Problem

In a chat discussion about the moderator elections on different Stack Exchange sites I've seen a couple of numbers that make me think.

Apparently we have a pretty low reputation per user ratio. I'm going to compare some numbers from Programmers and Ask Ubuntu.

Ask Ubuntu Numbers

Total users:              36065
Users < 150 rep:      33911
Users >= 150 rep:      2154
Users >= 3000 rep:        82

Programmers Numbers

Total users:              40708
Users < 150 rep:      34888
Users >= 150 rep:      5820
Users >= 3000 rep:      256

Note: All data is from 2nd February

Now that leaves us with roughly 5.9% of the Ask Ubuntu community being eligible for a vote in the elections. Programmers had 14.3% of the community being eligible!

That is quite a lot but it gets even worse when comparing the users >= 3000 reputation.

Only 0.22% of our community can cast close votes on questions! On Programmers it is 0.63% which isn't a great figure either but still better than what we have.

Here are the results of last years Ask Ubuntu community moderator elections.

776 voters were eligible, 211 visited the election, and 145 voted

That means that we had a vote participation of 18,7% last year. We'll have to wait for the results of this year's election to find out if that number went up or down of course.

Suggestion

The figures above mean that we have to get the rest of the community more involved in voting. The best option to do this is to organize an event especially for Ask Ubuntu beginners.

This event should be about the Stack Exchange concept, that is how Ask Ubuntu is supposed to work. Why it is important to vote on questions and answer, to flag posts, to edit and of course to participate in Meta and chat.

Of course such an event doesn't help without letting people know about it. Thus advertisement is going to be crucial.

Here are some ideas on how to address that problem:

• Write a Meta.AU question about the event.
• Create an ad for the sidebar that links to the Meta question.
• Have a site banner (like in the moderator elections) linking to the Meta question.
• Get some media coverage (OMG! Ubuntu! for example [Joey Sneddon is happy to help]).
• Blogging and micro-blogging.

I've already added a card to our Ask Ubuntu Trello board.

Here are the tasks to make it happen:

• Preparing material for the event.

  That is, relevant Meta.SO and Meta.AU questions for example.

• Preparing the actual event.

  Write all the chat comments and proofread them.

• Writing the Meta.AU question (announcement)

• Creating a sidebar ad for the event

• Creating a site banner ad for the event

• Creating an article for OMG! Ubuntu!

What do you think about it?