The site can't get out of beta until we get our questions per day count up significantly.
We need some legitimate way to drive up questions. We could spam lots of questions we already know the answers too, but that's not going to help the site in the long run.
We need to find a way to get gamers to come here when a new edition or game comes out.
Any thoughts?
Get a greater variety of users, playing a greater variety of games?
We have a steady trickle of MTG questions because that's a complex game (with constant new content) that generates consistent rules questions -- it helps that the rules are robust enough that we can actually answer those questions, too. It's not the only game like that. But we don't have many questions about minis wargames (for which there are many rulesets, with unique rules and strategy concerns -- not to mention that questions about prepping game materials are totally on-topic!) and other card games (L5R, Pokemon, Yugioh, the various "LCGs," the recent Netrunner reboot, &c.). But we don't seem to have many users actively posting on those topics. My best guess is that it's because, as a community, we're not actively playing those games? But someone is, somewhere.
How do you grow that user base? I don't know. It's not something that we can fake, really. I think there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, where it's hard to encourage any dedicated fans of (e.g.) L5R to post here unless there's already strong L5R content to make it worth their while.
(In many ways, RPGs SE had it easier, because it looks like they were able to hit their content quota just with D&D3/4 questions, and the rest is icing -- that kinda shows when you look at their front page, though.)
I can't seem to find a blog for this site. I think it'd be a great way to drive traffic for new game releases and such. Something we try to do at the IT Security SE to help keep the blog alive, is a "Question of the Week" post - do a write-up of an interesting question and its answers (not necessarily one from the past week) every week.
The fundamental "problem" with board games (at least so far as this Q&A site is concerned) is that unlike video games or RPGs, the majority of board (and card) games are designed with the principle of simplicity in mind. This makes them awesome for picking up and playing, but it also means that most rules questions either are answered by reading the manual for a few minutes — we don't want to boost our counts with "general reference" questions — or, if the situation is not covered in the manual, are not objectively answerable.
Often the only real difference between a regular player who has read the rulebook and a "rules expert" is just that the expert also knows where to find the official FAQ and/or errata, or a more up-to-date version of the rulebook itself. Short of getting one of the actual game designers/developers on here to answer questions, we have a rather limited supply of canonical documentation to work with.
Such questions obviously have their place on this site, and will continue to do so for as long as the site exists, but in and of themselves they are not enough for this site to reach the critical questions-asked mass to become successful.
Which begs the questions: What makes a board-and-card-games expert better than normal people, and what would said normal people want to ask said board-and-card-games expert that they can't just ask someone else?
The obvious (to me) feature that separates many BCG experts from the laymen isn't the fact that they know the rules to any particular game very well — as mentioned above, anyone can do that without much difficulty — but rather that they know a lot of games very well. The questions that this type of expert would thrive at, where the layman would falter, would be any questions which tap into this breadth of understanding.
What we really need is more "game agnostic" type questions, which don't require knowledge of one particular game so much as a strong knowledge of games in general.
Off the top of my head, there are three major categories of questions which would really capitalize on the knowledge of a BCG expert:
(There are probably many more categories that aren't currently on the top of my head)
For this site to succeed, I feel we need to be cultivating these (properly scoped) types of questions, despite their tendency towards subjectivity. We'll just need to make sure the principles of good subjective are adhered to.
Asking questions about games that you play will eventually up the site in Google rankings, which will entice other players to start coming here and doing the same.
Another point would be to try and make sure people give good answers. A simple "Go to this link (link)" isn't going to cut it. Quick answers are good to have, too.]
The basic strategy should be "Draw them here, keep them here." If the name starts triggering recognition, people are more likely to keep coming back. Maybe even make an account! The association with StackOverflow doesn't hurt, either.
I wonder, perhaps, if some kind of banner can be put up at Arqade, since the demographics overlap so heavily?
This isn't the first time the topic has come up, which makes sense, given how long we've been in beta. In November 2010, we talked a little bit about how to get our numbers up. One of the 15 "Top 7" questions is about how to promote the site.
And it's a problem that all beta sites deal with. Some just deal with it better ... and some have an easier time of it because of their audience. (Arqade, for example.) Either way, our goal has to be reaching a sustainable volume of good questions that can get us out of beta: if we seed questions, at some point we'll run out. If we lower the quality threshold, then even if we do get out of beta, we become just another site, with the added bonus of having to explain why these old questions were all closed while these new questions are allowed.
I think Alex has the right idea - more people asking more questions about more games. goldPseudo touches on some of the problem, that there are a lot of games that are designed not to bring up questions. (Chutes and Ladders, right?) But there are plenty of games that do bring up questions, as we've seen with MTG. We just need to tap those audiences (uh, not in a MTG sense), and that means pretty much the same thing it does for everyone else.
Individually, we can promote the site through social media, especially by posting questions that need answers. We probably all are connected to people who play games but aren't here yet, and maybe seeing a question they can answer will draw them here. We can remember to ask questions here when they come up while we're playing games ... but again, these should be good questions, not questions-for-the-sake-of-asking.
I also like Pat's suggestion from the Top-7 question: work with cons when we can. Drawing questions from attendees themselves is a great idea, although we would have to emphasize that they won't necessarily get an immediate answer (i.e. we're not a replacement for GMs) even if we make more of an effort to watch for questions during cons.
If there is a smaller con in your area, you might be able to work with the mods and SE so that BCG can be represented there. (Larger cons probably require more advance planning and more work. I've been looking for an excuse to go to Gen Con, which is local to me, but as Pat points out, the ROI for us may not be worth it.) In a sense, game nights at home are baby cons: we can use those as an excuse to post questions here when they come up (again, real, high-quality questions, not things like "Can I move forward with a 4 in Sorry?"), and maybe get one or two new people to check out the site as well.
All that is really about time and effort. Anything else is just fool's gold: there is no point in getting out of beta if we do it as Yahoo Answers 2.
Stop being so deletionist and rigid.
Encourage questions which don't have just one right answer and are open to interpretation and debate.
Recognize that what will work for boardgames.se is not exactly the same thing that worked on stackoverflow.
strategy tag, for example! You're talking about recommendations, specifically.
– Alex P
Jun 13 '12 at 23:40
Game recommendation questions were (are) so popular that I think it's worth brainstorming what kinds of templates could be used to solve some of the issues they bring up. I think there's an objective type of question here that is being completely ignored: an answer which is an objective (or nearly objective) list.
Example of non-game question: What towns that are within 4 miles of London, England?
The answer to this is objective, right?
Example of very objective game question: What games were made by EON before it went out of business? Please provide one game per answer with either a brief description of the game (this particular Q is low value because you can easily find the information elsewhere).
Now for one that has a little subjectivity creep in (and for which I actually want to know the answer!):
Which games are obviously Gateway Games, where gateway games are defined as . . . Please list one game per answer so the answer can be voted up (if it's a Gateway Game) or not voted if it's not a Gateway game.
I know that stack exchange mechanisms are not particularly well suited to this type of question, but if you can nail down a precise definition for "Gateway Games" (which was attempted here), then the answer to this is actually an objective list, just like the answer to towns within 4 miles of London. Not only that, the objective list would be roughly ordered by popularity and degree of adherence to the definition, which adds additional value.
I would love to see questions like this. Other examples:
Which wargames offer simulations on a squad level that are on par with Squad Leader?
Which games have had the largest influence on Game Design over the past 40 years? Please list one game per answer and describe the influences this game has had on the industry?
What games can be enjoyed at various levels of complexity, such that both a 6 year old and a game-loving adult parent might enjoy playing together? Candyland does not meet this criteria as it is boring for game-loving adults. Bridge neither because it is far too difficult to learn. Rat-A-Tat-Cat, Backgammon, and Checkers are good candidates for this list because they can be enjoyed immediately at a very simple level but actually have significant strategy components that can be mastered over time and are therefore of interest to game-loving adults. Please list one game per answer and provide some reasons for both the adult and the child to enjoy the game. If there is a way to handicap the game, please include that information (i.e. Checkers - adult can start with 1 or 2 pieces removed).
TLDR; Can we do a restricted form of Game Recommendations where the questions have answers that are lists that are objective or close to objective, because they adhere to well defined criteria?
What about generating more broader not-for-a-specific-game question about games, something like: how a game should be to be considered like a worker placement game? or another one like: is stone age a worker placement game? why?.
At least we can do that with new games and encourage one or two quick questions about the mechanic.
What about "can somebody explain to me in a quick view the mechanic of that game?" or what about "how this (new game) is compared to this other game in the mechanic?". This last one is not a pool, is asking for facts.
This way we can attract people when looking for that game. And another type of question could be "Is the mechanic of X game on this online site exactly like the board game?". This one is easy answered reading the helps on the site usually, but could attract people too.
We could allow more subjective questions that relate to game recommendations because these are very common questions and produce more traffic than almost anything else on the site. They are also interesting and nearly 99.5% of the time produce answers that are very helpful. However, they are subjective (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!) and very often discussion/opinion based (Just looking at people replying to each other in comments gives makes my back tingle...), and thus are quickly burned at the stake and ejected from our community. If we allowed them, this site would soon degrade into total anarchy with subjective questions, the quality on all of the other questions would be destroyed, objective questions would get moved off the front page, and plenty of other unspeakable atrocities would occur. Just look at this pile of utterly terrible questions that make me sick my stomach if you want to see what I' m talking about...
That's why we should never, ever, ever let this happen, because the second we allow game recommendation questions this site will go downhill like crazy until it ends up being nothing but pictures of LOL CATZ that have nothing to do with board games at all. Thank goodness we're preventing all of that...
(Sorry for bringing up a topic that's already been flogged to death, but it was bound to come up in this context anyway ;)
