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I've seen other sites have some success drawing in and retaining users via regular community challenge events, e.g. World Building or Code Review.

Since our participation is waning, should we consider doing something similar?

For those not in the know, a community challenge works like this:

  • Users suggest various topics or themes. For example, on Earth Science, suggestions have included antarctic and volcanology.
  • Everyone else upvotes topics or themes they like.
  • Each week, the highest-voted suggestion becomes the weekly topic challenge. A meta post is written up giving a brief summary of the idea (with the featured tag, hopefully), and at the end of the week, users who asked or answered one or more questions about that topic are recognized.
  • Repeat until everyone gets tired of the idea or everyone runs out of suggestions.

Should we have these challenges, how often should we have them, and who should be in charge of them?

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Yes, we should have challenges.

Throwing my own oar in to suggest that yes, community challenges have a tendency to drive up participation, and help round out our knowledge base.

As a newly minted moderator, I would be happy to take charge on this and organize the challenges, however if the community believes somebody else would be better for the job, I don't mind handing over the reigns either.

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    I like the idea in general, but can you propose a few suggestions for what the challenges might be?
    – fredley
    Jun 19, 2015 at 12:40
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    For topics we could draw from our popular or unpopular tags, tags such as moka, aeropress or crema could be good initial challenges to beef up questions in those areas. Alternatively we could try to bolster the unloved tags, such as greek-coffee or mouth-feel. What we cover really depends on what the community suggests in the appropriate meta posts, which depends in turn on what the community feels we're lacking in.
    – Nick Udell
    Jun 19, 2015 at 14:00

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