8

As many of you have likely noticed, we seem to have fewer questions these days than we did during the early days of the site, a few short months ago. Some of this is of course normal, as when a new SE site is launched, it typically gets pummeled with questions, then interest subsides a bit.

Several things must happen for any SE site to flourish. However, perhaps the most important thing we hear repeated over and over again is:

A successful site must attract experts!

How can we attract more experts to our site?

15
  • 1
    I can tell my Spanish teacher about it. =P
    – user706
    Commented May 10, 2012 at 22:14
  • 5
    @dunsmoreb: No, tell your whole class! :)
    – Flimzy
    Commented May 10, 2012 at 22:15
  • 1.4 questions per day as for today, and lately we are having over 300 daily visits :)
    – JoulSauron
    Commented May 11, 2012 at 8:21
  • This is bad because the site can be closed :(. They already closed some beta sites. Commented May 11, 2012 at 17:14
  • @JoulSauron: Yes, those stats (and others we mods have access to) are precisely the reason for my concern. :/
    – Flimzy
    Commented May 11, 2012 at 17:18
  • We need more questions, I guess. More questions to answer would make occasional visits to stay and come back regularly. As I'm just a native speaker I don't really have much to ask. And answering just learners' questions it not really attractive to linguists and experts as well. About experts, would native experts come to a site run in English? I think somehow would only attract experts in Spanish language whose mother tongue is English...
    – JoulSauron
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 6:56
  • I emphasized questions because answers don't seem much problem.
    – JoulSauron
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 6:57
  • 1
    @JoulSauron: English L&U is full of questions from native speakers. Those are the best questions, because they attract the experts!
    – Flimzy
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 6:58
  • 1
    But you make a good point. French L&U is run primarily in French. I wonder if we should consider switching to a primarily Spanish format.
    – Flimzy
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 6:58
  • Exactly. At least for Spaniards, I can say according to official statistics that English is a barrier. Thus, we cannot expect to attract many people like this. I've also noticed that 90% if not all of avid users come from SO or other computer relater SE sites. So we must make the effort of telling people outside the computer circle.
    – JoulSauron
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 7:04
  • 1
    @JoulSauron: See my new question here: meta.spanish.stackexchange.com/q/219/12
    – Flimzy
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 7:16
  • I'm discouraged about participating. I had one question rejected because it didn't conform to quality standards. I had to reword the question in English to get it past the screener. I've written some answers that I thought were pretty good, but got zero upvotes, rightly or wrongly. Commented Sep 14, 2012 at 11:33
  • @WalterMitty: Can you provide some links? I, and I'm sure others, would be happy to provide some constructive criticism.
    – Flimzy
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 16:02
  • I've kind of gotten beyond this comment since the time I wrote it. Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 18:18
  • Basically, I was overly impressed with my own expertise. For a non native speaker, I'm very fluent. But my formal study of the Spanish language doesn't go beyond primary school. The needs of this community often go way beyond anything I can contribute. Commented Sep 17, 2012 at 13:23

6 Answers 6

3

There are (at least) three vectors that I think might be useful to help get the word out:

  • Language exchange sites (Livemocha, ConversationExchange, LingQ, etc.).
  • Expat communities (IWantOut, International Man, Sovereign Man Confidential, etc.).
  • Travel communities (Travel.SE, etc.).

I've been meaning to update my profiles on some of these sites to include cross-links for my profiles on other sites as well; I'll make sure Spanish.SE ("ES.SE" :P) is added to that list (:

1
  • All done; profiles updated (:
    – user682
    Commented May 11, 2012 at 4:28
2

See if you can't get SpanishDict.com to sponsor/promote you.

1

What about spamming (kidding) emailing Universities and / or language schools in non-spanish speaking countries?

UPDATE

Also what about having a Facebook page for the site??!!

1
  • Not only that, but also to Spanish teachers in Spanish-speaking countries. This way we would attract teachers of Spanish that could answer much better than some of us.
    – JoulSauron
    Commented May 31, 2012 at 11:08
1

There are various steps to go about it

  • By word of mouth - You can obviously tell your friends, co workers, relatives etc about this this thing. Also check out this Elevator pitch thingy
  • Make an advertisement - This is being followed on Chem.SE and Math.SE & Islam.SE & if we are lucky we can get our add posted on some other SE site like Physics.SE. Another thing you can do is take a print and post in around your locality, outside your local store, stick it onto the rear windshield of your car (or someone else :P) etc.
  • Blather about it on your blog - If you have a blog (not necessarily a succesful one) just promote it in any way you seem fit.
  • Make a Facebook page - Make a facebook page, act like a true troll and post the link to that page all over Facebook (well there are many related pages on FB, you can post there if you want.) But be sensible and make only one page. Please discuss this in chat before making a page. (Also see Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page)
  • Twitter - SE sites have a way to automatically post to twitter. You can do you job by re-tweeting these tweets. Happy tweeting.
  • A Youtube video - This is something new. Well I think there are a few programmers/ developers on this site. You could make a simple video about advantages of such a site with its link would be helpful.
  • Post about it on other forums - Are you active on some other forum? Then this is for you!!! Just post its link with a short description.

  • Spread a word of it on whatever social networking site you are on - Whether you are on Google+, Fb, Twitter, HiFive, Myspace etc make it a point to mention about it.

    enter image description here
    You should find this on the main page.

  • ...
3
  • this was my post fom an other SE site.
    – Ashu
    Commented Jul 19, 2012 at 7:44
  • +1 for posting ads on other people's cars!
    – Flimzy
    Commented Jul 19, 2012 at 16:25
  • The twitter is already working: twitter.com/StackSpanish
    – JoulSauron
    Commented Jul 19, 2012 at 21:06
1

I agree that using more Spanish and less English would improve the site, and attract more experts. How do you get there from here?

Other comments have noted that SE software forces Spanish tags to use the English alphabet, without diacritical marks. How does the French site get deal with this restriction? Spanish without diacritical marks affects me like a fingernail scratching on a blackboard. Ugh!

2
  • The French site is required to use the english alphabet, too. I'm not sure how serious of a problem this is perceived to be there.
    – Flimzy
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 16:02
  • @Flimzy In French, it's mostly prepositions, pronouns and some verb forms that can be ambiguous without diacritics. Tags are mostly nouns and while seeing a word without diacritics can be jarring, for the kind of words that tend to appear in tags, we're lucky that very little effort is required to mentally restore them. Commented Dec 2, 2013 at 1:13
0

SpanishDict is probably where the majority of the questions are asked, we need to get some of that traffic here. To be fair, they have put a great deal of time and developed teaching resources as well though.

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