Interpersonal Skills has entered into private beta. I waited many days for this entry and since today is Tuesday, I am checking from morning itself when this will be launched.
There are many SE sites that get closed after beta because of less people/ questions/ etc.
So, how can we help get this site successfully out of beta and make it a permanent site?
There's more than 1 way to help a site succeed, but simply put we have to be very careful of how we manage it.
I'm sure you're thinking of many questions, but don't post all of them on day 1, that leaves no other questions for other people to ask, then the rate of questions asked will drop and the site will become inactive. Try and space out your question asking, and if you see the site has a lot of questions one day, maybe wait a day before asking yours.
There's no point making rushed questions or answers, trying to post as many as possible to fill the site not only effects the above point, but also makes for poor core questions. The questions made at the very start are more likely to be ones kept for the life of the site, often ones that introduce people here, so they need to be of the highest quality. Take your time making both questions and answers, and if you don't feel confident in making a good post, don't make one, let someone else make an amazing post.
It's all well and good to say "Get as many people as possible" but then you have the above issue. If they don't know how to post questions or answers, they will fill the site with horrible questions and answers and clog up the system. If you see a new user (or any user) that's asking poor questions, instead of deleting and downvoting the post, try and help them improve. Having more good users is never a bad thing, and if you can help improve the quality of a user's work, then that's a win for the site. It's better to improve 1 user than to turn them away.
No matter what's happened, how much you disagree or how bad a post is, always keep cool. Manners are an invaluable tool, and will get you very far. You don't want to be "that guy" that everyone dislikes because of his way here, and in addition you don't want to be remembered by new users as that 1 guy that told him his post was useless. Always use constructive criticism, even if they post bad content, maybe one day they can become an amazing poster, and you can take pride knowing you helped them achieve that.
There's a few things that really help to make a success of private beta with a view of moving forward into public beta.
Voting - it cannot be underestimated. Voting up and down on content is one of the simplest ways to determine what the community deems as quality content on the site and assists in defining what is on-topic.
Meta - Questions and answers on meta, read and vote on them. This is what shapes our expectations and scope, as does voting, but in a more refined way and it's the forum to gain depth into what we want and why we want it.
Chat - Drop into chat during the day (and night). Chat is where we bond and grow as a community. Where we flesh out the details on meta. Where we learn about each other and can be supportive of each other, as a community. I'm not meaning in a personal sense - I mean in how we pace ourselves and interact within the community.
Stamina - it's vital to pace ourselves. This exuberance we all feel is energising and a great way to launch the site. It's also good to bottle that and save some of it for the public launch, when things quieten down a bit and it can become an effort at times to attend to the site housekeeping. By conserving energy, it means the site will be a more enjoyable place over the long term.
I think that one of the biggest challenges will be people asking questions that are too vague. Unfortunately, social situations/problems are often very vague, but if we want to maintain a higher quality than other sites we will have to find a way of making sure that people ask more specific questions so that they are actually answerable.
This site is about interpersonal skills. Let's use them! This means asking follow-up questions in comment threads, provoking thoughtful discussion or reconsideration, and answering with advice that can be realistically applied.
Some of the questions here will come from people who may not have fantastic Interpersonal Skills. That's the point of this site. We should discuss incoming questions before answering them. This gives the ask-er time to refine the question into a high-value question and the answer-ers points to use in their responses.
Now, not all of the questions here will be high-value or able to be answered effectively. As experts, it's our job to point them in the right direction. If we can't, we need to explain our vision and why their question doesn't fit into it. A part of Interpersonal Skills is turning people down in a reasonable way; let's do it effectively.
Answers to questions is what people will come here for; let's make sure they walk away with good ones. Interpersonal Skills are largely subjective. Not everyone's taste is the same. This means we should answer in more abstract terms, making considerations for those who have underdeveloped Interpersonal Skills and the situations they're likely to encounter.
