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It looks like we're just shy of a year in beta. Unfortunately, according to Area 51 stats, we're still only getting 1.8 questions per day. I can't necessarily think of much to ask; maybe I just haven't had enough time lately for musical activities.

Did other Stack Exchange sites have this problem? Were they able to solve it? It seems like we are doing well in the other stats (I think visits/day will improve once the quantity of questions increases).

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3 Answers 3

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I haven't read the previous questions and answers about this topic, and I'm a relatively new member, but here is my take on the issue.

We need to make people aware of this site, specifically the community on popular forums, where the current information sharing is going on.

Forums are good for general communication and chit-chat, but not so good for getting reliable answers to questions.

I'm a bass player, and talkbass.com is my primary source of information about bass guitar, and music in general. Being an old an established community, you can find answers about pretty much anything about bass related. But, due to it being a forum, finding useful, reliable answers is pretty hard between all those trolls and random chat stuff and 'thanks', 'me too' posts.

Than there are ultimate-guitar, and harmony-central, and lots of others.

How can we do this?

  • Contests

Other SE sites has done some successful contests. Here is one from gaming.SE.

We can implement this format, and giving some reasonable prize. One contest may be about bass guitar, then the next one about electric guitar etc. Or about brands maybe? Like, Fender in general, or about stratocasters etc. I don't know if it is allowed, but we may get some sponsorship from a brand or music shop maybe?

Spreading the word about a contest is quite easy, given there is a appealing prize attached to it.

As I'm a bass guitar player, my examples are about related areas, and can be applied to all kinds of music.

  • Answering questions at forums with relevant music.SE questions.

Pretty straightforward, but caution must be taken if the rules of the forum that we are posting allows this.

  • Music schools

Wearing a music.SE shirt at music schools might generate some curiosity about the site?

Anyways, these are some basic ideas just popped to my mind.

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Over on security our best wins were:

  • while attending conferences, tweeting links to questions which were appropriate for the topics discussed by speakers, and including the conference hashtags
  • having speakers mention the site (eg I tend to name it in my bio whenever I talk at conferences)
  • swag: t-shirts etc, especially when worn by high profile individuals at conferences, or given out as prizes are especially popular. This includes stickers on laptops (or in the case of music.SE, on guitar cases etc)
  • our blog - especially our Question of the Week series. Some of these have drawn great attention, and as they discuss the answers and link to a range of other questions they give wider exposure
  • and last but not least, jumping on the slashdot effect bandwagon: When an xkcd cartoon was posted about passwords, we had a specific question and linked to it on reddit and slashdot. That day our visits shot up by over 8000 views from the previous day

We had other tactics but these seem most likely to be transferable over to music. You really just need passionate individuals to drive each of these.

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  • Great ideas. We need some people going to conferences :P
    – user28
    Apr 19, 2012 at 15:59
  • Not just conferences, but Q&A before concerts etc
    – dumbledad
    May 17, 2012 at 8:22
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Well, We're up to 3.5 now and I think that number's going to go up slowly, It's the kind of thing that will reach a critical mass and then the questions will rocket up!

Perhaps it's me but I'm noticing that there never seem to be any really difficult questions. Greek Modes and the Phrygian dominant scale are 2 intermediate - advanced topics that I'm really surprised haven't come up sooner than when I joined. It seems to me we just need to keep up the interesting, helpful answers and the QPD will keep rising!

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