Community Engagement Across the Network: Focus for 2026

Please can you finish an engagement project, before you start on the next one. The recent experiments (Comments, Open-ended Questions, Challenges, 1-Rep Chat, Free Votes) on Stack Overflow, that are all unfinished, is not a good experience for anyone.

Moving on to the next one, without finishing the last, really leaves things in an often broken state, or at best detrimental state. Also, when another experiment is started on, the prior experiment loses the development resource and focus it needed to actually be successful in the eyes of the community; both new and old.

I'm all for new ways for lower reputation users to engage, but this should not be at the detriment of the long term users that those users, and Stack Exchange Inc, rely on for their expertise.

Also, just because Stack Overflow has the largest number of users doesn't mean it should always be the place to experiment, and the end point for that experiment. Free votes could be useful on all sites, but they aren't. Threaded comments, though I admit I hate (see my many posts on Stack Overflow Meta on why, but they are seriously detrimental to site usage in their current form), when complete could easily be useful on other sites as well. Last I heard neither of these experiments are expected to leave Stack Overflow.

We want to hear what your non-product challenges are

Yes, all the time, over and over and over. You want to hear, but you don't want to do anything about the things you hear. See this.

Our non-product challenge is this: we only ever interact with CMs and middle management who either don't listen to feedback or don't have the power to do anything about it.

Stop asking for feedback! There are TONS of feedback, all over the metas, hundreds upon hundreds of pages of it! For each experimental feature there are at least 2-3 meta threads filled with feedback. Which is completely ignored most of the time.

Instead of listening to the requested feedback, some one-dimensional person just runs a bunch of strange usage statistics tests and draw strange conclusions based on it. "When we did this, engagement went up by 2.42%." You can't design sites like that, making all design decisions by jumping to conclusions by statistics. I heard quoting Mark Twain is popular these days: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics".

I don’t intend this to be negative, but rather an opportunity to address a concern that I’m fairly sure isn’t just mine.

What makes this time different from all the other times the CM team attempted to get some momentum and got the rug pulled out from under them? I have provided and voted on a ton of feedback over the past 11 years, and despite the best intentions of the CM team, it never seems to have an impact. From the outside, it doesn’t seem like the CM team has the power to do anything.

Since you’ve couched this as a problem communities are going to solve with your help, instead of a problem the company is going to solve with the community’s help, does that mean non-trilogy sites are finally going to get more autonomy?

I appreciate the communication and desire to improve lines of communication with the community. At the same time... I confess that I find this approach a little puzzling.

From where I sit, the community has given a ton of feedback, and it seems like it's rarely acted on. I find it hard to perceive the point of spending more time asking the community for feedback and dialogue, when the time that the community has already spent on dialogue doesn't seem to have a clear positive payoff. I find it hard to see the point of responding to such calls for discussion, when many have already tried communicating and it feels like it rarely goes anywhere. There must be some ideas in your mind about what is to be gained, but it's hard for me to understand.

To put it another way: in my view, it seems to me like the core issues are product issues, or can't be separated from product issues. So it's not clear to me what there is to be gained by taking some time away from supporting developers on product initiatives, to talk to people here.

Y'all have visibility and experience I don't have. So I'm sure there's a reason it makes sense. It's just beyond me.

I'm not sure what is the path forward. I realize this isn't very constructive feedback, because it doesn't suggest what would be a better way forward. If there isn't developer time to improve the product, then there isn't developer time, and I'm not sure what there is to be done.

^{This is primarily focused on Stack Overflow and somewhat of a follow-up to Larnu's answer.}

Generally speaking, it is good to hear that CMs want to focus more on the human side of the network. But as someone who has been deeply involved in many (engagement) experiments over the last few years--from moderating Discussions and now Challenges, to some involvement in 1-rep chat rooms, and active participation in Collectives--I have to be blunt:

You cannot build community engagement on a foundation of broken tools.

Engagement does not happen overnight, and it certainly does not happen when the platform is littered with the ghosts of previous initiatives. Moving the focus away from product initiatives right now feels like walking away from a house while the frame is exposed and up in flames.

By leaving these "features" in their broken state, you are not reducing the barrier to entry. You are breaking existing workflows and pushing away the veteran users who provide the very expertise the sites rely on. And you are failing to meaningfully replace a departing expert with new users, even if we only cared about raw numbers.

The "Half-Baked" Debt

My concern is not with change itself; I have supported some of these projects because I want the network to thrive. The problem is the cycle of abandonment. Take Discussions/Challenges as a prime example:

• The Discussions UI was fundamentally broken for 2+ years.
• After the feature was "retired," we were left using that same broken UI for a completely different purpose (Challenges).
• Eight months later, and we are still dealing with that broken UI despite seeing relatively positive feedback and arguably good engagement.

Shouting into the Void

The community provides exhaustive feedback. We point out the bugs, the UI hiccups, and the moderation gaps. Yet, those announcement posts often feel like a void.

Worse, when staff does engage, it sometimes feels dismissive. I have recently seen staff (not CMs) defend initiatives by citing pseudo-stats like "thumbs-up" metrics while ignoring the inherent bias in how that data is collected, and being frankly curt with users who point out the flaws in that logic. If the plan is to "engage" more, it needs to be a two-way street that involves sharing actual, meaningful data, not just anecdotes about how "people love it" while ignoring the dissent.

Stop starting, start finishing

Before the CM team "carves out more time" to solve non-product challenges, we need a commitment to stabilize the products we already have.

1. Pay the debt: Fix the issues you have introduced through the experiments that are currently languishing.
2. Set Guardrails: I have written previously about setting clear standards for experiments. I would argue that establishing these standards is a non-product challenge with a direct impact on current and future products/experiments.
3. Respect the Expertise: Stop treating long-term users as an obstacle to engagement. When in fact they are the ones who make the engagement possible.

If you want us to help you solve the challenges on the different sites, show us that our previous help, the hours spent testing and moderating your experiments, was not a waste of time.

_{I don't even want to get into more fundamental issues, like the fact that we are not seeing great signs of being able to work together to achieve "mutually beneficial results". Instead, we see broken promises and lack of transparency.}

So the bad news is you've got a big problem. I wrote about it on LinkedIn (for some reason):

The problem wasn't with questions. Stack Overflow was getting far too many questions and far too many were basically unanswerable. No the problem was the number of people willing and able to answer questions. Since Stack Overflow was developer-centered company, it naturally took a technological approach to the problem. The system was designed to filter out as many questions as possible automatically and give veteran members of the site power to close (and potentially delete) questions.

But that created a deep-seated culture of suspicion of questions. Questions, in the Stack Overflow culture, are annoyances that must be dealt with. Even now, with question levels at the level they were during the site's beta period, people in the community are terrified that bad questions will destroy everything the site stands for.

The reality is they are probably right! The community was founded from the start with a exclusionary mentality and resisted attempts to moderate. In the end it will get what it wants: a manageable stream of questions. Sadly that result comes with the consequence of very few answers of any quality.

The good news is that you're not looking for technical solutions. Or at least not solutions that require a team of developers to create. The community team is full of smart, passionate and motivated people. I don't know if you all can overcome the external forces seem arrayed against the network, but I wouldn't bet against you.

My overall advice is to adopt what I call level 3 strategy:

Trying to fix the root problems is more likely to work than the naive solution. But odds are very good your first attempt won’t work. Far too often community managers define success by completed projects rather than improved outcomes. Instead of iterating, people tend to want to declare victory when the first solution is done. Level 3 community management means having a plan if an initiative succeeds or fails. Can you fix flaws and try again? Would a different approach work better? Maybe you still need more research to understand the problem. Even ideas that succeed can be improved.

Ok. How about specific ideas, then?

Cut your losses

So I wandered back to meta because I was irritated with the new comment UI. You have data about how the experiment has worked. Is it a home run or would it be more like a sacrifice bunt? Unless you can prove a substantial increase in engagement, you should shut that experiment down. It's irritating to the existing community (if the votes mean anything) and if you don't have enough data to prove it's a winner, it probably isn't. If it is helping, you might as well implement it everywhere on the network and be done with the "will they or won't they" speculation. Other people have pointed out other experiments that ought to be evaluated in the same way.

Use Stack Exchange for experimenting

Before I was hired as a (boring) community manager, there was the CHAOS team (10k link). They did . . . chaotic things around the network. Most of what they did wasn't really productive. But since they were enthusiastic and focused attention on non-Stack Overflow sites, they community was receptive to their experiments. And since human nature doesn't change, what they learned on non-Stack Overflow sites had the potential to impact the flagship site too. Maybe things have changed since I was there, but Stack Overflow leadership was way more cautious about Stack Overflow than the rest of the network combined, so this might be the only way to try things that have the best potential to turn the ship around.

Focus on onboarding people into the existing community

Fundamentally this is a question and answer site. I used to think there was an unlimited supply of people who like to ask or answer questions (or both!) for fun, but I no longer believe that. So you have people who are desperate to get their questions answered and will never join the community (or come back to the site, if they can avoid it) and people who get some sort of enjoyment from typing in the text boxes on the network. Ignore the first group and figure out how the second group ticks. And then dedicate yourself to creating delight for that group.

Consider spinning tags off of Stack Overflow

I wrote about the idea years ago. I don't know if it's a good idea or a really, really bad one. But I do know that when I land in, say, the GitHub Discussions for a project, I feel a lot more confident that the answers I see are correct than if I see the same question on Stack Overflow. People who hang out in the more specialized platform tend to be more focused on the specific technology. I also get a stronger sense of community from the smaller group, which has the potential to be beneficial for engagement.

About time ;)

One of my side projects over time has been to try to keep contact with the SE diaspora, folks who were in SE previously, in the hope of bringing the community home at the right time. Some of those communities have been away for over a decade - and many of the folks don't really believe things can be saved.

I'm a bit of an optimist, and to paraphrase the lord of the rings... perhaps, just perhaps There may be a light beyond the darkness; and if so, I would have us see it and be glad. I'm not sure what that would look like, or see clear signs of hope, but its essential to rebuild the hearts of many communities.

I think something missing - and worth considering, not just about your periods of tenure, but also the past, is to look at where the company has fallen short of building trust, where words were said but not followed up on, or wrong words were said, and how perhaps those breakages in trust be addressed, not from a place of blame, spite or recrimination, be because its the right thing to do. To understand where folks might do better, and find better ways to communicate both ways.

Rebuilding trust and goodwill's essential, cause then people talk to you, and trust you - and that's somewhere the company's done poorly for years.

That's a heavy thing to ask.

Many initiatives are focused on the new but forget the fundamentals, or the community we have - and addressing the needs of the folks who are, were or have been here would help a lot in trying to rebuild trust and re-engaging folks.

We've a decade of baggage, and it would be good to make a start of unloading it.

A lighter thing would be to try to find a community, or chat where you'd want to see activity, and see if you can hang out, and spark a conversation. Not 'just' as duty, but as part of getting to know the community better. (Admittedly, I'd pondered the idea of going to 2-3 community chats a week, throwing the floor open and seeing what happened but that might be a bit too much for most ;) )

In general better communication would help I'd say, and more natural communication.

Another long running challenge has been that smaller communities, heck anything smaller than SO tend to get ignored, and they do feel it. Trying to rebuild confidence with those communities would be nice - as a long term 'incremental' project rather than a big one. We kinda need a voice - and we don't really feel we have one a lot of the time.

I don't consider myself part of "the community" and I don't want to be part of "the community". That's not why I engage with Stack Exchange sites. I come here because

1. I like solving interesting puzzles in my areas of expertise. This helps me learn and also train my problem solving skills.
2. I like helping intelligent people. I just enjoy seeing someone learn from my answers (even if it's just signalled by a green tickmark or upvotes).

That's it. I'm not even really interested in curation (I stopped doing that years ago). If I was, I'd probably still be contributing to Wikipedia (they don't have the ick factor of being a for-profit company).

The issue now is that it's come to a point where the number of new questions is so low that it's not really worth anymore to visit daily (although currently I still do so out of habit). I don't think "community" is the solution to this problem. If I wanted to be part of a community, I have much better options and you can do nothing that would change that. "The community" is too small anyway for a viable business product. You need to offer something that makes it attractive to individuals to engage with the site. Clearly, your current offerings have become mostly obsolete.

What you are proposing might help retain the community you have (I doubt it). But that's too little too late. You are currently not attractive enough to grow your user base again. That requires some large and visionary changes, if it can be done at all. Stuff like opening chat to everyone certainly isn't that. Of course, large changes might drive away the remaining community. But you'll have to take (more intelligent) risks or it will be lights out soon.

There's a fine line between a product and non-product challenge... someone from SOCorp will post a heavily criticised product "experiment", respond to some feedback for usually a maximum of 48 hours and then the meta post is more or less response silent until the experiment gets labelled as a success.

How will this community engagement initiative change that and how is it different to similar initiatives that have come before?

CMs will continue to support Product and Engineering on platform initiatives, but we are going to be pulling back a bit on the amount of time we spend there

Which is good but it's worth considering getting folks more directly working in/with the networks from product and engineering cross-working with community.

Historically, we had an almost constant presence of folks from across the company working directly and comfortably with the community. Some of them were community hires, others folks who moved sideways from community related jobs to dev and SRE. Yet others just... came in and were good at working with the community. Generally when they moved on though, they were incredibly good at what they did but never really replaced.

It would be nice to have more platform initiatives focused on community needs and communication, with the folks working on it taking charge on communications, rather than having CMs being quasi PMs.

It would also be good to have ongoing work on building and retaining community facing communication skills.