Meeting the traffic and rep requirements - should we be worried?

Question

It's going to take time to meet the rep requirements. We are moving in the right direction everyday though, should we keep urging everyone who committed (in the commitment stage) to meet 200+ rep because, unless I'm wrong, that's part of what they agreed to do.

(can someone help me find and verify this to be the case?)

We receive 25~ points each time one of our referrals meets commitment. I know because I just received some points from referring Eric Lamb though, he is at 400 now so, again, I'm not sure exactly what the commitment consisted of or if there was a delay on me getting my points.

Anyway, here are the requirements for rep and where we currently stand:

• 150 users with 200+ rep (currently 41 users with 200+ rep)
• 10 users with 2,000+ rep (currently 0 users with 2,000+ rep)
• 5 users with 3,000+ rep (currently 0 users with 3,000+ rep)

You can see all the requirements here by the way.

If you see the very last one on the list (blue boxes), the traffic stats, you will notice that we are about 1/5 of where we should be (where's math when I need it?)

Now, I realize the beta just went public (2 days ago in fact). I also realize the stats will pick up a bit once Google starts hitting all the newly generated content and people start finding this site while searching for help etc. though, this is the one I'm most "worried" about meeting at this point in time.

I think rep will be a walk in the park because we are such a passionate group and will power through the rep requirements like everything else we've done up until this point. The traffic requirement, well, I'm not so sure based on being a smaller more tight-knit group without the sheer mass of other communities.

Should we sit back hoping these things will all just iron themselves out?

Or should we keep up the momentum we've gained and continue with the push, power right out of beta and then relax after launch?

What's your thoughts on meeting rep and traffic requirements?

Answer 1

No, you should not be dwelling or agonizing over these numbers in a way your post suggests. From here on out, that's not your job.

The task at hand is to compile a great collection of knowledge on this subject. That's about it. That means asking intriguing questions when you have them, really knocking out (and constantly improving) some great answers where you can, and to vote early and often… to encourage better answers and to recognize and motivate those who contribute their hard-earned knowledge and experience here. There's some meta governance that goes with keeping the site moving in the right direction, but that's about all there is to it.

Those Area 51 stats do not represent some sort of “report card” filled with pass/fail grades. That's not how it works. You're only concern should be to provide a great end-user experience to those who come here for help. Planning specifically how you are going to optimize those numbers usually leads to unwanted behaviors — usually to the detriment of the site. Just focus on quality, and the numbers will follow.

Have a look at the blog post below. Hopefully it will put those numbers — and how little they actually mean as an end goal — into perspective:

Does this site have a chance of succeeding?

Answer 2

I'm thinking a major part we aren't currently fulfilling is the voting. Look at the number of votes each question/answer is getting. It's extremely low, most questions are getting just 1 or 2 votes.

We should be voting even if we aren't asking the original question or contributing an answer. If you learn something, vote.

Answer 3

For the record, the commitment we made was to:

participate actively for at least three months, especially during the private beta, and to ask or answer at least ten questions.

Ten questions or answers being the primary metric they track (to see this, just click the commit button for a different proposal, I can't find it in a FAQ anywhere).

I think we are doing well on most of the requirements. If you look at proposals which have been in beta for a bit longer (e.g. Robotics), they actually say how many users the proposal is on pace to hit at 90 days, so I assume ours will do that soon (maybe after 30 days?).

From what I can tell (looking at Area 51), most sites take much longer than 90 days to reach the criteria to get out of beta. So we will be doing well if we make the targets at the end of 90 days. Still, it's a good target to aim for!

Answer 4

Keep up the momentum all the way, we're in such a roll at the moment. Let's not lose it.