been some questions about that posted.

What do you think aboout a meta post for interesting questions to encourage people to tweet?

Tiago Cardoso

sounds good

jmort253

2:11 AM

Some sites do the "question of the week". That could be a good way to build up our list... and the self evals....

Tiago Cardoso

is it possible to know how many people visited a question from a specific link?

jmort253

we know what some of the good questions are already ;)

Tiago Cardoso

I mean

jmort253

Not that I'm aware of... wish there was.

But we can all see how many times they've been viewed on the right side of the question page.

Tiago Cardoso

it would be good..

yeah, it's a starting point

if we pick a good question and promote it, for sure we'll have some boost in our community

we could define some internal goals... like 'have a top question with 1k views in a week'

as a healthy competition... where everyone is at the same side: promoting pmse

jmort253

2:15 AM

Interesting idea

and probably better than the voting contest. That was a bad idea ;)

Tiago Cardoso

hehe

jmort253

Hmmm... a good "requirement" for anyone participating in a question-writing contest could be that all participants have to tweet the winning posts.

Tiago Cardoso

but the voting contest would be good, pushing people to dig for good questions

jmort253

s/requirement/suggestion

yeh, for sure.

Tiago Cardoso

promoting @ tweeter, facebook or linkedin

or all of them

jmort253

2:18 AM

whatever your poison is

:)

we have some people, like MON40, who are big linkedin fans

then Twitter folks like Mark Phillips

Bloggers like PawelBrodzinski

Tiago Cardoso

hehe

jmort253

So basically, we'd just be encouraging more of what many people are already doing, and maybe encouraging more people to do the same.

Tiago Cardoso

exactly

you got my buy in

hehe

Would you create the post @ meta now or we have to wait to have other peers joining the cause?

maybe mention some key users here @ chat and share with them the idea?

jmort253

Well, I think you should mention it. I talk a lot ;) So I think it's helpful for other people to propose stuff.

And for anyone reading this chat, I don't just mean mods. Anyone can propose something.

Tiago Cardoso

oh yeah!

jmort253

2:27 AM

> Oh no, not jmort253 again, what's he got to say this time. lol

Tiago Cardoso

hahahha

the formatting works here?

yeap, it does

:D

I believe we can start calling the most seasoned + active users we have

like David, Lunivore and Pawel

jmort253

Yep, formattting works here. ;)

3 great contributors :)

Tiago Cardoso

we could propose another thing... anyone suggests a name to mention here to spread the word: this way, we'd suggest to increase the interaction between members

is this a bad idea?

hehe

like, for instance: I mention David and Pawel. David will need to mention two other guys, as well as Pawel. And so on

eventually, people won't buy in.. but we'll have the community engaged

jmort253

The chat mentions really only work for people who have already been in chat.

and you have to scroll up and load in enough previous messages to where their names appear.

Tiago Cardoso

ohhh, wasn't aware of it :(

jmort253

2:33 AM

I think one thing that might be helpful is to maybe try scheduling another chat event.

Last one was pretty .... uneventful....

It was pretty much just me

Tiago Cardoso

heheheh, I tried to join but it was too late when I entered

(a couple of days later, actually :P)

jmort253

and some user with 1 rep who was bouncing from chat to chat on the network.

Well, even if the chats are empty, using it more may help promote it.

I mean, this chat isn't getting a lot of usage, but it gets a lot more than it did 6 months ago.

It went something like a year without any activity.

Mark was wondering if it could be used for events like webinars

Tiago Cardoso

I guess we have far more than enough knowledge to be shared with our members, it would be great a webinars

*some webinars

jmort253

So we definitely have ideas. It's just a matter of getting enough people interested in 1 or more of them.

Perhaps the best first ideas might be things that would be successful only with a few people.

Tiago Cardoso

we could create a question @ meta to discuss about ideas

is there something like this already there?

I believe I saw something like this in the past...

jmort253

2:39 AM

1

Q: How do you feel about a PMSE contest?

Occasionally, StackExchange communities hold contests centered around some particular set of activities on the site. These events can be a fun way to get more people engaged in making the site a better place. I wanted to get some ideas from the community. If there is enough interest, then someon...

Then there's this one:

2

Q: Is anyone interested in a voting contest?

Mark and I were discussing on this question, How close are we to coming out of beta?, what things we would need to do to get closer to coming out of beta. We're doing great, but if we graduated today, we would only have 6 regular users who are close voters, assuming the 3 elected moderators were...

discussion voting contests

Which I'm convinced is not such a good idea.

Tiago Cardoso

hehehehe

just noticed I got only 1 out of the 4 badges from voting :P

I'll dig some questions when I have free time to find some good stuff

jmort253

But again, I think it's time for someone else to take a stab at the contest idea. ;) And new ideas are really what we need.

awesome!

Well I'm going to head out.

Congrats again!

Tiago Cardoso

yeap, I'll jump in and add a note there

thanks, mate!!

we'll keep in touch

jmort253

ttyl

Tiago Cardoso

y

Yannis Rizos

1:57 PM

-1

Q: Is there a product planning tool that has these specific features?

I am working on a web startup in the early stages, and we are struggling a bit to manage the scope and scheduling of our product. We have loads of high-level features in the pipeline, but we need a good way of scheduling them for release iterations and breaking them into actual tasks that can be...

project-management product-management

Hey everyone, is this ^^^ something that could work in PM?

Yannis Rizos

2:20 PM

@jmort253 ^^^

Tiago Cardoso

3:22 PM

Hi @YannisRizos, in my opinion this question could be potentially moved to PM. I've went through the comments (especially on the related meta question) and it seems that the question is offtopic from a programmers perspective, but could have some valid answers @ pmse. Let's wait for @jmort253 comments on it as he's more seasoned on these questions!

jmort253

3:51 PM

@TiagoCardoso, @YannisRizos - Goodmorning/evening, this has a lot of detail in it and specifics, which is good, but what concerns me is that it's really sort of a shopping question.

The "What tool should I use for X" questions traditionally get a lot of spam or answers that don't really add value.

If it were asked here, I think it would be worth trying, but I'm concerned that if you migrate it over and we end up closing it, it would count as a rejection ;)

Yannis Rizos

-1

Q: Why has my question been closed?

I would like to know why my question has been closed nearly instantaneously? What is a good product planning tool? I read the FAQ prior to asking, and it does not seem to contradict any of the following guidelines to me: inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”. tend to have long, not sho...

discussion closed-questions specific-question

Tiago Cardoso

Yep... well, the concept of the 'shopping question' was new to me, just read the blog entry talking about it: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping

Yannis Rizos

@jmort253 I know the question is NC, I was wondering whether the list of available solutions is limited enough to not make it so attractive to crap answers.

jmort253

If we do migrate it, can we edit it and add to the question that explanations of why the tool is the best?

Tiago Cardoso

the point is that we do have some similar questions in pmse, which is fairly acceptable as it's asking for a tool to fix a specific need, not 'the best' tool (at some level)

Yannis Rizos

3:54 PM

@jmort253 It doesn't have any answers, so I think any edit would be welcome.

jmort253

@TiagoCardoso, @YannisRizos - Let's give it a try ;)

worst thing that can happpen is we flag spam a few answers

Yannis Rizos

@jmort253 So, should I send it over? Other than NC, it doesn't really seem on topic for ProgSE.

jmort253

@TiagoCardoso - It's up to you if you think editing can make it work ;) Tool recommendations are specifically listed as off-topic in our faq.

But I could see it possibly being tailored.

Maybe the op can be open to any solution?

I'm fine with whatever you decide, but I gotta run! :) Good luck! :)

Work calls ;)

Tiago Cardoso

Indeed, although we do have some tool recomendation-like questions around... thinking twice, if we start to actively migrate such questions we'll be opening a breach in our own rules, don't we?

jmort253

@TiagoCardoso That's sort of my concern.

If someone asks one and they get some really good answers, I let it go, but actively migrating is a bit different.

Yannis Rizos

4:00 PM

@jmort253 Ok, I'm not sending it over now, but feel free to do any edits on it on ProgSE and/or chime in in the related Meta discussion /cc: @TiagoCardoso

Tiago Cardoso

@YannisRizos, what's your opinion? Alternatively, instead of actively moving question, we could just add a comment @ meta telling that the question could have more answers @pmse

this way, would be up to the community to decide if it's on or off topic

jmort253

Yeh, @YannisRizos what do you think about him re-asking?

Tiago Cardoso

and up to him to think if he can fit the question to pmse

in the end, is his own interest to have his question answered :)

Yannis Rizos

Sure, that could work. You could post it as an answer on our Meta @TiagoCardoso

-1

Q: Why has my question been closed?

I would like to know why my question has been closed nearly instantaneously? What is a good product planning tool? I read the FAQ prior to asking, and it does not seem to contradict any of the following guidelines to me: inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”. tend to have long, not sho...

discussion closed-questions specific-question

jmort253

Awesome :) Good work gentlement! off to the races :) ttyl

Tiago Cardoso

4:07 PM

Done, @YannisRizos!

And thanks for bringing this up!

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