Questions for all CEans [ Requesting Responses For Everyone! ]

@thebigk • Oct 27, 2024

Oct 27, 2024

1.1K

This is one of the options I've been exercising in my mind for a long time. Most of the very regular users of CrazyEngineers have sometimes complained about quality of discussion and the overall 'stickiness' factor. There are a few questions that only you will be able to answer. So please be as frank and honest as possible 😀 and provide your feedback.

The more answers we get, the better will be the insight! So I'd say each one of you should answer following questions -

1. If we go 'invite only', that is accepting only those members who you invite - do you think will bring the quality we all want?

2. Will you invite your friends? If yes - why? If not - why?

3. Do you think your friends will be interested in joining? If yes - why? If not- why?

4. What are the things that would make you want to invite your friends to CE? I know so many of you do it through word of mouth already.

5. How do we attract experts to contribute to CE to answer questions? Websites like Quora have been successful at doing this.

6. What are the 'new' things you'd like to see on CrazyEngineers, apart from high-quality discussions? For example, some of you may want up to date job alerts, study notes, expert talks (or whatever). Tell us what would you like to see on CE that'd help you personally and professionally?

Looking forward to your responses...

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Nayan Goenka

@nayan-Dhpt4N • Aug 30, 2013

Well this is excellent thread you started and I was looking forward to answering similar questions.

I got to know about CE from @#-Link-Snipped-# . I got interested, I joined. I liked the place, I stayed and started contributing. I tried to do same thing to my friends, pushing them to join here and learn something. We know the quality of stuff we have is degrading but still we make stuff that is knowledgeable. People don't want that in the college. They want a hard and fast Google. They dont have patience to read and work in Forum threads. Or to put it in perfect way, they are ignorant to the power of Foruming and Social Networking. All they know about social networking is Facebook / Twitter. That is a major issue happening here. they don't want to wait and work on forums. Still I tell every other guy I think would be interested but ultimately only few join.

You came in college on 20th and gave a demo on CE. Many people saw me active there and recognized immediately. But only some joined. Why because they don't understand what actually we are doing here. Awareness i colleges is the biggest issue CE is facing from getting quality people and quality stuff. You make them aware, all will come. And I even told about CE to some young professors, they don't realize even the importance of forums. People don't know what foruming is, that is an issue

Next thing about invites. If you restrict accounts creation, that will slow down traffic according to me. Maybe we get people who make an account once and never return but that overall contributes to stats of the website which everyone gets impressed on. "147k users there? there must be something, lets check it out." More thing we can do is add a friend referral system. You get points for adding friends here (add that clause in CEoM) and people will start calling more and more friends. If they call 10, atleast 5 will think about doing something here.

For the quality of discussions, we should moderate every thread being created. If its worthy, it stays in main section else move it to some other box. So anyone visits a main forum section, he gets a gold mine. And you actually cannot stop spams or useless topics by 100%. What we can do is segregate them.

For inviting the experts, if we identify some people, we can send them an invitation card like official invitation on paper. They will pay attention to that.

Excuse me on this : The name CrazyEngineers is awesome, but for youth, an excellent name but when it comes to a bit older people like professors,aged people who are a bit egoistic, the name seems kiddish and they tend to ignore it. That MIGHT be a factor. Personally, if you see my #-Link-Snipped-# page, I wrote there," I am a Crazy Engineer" and added a referral link there. Its because I take pride in that title.

Experts will need special treatment to keep them stuck up there.

For moderation job, you can add some more people to make more quality content and pay them in points or preferences. Cash is not the preference. It is the first forum I ever saw where you actually pay cash to people for working and contributing here. THAT is a ++++++++ thing. It should attract more and more people. But that ain't happening. Don't know why.

For some new things, Yes a job update app, or something similar news will be very good. But that will be more of spoon-feeding. And college students are accustomed to being spoon fed so we can include that. Apart from that, we really need a chatting system (like you said about CE Conference, i dont know much about it but something will be very useful).

And yes, one last thing. I am trying to recruit as many good people i can here and encourage them to learn because this is where you get exposures. I used to be active on forums and that is where I met my business partners and started a business ultimately. People don't realize its power so we need to make them aware. And all the CEs understand that so they can take this initiative. Rest leave everything on Google. Make some more head meta tags and some basic link building, traffic will pour in. Manage the quality by moderation and we are good to fly higher.

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Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran

@sarathkumar-FEGRPw • Aug 30, 2013

For first question, it definitely a "NO" nod
2)I want to invite my friends so that they will also be enriched by knowledge and updates in current scenario.
3)Yes my friends were interested and I had made them to join CE by my activities in classrooms.
4)I usually used to write the recent updates in my class room board and the friends ask me how do you know the news or fact and when i am discussing with my friends I would describe it.Also used Social networking websites and posted in our group.
5) It may be difficult to invite experts but not impossible.Today's CEans are future experts so don't worry .(the best can be done by inviting teachers community)
6)I want Job alerts section.........
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Pensu

@pensu-8tNeGU • Aug 30, 2013

I dont think going "invite only" is a good idea. See, what happened to Google+! The only concern I have is about the quality. May be, this is not the place, but I want to say that I feel like there are fewer "technical" discussion than there were earlier. There are more news items than the discussions. May be we all got busy! As to answers your questions, I dont think increasing the number of members is going to do us any good. What we need is more active members, and to do that, let's get practical, you need to give incentives. Not all of us are here because we like the place!

Next, yes, calling experts is a big plus. It has worked for Quora, it will surely work for us. May be, if we could add up some professors or some senior professionals like Ramani sir, that could probably do wonder. How do we attract them? Well, that's a trick question. I guess talking to people personally and convincing them about the idea should work. Coz I dont think a mail/phone call can do this.

For me, new things could be, a better chat environment. I have said this earlier too, previous CE-conference was better, people used to interact. Now a days, I dont think anybody is using it. Job updates is a good idea, but to make it a success, you would have to be consistent, may be, you might need a dedicated team for that.

All in all, the root problem I see is the lack of quality discussion. Resources are good idea, may be, we need to highlight them more. Hope this helps.....😀
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[Prototype]

@prototype-G9Gn5k • Aug 30, 2013

I've a suggestion. Instead of making it complete invite only, we can make a section for Invitation Requests where users will post (without registering) a basic form with few details. Now, the permanent users will read and may invite the person whom they think will promote shared learning. By shared learning I mean, asking what they don't know and help others in the things they know.

However, there should be limit on the amount of invitations that are given out by a single user. We already have ranking system in place. That may be used to decide upon the number of invitation an individual can give.

This will ensure that at least "average" user is allowed access and not the one who's registering on every website that comes across to ask for ready made final year project. Such an user won't take pain to fill form and then wait for 2-3 days for invitation. Someone's willing to go through that step will likely be a quality person.

The compete invite only method might not work because if I've a friend who's not so good, yet is my good friend asks for invitation, I'll not refuse it. That as well limit the people to the near ones. That way we'll never have any diversity.
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