Hi There,

In most online communities and platforms, 90% of users are just lurkers. They browse, read, or observe but never contribute. This number becomes even more dangerous for open platforms like Stack Overflow since their business model depends on user participation.

This high percentage of lurkers could be because of fear of backlash, downvotes, or coming across as less intelligent.

To overcome this, Stack Overflow introduced a private space for new askers where they can get peer guidance and feedback. This aims to nurture users and increase engagement and retention. Let’s decode this latest initiative and its effectiveness.

Staging Ground: The Stack Overflow Approach

Stack Overflow, a Q&A platform for developers, introduced a private space called Staging Ground where new askers can get their questions reviewed before publishing. The mechanism is pretty straightforward.

An open platform like Stack Overflow allows users to engage with peers and express their opinions publicly. This increases the fear of backlash or downvotes in users, particularly novices. But now, they can opt for expert feedback before publishing their question.

An experienced user will review the question, suggest changes if any, and exchange ideas through the comment section. Once the question is ready, it will be posted in the community. This sandbox approach tackles several issues simultaneously:

• Lowering the entry barriers
• Promoting peer learning
• Reducing moderation overload

Result: 83.5% of Staging Ground questions remained open (a proxy for relevant questions) for the first 7 days, as opposed to 71% previously. Moreover, 39.4% of these questions received at least 1 answer or a post score of 2 (upvotes minus downvotes), an improvement from the previous 35%.

What not to do?

Other platforms like Quora and Reddit are dealing with similar challenges. Reddit’s complex voting system can often alienate beginners, while Quora’s algorithm favors more established profiles, making it hard for new askers to stand out.

Here’s how to tackle these challenges:

• Encouraging Mentorship: Akin to Stack Overflow, allowing new askers to receive feedback and peer guidance can boost confidence, engagement, and contributions.
• Templatizing Questions: Providing templates or prompts for common question types can help users formulate their inquiries more clearly.
• Prioritizing New Content: Alongside what’s popular on the platforms, prioritizing the questions or answers by new askers can provide them a space to grow faster.
• Leveraging AI: Using AI to fact-check content and highlight the answers with more factual accuracy rather than upvotes/popularity can help businesses manage a fair amount of new and existing content.

The Final Thought

In the last 1 year, Reddit’s organic traffic has grown by 253.3% and Quora’s by 133.4%. This was accomplished through UGC alone. Stack Overflow’s Staging Ground aims to achieve the same by encouraging users to engage and ask questions.

This is a perfect example of how social features can efficiently boost user participation. Many other apps including Goodreads, Coursera, Fitbit, etc also utilize several social features like gamification, group conversational space, and an interactive feed to keep the users engaged.

If you are looking to optimize your app to maximum user engagement, we can help you get started in 15 minutes.

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