New Year's Resolution for 2014?

Question

The New Year is approaching quickly and I thought it would be cool as a community to think of some New Year's Resolutions we can all push for together. Specifically, let's look at our stats:

There are a few things I would like to see:

• Raise in answer rate. To do this we need to make sure whenever a question is answered, we make sure as a community that we mark that as the correct answer. If you see a question that appears to be answered and the user is new, a polite, friendly reminder that they can mark the answer as correct could be very beneficial.
• Raise our answer to question ratio. Do you have a different way to solve a question that already has an answer? No problem. Even if the other answer has already been accepted you can still answer that question. You can use this to get yourself to the Sportsmanship badge!
• Raise overall rep of our user base. We only have 28 users with 3000+ rep. For a site with 282 avid users, 28 is a bit low. We only have 47 users above even 2000+ rep. I shared my views on voting not too long ago, so I won't go into too much but let's keep voting! I have seen a big uptick in voting since we discussed it, but we can do even better!
• Spread the word more! Have you ever read a cool Q&A and thought, wow that is really interesting? Well, if you have, share it! Each post has a small link at the bottom that will give you a link you can use to share. If you get enough unique hits, you can earn the Announcer, Booster, or even Publicist badge(s). The more people involved with the community, the more we can learn!
• Let's chat! This is more of a personal goal, but I need your help to do it! This site has a Chat feature that can and should be utilized. I personally haven't used this in the past but I want to get more involved and start talking more directly with all of you.

So, what would you like to see? What would you like us to strive for?

Answer 1

I think we are succumbing to the 90-9-1 principle of internet culture of social networks. Only a fraction of the users actively contributes, while the majority reads, looking for an answer to their immediate questions and problems.

We have a core, but it grows slowly, if this community and site needs to mature, we really need a higher level of participation. While the stackexchange gamification of reputation and badges may pull you in once you've got the hang of it all .. it would appear a majority of users do not cross that boundary.

We can post all we like about it in Meta, and try to over-and-over refer people to the FAQ, I do not think those methods work.

I think we all, need to realize that we need to tutor and guide in the ways of stackexchange. We need to comment and explain, directly engage users where they ask their question. Explain things over and over again. I think we need to be more patient, not flag or close questions which are only a few hours old, give our noobs a chance to understand and adapt. Maybe we need not always edit, but first ask them to edit and improve their own posts.

Hint people that they too can contribute, that their questions are a source of information for the future and others, that we're all together in building this source of knowledge.

Yes, many of us already do these things, but there is still more of it that we can do.

Answer 2

Edit: I'd like to leave the beta this year ;)

I've just seen the @RoberCartaino's answer to Solved Questions vs Asked Questions Ratio

89% answered questions doesn't mean "accepted ones". It means "there's 1 or more answers that was upvoted".

So if we could have a look at (sometimes ancient) tricky questions and maybe provide some answers, maybe upvote existing ones, maybe even set some bounties this statistic should improve :)

As for the chat room - I still can't enter it, I guess we need a new one.

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Original: This is not a real answer ;) The chat room is still frozen (@Saariko only moderators can talk I guess).

The room is still grayed out:

And I can't post there (even tried with different browser):

Answer 3

Two:

1. Update tag descriptions and tag wikis and refer new users to the tag wikis for more information on the subject(s) that they are querying. The first two pages of the most popular tags have some that do not have definitions.

2. Update old answers when appropriate. Many times SFDC adds support for something they didn't previously support or release information relevant to a previous answer. It would be useful for someone stumbling upon an SFSE question and answer to have the latest and greatest.