Thank you.

We will also provide as much context as we can for policy, decisions, and actions that we take within legal and regulatory constraints - we want you to understand why we’re making changes, not just that we’re making them.

In the spirit of this desire, I have a question.

Increase Community Engagement -

 

• Though our active user base continues to grow, our engagement has remained the same. What this means is that while more users are coming to the site every month, the number of users who engage meaningfully in the site does not increase proportionally.
• To change this dynamic, we will balance investing in improving our tools and features that benefit our long-term users with initiatives that convert new users into engaged ones.

When I read this, it appears to me that there's a fundamental misunderstanding underlying the desire to increase engagement. So why is this a goal?

The ideal use case for Stack Overflow is that I have a problem, I search for relevant questions, and I quickly arrive at an existing answer that provides the missing information I needed. When I'm trying to solve a problem on the clock, I don't want to spend an hour writing a good question. I don't want to spend three hours hunting down the information and posting an answer about it. I want the information to already be there in an easy to digest format.

While we addicts... I mean, more active participants take pleasure in adding to the knowledge base, most people aren't willing to spend a lot of time on doing that. (Hence the quality problems we observe on a daily basis.) They're here to get an answer, not create answers for other people to consume. They'll be much happier if they can get their answer and be on their merry way with as little effort as possible, and reading an answer is a whole lot less effort than writing an entire question, waiting for someone to answer, and then evaluating whether that answer is correct and applicable. If SO is succeeding at its core mission, then we should expect to see this sort of engagement to decrease rather than increase.

So why do you want to increase their engagement?

Thank you.

We will also provide as much context as we can for policy, decisions, and actions that we take within legal and regulatory constraints - we want you to understand why we’re making changes, not just that we’re making them.

In the spirit of this desire, I have a question.

Increase Community Engagement -

• Though our active user base continues to grow, our engagement has remained the same. What this means is that while more users are coming to the site every month, the number of users who engage meaningfully in the site does not increase proportionally.
• To change this dynamic, we will balance investing in improving our tools and features that benefit our long-term users with initiatives that convert new users into engaged ones.

When I read this, it appears to me that there's a fundamental misunderstanding underlying the desire to increase engagement. So why is this a goal?

The ideal use case for Stack Overflow is that I have a problem, I search for relevant questions, and I quickly arrive at an existing answer that provides the missing information I needed. When I'm trying to solve a problem on the clock, I don't want to spend an hour writing a good question. I don't want to spend three hours hunting down the information and posting an answer about it. I want the information to already be there in an easy to digest format.

While we addicts... I mean, more active participants take pleasure in adding to the knowledge base, most people aren't willing to spend a lot of time on doing that. (Hence the quality problems we observe on a daily basis.) They're here to get an answer, not create answers for other people to consume. They'll be much happier if they can get their answer and be on their merry way with as little effort as possible, and reading an answer is a whole lot less effort than writing an entire question, waiting for someone to answer, and then evaluating whether that answer is correct and applicable. If SO is succeeding at its core mission, then we should expect to see this sort of engagement to decrease rather than increase.

So why do you want to increase their engagement?

Thank you.

We will also provide as much context as we can for policy, decisions, and actions that we take within legal and regulatory constraints - we want you to understand why we’re making changes, not just that we’re making them.

In the spirit of this desire, I have a question.

Increase Community Engagement -

• Though our active user base continues to grow, our engagement has remained the same. What this means is that while more users are coming to the site every month, the number of users who engage meaningfully in the site does not increase proportionally.
• To change this dynamic, we will balance investing in improving our tools and features that benefit our long-term users with initiatives that convert new users into engaged ones.

When I read this, it appears to me that there's a fundamental misunderstanding underlying the desire to increase engagement. So why is this a goal?

The ideal use case for Stack Overflow is that I have a problem, I search for relevant questions, and I quickly arrive at an existing answer that provides the missing information I needed. I don't want to spend an hour writing a good question. I don't want to spend three hours hunting down the information and posting an answer about it. I want the information to already be there in an easy to digest format.

While we addicts... I mean, more active participants take pleasure in adding to the knowledge base, most people aren't willing to spend a lot of time on doing that. (Hence the quality problems we observe on a daily basis.) They're here to get an answer, not create answers for other people to consume. They'll be much happier if they can get their answer and be on their merry way with as little effort as possible, and reading an answer is a whole lot less effort than writing an entire question, waiting for someone to answer, and then evaluating whether that answer is correct and applicable. If SO is succeeding at its core mission, then we should expect to see this sort of engagement to decrease rather than increase.

So why do you want to increase their engagement?

Thank you.

We will also provide as much context as we can for policy, decisions, and actions that we take within legal and regulatory constraints - we want you to understand why we’re making changes, not just that we’re making them.

In the spirit of this desire, I have a question.

Increase Community Engagement -

• Though our active user base continues to grow, our engagement has remained the same. What this means is that while more users are coming to the site every month, the number of users who engage meaningfully in the site does not increase proportionally.
• To change this dynamic, we will balance investing in improving our tools and features that benefit our long-term users with initiatives that convert new users into engaged ones.

When I read this, it appears to me that there's a fundamental misunderstanding underlying the desire to increase engagement. So why is this a goal?

The ideal use case for Stack Overflow is that I have a problem, I search for relevant questions, and I quickly arrive at an existing answer that provides the missing information I needed. When I'm trying to solve a problem on the clock, I don't want to spend an hour writing a good question. I don't want to spend three hours hunting down the information and posting an answer about it. I want the information to already be there in an easy to digest format.

While we addicts... I mean, more active participants take pleasure in adding to the knowledge base, most people aren't willing to spend a lot of time on doing that. (Hence the quality problems we observe on a daily basis.) They're here to get an answer, not create answers for other people to consume. They'll be much happier if they can get their answer and be on their merry way with as little effort as possible, and reading an answer is a whole lot less effort than writing an entire question, waiting for someone to answer, and then evaluating whether that answer is correct and applicable. If SO is succeeding at its core mission, then we should expect to see this sort of engagement to decrease rather than increase.

So why do you want to increase their engagement?