Increasing the site's activity

Question

I'm a new user on this site, but I've been following what's happening here for maybe a year (or two?) and I've seen that it seems to site lacks activity.

On Area51, there's an average of one question per day, which is low.

I've read this post, I think it touches something important. MartialArts.SE needs to find its purpose. In my opinion, to bring more new users, we need solid questions with solid answers. Otherwise people wouldn't feel encouraged to post questions here.

MartialArts.SE has potential, I'm sure of that, and I hope some of you also think this way.

This potential needs to be developed by the current solid users.

I think, though I have nothing to back this up, that we should have more community-wiki questions written by high-rep users. You are the example to follow on the site (or well, you should be). Write some questions, and self-answer them. Make it a community-wiki so people can add information, make these answers solid so that new users on this site take some time to read more "open-ended" questions and get interested to read more.

From my experience, there are some recurrent questions in martial arts. "How to use [...] in a self-defence situation", "What are the difference between a style and another", "stretching/training tips", "Ways to figure out if you're in a good dojo", etc.

Some of these questions are asked more than once on the site, but there's no "reference" post.

This is only my idea, but I'd like to start a discussion on how can we improve this site's trafic?

EDIT : Maybe could we list here questions that we think would be good canon community wiki questions. People could grab some from times to time and write a good question/answer?

Answer 1

Ask questions!

No seriously: ask about stuff. This is how the site grows: the more questions, the more chances of people coming here, reading, and asking questions of their own.

Answer 2

The StackOverflow format is built around question/answer exchanges that discourage broad questions and discussions in favor of questions that are verifiably answerable. This is not the best fit for martial arts because:

1. There may be no consensus on the correct answers to quality questions. In this situation it is better if people can vote on answers individually rather than starting edit wars in a community wiki.
2. Many questions do not have simple answers and are therefore considered too broad, for example a question asking for training tips.

That said, there are good questions that would be answerable in a wiki format but would be considered too broad if asked normally. For example: What are the major martial art styles?

Don't pay so much attention to reputation on the site. Quality questions and answers can come from anyone.

---

We also need a canned question/answer for the questions about how to learn martial arts without instruction. That's another good candidate for the community wiki.

Answer 3

New topic: Martial art into a different context

This is a suggestion for a new set of questions, which would sound like:

"Which concepts and techniques from [SomeMartialArt] would be useful in a [SomeRuleset] fight?"

with some flexibility, like:

"From which martial arts would you draw techniques for improving your ground-and-pound skills?"

"What are the advantages of using judo throws rather than wrestling takedowns for the purpose of a no-gi grappling match?"

There are already questions which follow this format, new users have asked them and they have sparked interest along with deep and insightful answers by experts (see for example Kung fu in MMA, Aikido in self-defense, Best martial arts in street fight).

These questions allow the experts to share and showcase their wealth of knowledge, allow the uneducated user to get an unbiased answer on intricated matters, generate traffic and attract people, and ultimately contribute to the general wealth of information on martial arts.

Answering these questions is tough and could become something that MA.SE could be a reference for. At the moment, some of these questions have even been closed.

Downsides I see are:

1. these questions are opinion-based and prone to cliché answers. Proposed fix: let the community establish a shared, scientific-like approach based on evidence which all answers should follow, and mark the border line between facts and interpretation of facts and other personal beliefs.
2. these questions are wide, hard to answer both completely and accurately and SE is a place for answers rather than debates. Proposed fix: let them be community wiki and let's try to contribute constructively, each of us focusing on his areas of expertise leaving the rest to be completed by other (partial) answers.
3. these questions could become battling grounds for egos. Proposed fix: People here seem cool so I wouldn't worry too much, but I leave this up to the moderators. I think there are ways to approach these problems rather than ultimate recipes, so people are expected to respect different views on the matter.
4. these questions could be spammed by new uninformed users (read: fanatics or trolls) or people who have financial interest in the answer. Proposed fix: the downvote/upvote system should take care of this matter.