Hello Everyone,
While I’ve been following some of the openEHR lists for at least a year, this is my first post.
After putting it off for years, I recently took the opportunity to sign up for StackExchange, and I’ve been using the sites some. If you can give a few good answers, I don’t think that it is too hard to get to 200, but I think it is just hard enough that you have to be serious about it to get there. Having said that, I am not so sure that the openEHR proposal will make it, and even if it does make it to the private beta, I am not sure if the community is big/active enough to pass that part (though maybe I just don’t follow the hottest lists here?). If there aren’t at least a few questions being both asked and answered each day (I think 10 is considered a healthy number), then the community will not be considered active enough to keep the site up. I thought I would mention that many people have followed the proposal, but have yet to come back and commit http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/87508/openehr?referrer=PqoY02J2FEIPC4BojQudOA2 to it.
As a solution, I wanted to suggest that people throw support behind the http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/85160/healthcare-it?referrer=PqoY02J2FEIkTnCqLW7Eyw2 Healthcare IT proposal. I see that some of you already have. This proposal should attract more people with more varied interests, making the community more robust. They already have at least ~25 200+ followers, versus the 8 200+ committers in the openEHR proposal. If the openEHR crowd joins in, you will probably have the numbers to be a driving force when it comes to determining how the community develops, if it ever does. I can already see that about half of the questions there are from openEHR people. And, if the proposal is successful, it might also be a nice opportunity to passively evangelize, since people in healthcare, who may not be familiar with openEHR, would ultimately see all of the questions you ask.
I agree, I think people should continue to use stackoverflow. As you do so, this can also help the proposal move forward (as users gain reputation), even if some of the questions asked are greeted with some hostility and/or closed, because this will just help to show that you actually do need your own StackExchange site. Make sure you upvote good openEHR-related questions and answers, as this will help your fellow committers gain the 200 reputation they need for the proposal. I think that 1500 is within reach if we are actually voting on relevant openEHR-related questions and answers that truly deserve our votes. If the openEHR or healthcare IT proposal actually does progress, we are expected to have users who are active enough that they reach very high reputation numbers.
Having said that, I am not recommending that anyone try to game the system (because this is not only bad, but they tend to notice this: if, for example, in one day, you up vote all of the answers that Pablo Pazos has ever posted, the site will see this and your votes will probably be reversed), but I have just noticed that there are some good openEHR answers and questions that haven’t received many votes.
Another thing to note is that, and this may have changed, but at one point, I read that if you commit to a proposal, the amount of “commitment juice” that you add to that proposal diminishes if 6 months pass since you committed. You can reset that clock if you just visit the proposal page again. If we are serious about having a StackExchange site, we should probably be visiting and using the site anyway.
Regards,
Jared Latiolais