As I look how we go through the beta I think one of biggest risks at the moment is the rate new questions are popping on the site. It may be a consequence of having more people that are looking for a question they can answer than those looking for an answer to their question.
Anyway, I guess we'd appreciate more questions. The question is: how to catalyze them and not compromise their quality at the same time?
Since there apparently is some doubt about whether the questions from the old site will get migrated here, perhaps we could grab the questions from the old site. It currently has 453 questions. How many of them are great? Or is pulling questions from the old site during beta considered poor form?
That said, one of the things I have the hardest time with is knowing what other people don't know. For example, do you think this question was too academic? Obscure? Both?
Basing on stats from early days of beta answer rate is healthy, the number of users almost reached old site's level so it seems like a good idea for me to cherry pick questions we like and we believe are valuable and systematically re-post them on the site.
I wouldn't do in in bulk to avoid flooding the site with new content at a single point of time. Also if we add just a few questions at a time we would be able to react/change the approach if it doesn't work well.
Just building on what Tiago suggests, the Stack Exchange platform encourages people to answer their own questions, and I really think it could be helpful to have the occasional self-answered question to help build our repository of useful Q&A knowledge. But it's important to remember the Q&A part! Self answered posts should look just like any other thread on PMSE.
In short, Self Answerers Must Role Play:
For example, when self-answering, it's helpful to think of yourself as two people: jmort253(1) and jmort253(2). jmort253(1) has the question and posts it, including what problem he faced, what research he did, what alternatives he considered.... jmort253(1) should write the question from the perspective of someone who is having a problem and who simply cannot find the solution. In fact, in his role, he knows of no answer.
jmort253(2) on the other hand, sees the predicament jmort253(1) is in and answers the question, following all of the guidelines of "How to Answer", including ... explanations and maybe supplementing the answer with a link.
Additionally, a third party coming to this page should not know that the question was self-answered. Imagine if usernames were hidden on all posts and everything was posted by Anonymous. There should be nothing in either question or answer that suggests it's self-answered or that something is amiss.
This is the true meaning of "pretend you're on Jeopardy".
I edited out Stack Overflow references to code, which doesn't apply here.
So, just like any other question, there should ideally be some problem to be solved, and if you recently faced a tough project management challenge and wish to document the result, a question clearly describing your problem followed by a great answer would be awesome! Remember, don't break the fourth wall! :)
For more reading, see:
Just bumping up this old thread... one thing that we could possibly do is to actively create questions we may already have / know an answer for.
This way, we'd be sharing our knowledge (especially the most seasoned managers) as well as improving the amount of questions we have.
Is it valid / correct?
