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    "I'd be interested in one where we lowered the threshold required to comment" I would not. Not until the site UI does a good job of actually making people read /help/privileges/comment. why more comments? what value does that add? how does it serve the overarching mission in line with the overarching methodology? I could spend multiple eternities cleaning up comments that should not have been posted and never be done. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 0:03
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    I agree that the site UI should do a better job EVERYWHERE of linking new users to docs on how to use the site. The number of times I've linked "What to Ask" doesn't bear counting. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 0:13
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    While I agree that some sites do need more Q&A activity, I think it's not universally the case or the only thing the site needs. On SO in particular they have so many duplicates asked that very few of the daily questions are novel and many others are low quality. But you seem aware of that considering your last paragraph. Your four possible outcomes don't consider secondary impacts. Someone who doesn't get votes on the content they create may disengage because it's not worth their time. How many people have left the communities because of that? Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 0:26
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    Catija: sounds like you're on your way to a robust set of metrics to figure out whether this worked or not; as long as you measure more detailed activity than "spending more time on the site" I'm happy. Looking at some of the comments I've realized that I mostly participate in SEs where there are still plenty of votes (and existing voting behavior already has issues), but Q&A activity has fallen. I'd assumed that this was common, but maybe it's just a subset of SE. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 0:38
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    What I wanted to stress it that turning into reddit, where there are tons of votes but very little other user behavior, is not a successful outcome. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 0:39
  • eh, giving people things they can actually do that doesn't require the stress of creating content can certainly ease people into the Q&A "ecosystem" and make them more likely to engage in asking/answering later. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 3:47
  • I didn't say anything about spending time on the site - anywhere on this post. "Engagement" is not equivalent to "views" - it's actually interacting with the site rather than just consuming it. I'm willing to allow that in your opinion, only voting might as well not be considered more engagement than passive consumption. That may be true but (as @KevinB just stated) it can be a gateway. You may have experienced the feeling a bit yourself when you wanted to downvote this question - you couldn't vote and you commented on the irony of wanting to downvote and being unable to - on this question. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 3:50
  • You're a veteran user of the network and meta (though not MSE). As such, it doesn't surprise me that you would be willing to answer the question to gain the few points you need (downvotes on MSE actually only require 100 rep as it is) to earn the privilege. If you'd not written a post before - or your attempts to post had been met with downvotes or even no votes - can you see that it might leave you feeling even more frustrated to the point that you felt so left out you would just wash your hands of the site entirely? Maybe not the first time - but what if it happened every time? Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 3:56
  • Somehow in this whole conversation I've fallen into a sort of trap - in focusing on talking about 1 rep users unwilling to create content, I've forgotten all of the ones who have. While many of those may have been downvoted, it's also possible someone could have 1 rep because their attempts to contribute got no votes.... and if that's because a site has depressed voting, it's kinda a vicious cycle. People create good content, get no votes, can't earn the privilege to vote, and then fewer people vote. Communities aren't static. Members do leave, so without voting, the new members can't come. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 4:06
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    We've both been active on Cooking - it's a great site and I love the people I know from there. Some of the best lessons about how to help askers do better and being willing to actually do the work to save questions that show a spark of value came from that site. It's something I treasure about it. So when you say that SA has "plenty of votes", it confuses me. In the past month, only 15 users have voted more than 10 times. Of the open questions from the most recent 50, 18 have a score of 0, 17 have a score between 1-3, 4 between 4-9 and 4 a score 10+. Five were hot network questions. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 4:23
  • Now, I'm not actually reading the questions to see if they deserve votes or checking vote splits to see if those 0 scores are actually 0 votes, but even if they aren't, to a visitor, having 18/43 of the questions from the last 20 days with a score of zero could lead them questioning whether their question would get any attention. You've probably seen the questions and answers - why do you vote (or not vote)? Personally, I usually forget unless I'm really amazed by the post making my brain explode with an incredible answer. Hopefully most people aren't like that. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 4:40
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    Catija: looking over the most recently asked questions on SA, the 0 votes are almost all intentional. If you look at the 0 vote questions, you see that they're mostly questions on the verge of being closed (lack of clarity, missing details, etc.). They're zeros because they should be zeros. Personally, if I read a question that's reasonably well-written, I upvote it unless it already has a bunch of upvotes. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 17:40
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    You're correct that the number of upvotes per question is small. That's because the number of active users in SA has fallen by at least 70% from 4 years ago. I don't think voting rights are the main reason for that. Instead, it's canonical answers, Google, first-to-post, absolute seniority, and the simple fact that it's hard to form a social community on a site where there aren't really places to socialize. The decline of the SE platform was inherent in its design; it simply doesn't give people good reasons to stick around. I don't believe that voting will change that. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 17:45
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    @FuzzyChef Yet, as you mentioned from the problem of the discrepancy between goals. If question numbers are going down because of canonical answers, the received wisdom is that from the point of view of the users, that is a success, not a failure. Because it means people are able to find the answer to their question, without needing have someone go through the process of answering it. Now, there are issues with canonicals drifting, but it being harder and harder to ask a new question isn't in itself seen as a problem by the technical site userbases. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 17:53
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    The goal is not to have people post their questions, its to get their question answered, and a question that is answered without them posting anything is a massive win. Commented Sep 23, 2023 at 17:54