I think I'm going to do the first challenge starting on Thursday. It looks like the non-digital communities suggestion is in the lead, so get your thinking hats on everyone
One small change though - instead of weekly, I think biweekly may work better due to lower traffic. Thoughts?
@Andy that sounds good. Plus, we don't have a huge pile of topics queued up, so let's not burn through 'em in a few weeks and then have to start collecting again. Biweekly seems more our pace right now.
I was just looking at that question, but more because it seems overly broad to me.
On a related note, we have more than 200 questions now.
I don't think it's a lexicon/terminology question either. When I first read it, it seemed more like a request to clarify the operational differences between the three roles.
I'm working on the topic for our first topic challenge. The first one is "non-digital communities". Any one have a good idea for an appropriate over arching tag to utilize for this? With nothing on the site related to this, it's a bit of a challenge (heh). We do have real-life with one question. Any other suggestions?
We can also retag as appropriate after the challenge is over if we get new tags to utilize
Even though "real life" is an internet colloquialism that people generally understand as meaning "not on the internet," I'm not sure it's the tag we want to use. It feels inherently sarcastic.
What's wrong with "offline"?
I guess it would be obnoxious if we had to tag a majority of the questions on the site as either [online-communities] or [offline-communities].
But I am typing in real life. And we are all acutely aware that there is nothing "unreal" about being a moderator.
@AJHenderson I think the breadth problem is distinct from the meta-tag problem.
The reason meta-tags tend to be broad is because they're not really concerned with the content of the question; [homework] on SO, for example, was only concerned with the context of the author and so it was hardly limited at all with respect to the the scope of the question.
But whether a community is online, offline, neither or both is potentially significant in determining what the question actually is and how to answer it.
Consider, "What should I do if someone in my community threatens to kill someone else?" tagged [online-communities] vs. tagged [offline-communities]
I'm not a fan of calling offline things "real", because it implies that online things aren't. Online communities don't exist in a specific place, but they're still real communities. I don't have a great suggestion though.
We should use an "offline" or "offline-communities" tag only when the question is specific to that setting, just as we don't tag other questions with reddit or irc or stack-exchange unless that's inherently part of the question.
Would tagging something "offline-community" be appropriate for non-digital community questions? Our focus so far has been online communities and is assumed to be the default, unless otherwise stated.
If a question is about, say, how to get community buy-in for some change, then its online or offline status doesn't seem relevant. If, on the other hand, the question is about how to keep a couple dominant users from streamrolling over everybody else, then the fact that it's in-person matters a lot.
For the challenge, you can make a community-wiki answer and ask people to add links, if there's no single tag that would apply to all of them.
Also, I'm just thinking out loud here; I don't feel especially strongly about this.
@AirThomas I've seen tag-based weekly challenges work on other sites, but it's probably not going to be a good fit here, at least not now with our current tag set. Rather than trying to jam tags into the tag set to fit current events, let's let tags evolve and meanwhile find other ways to manage the challenge.
@Mateon1 I think the topic's fine. You'll want to talk about both the current state (user base, activity, scope, etc) and how it's been changing. Is it dying because you're losing your users or because it was a limited topic and they've said all they could say?
I'm a semi-regular user of a game-related wiki, and I've noticed an extreme drop of activity after a sequel to the game came out. I hoped it was temporary occurrence, and we'd start to get users back on our wiki, but so far it's only getting more and more inactive.
Right now the wiki is in extre...
I know that its is the possessive and it's is the contraction, and know when to use them. But why doesn't the possessive have an apostrophe?
"The bear's eating a fish." [contraction]
"The bear's coat is brown." [possessive]
"It's eating a fish." [contraction]
"Its coat is brown." [possessive]
...
yeah, that's why I don't have problems with that one
the trick with it's is that it makes me think of both the possessive and the contraction and unless I think of the contraction, I forget that it isn't the possessive
I know that its is the possessive and it's is the contraction, and know when to use them. But why doesn't the possessive have an apostrophe?
"The bear's eating a fish." [contraction]
"The bear's coat is brown." [possessive]
"It's eating a fish." [contraction]
"Its coat is brown." [possessive]
...
