On Apr 26, 2012, at 12:26 PM, Nada O'Neal wrote:

> I haven't seen the proposed new Stackexchange digital preservation site:
> http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/39787
> mentioned on code4lib yet. I'm sure most of you have turned to Stack Overflow 
> in your darkest hours of need, so if you think you might like such a site 
> specifically geared towards Digital Preservation, please take a look. 
> 
> The proposal is currently in the commitment stage and needs about 900 more 
> "committers" to make it to the next stage. 

It was mentioned yesterday, but it doesn't need 900 more 'committers'.

If you click on the 'more info' near the 11% commitment score:

	The commitment score is the minimum of three scores:

	56%  112/200 committers in total
	11%  11/100 committers with 200+ rep on any other site
	40%  commitment score, based on committers' activity on all other sites and how old the commitment is

So ... yes, we need another 88 people to commit ... but what's going to be harder to get (as evidenced by the 'Libraries' proposal, which has dragged on for so long that the folks at Stack Exchange renamed it to 'Library and Information Science' incorrectly thinking that it'd be broadening the category : http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12432/)

Now, the important thing is that the 'any other site' is specifically 'Stack Exchange 2.0' sites, which means that Unshelved Answers, even though it was a 'Stack Exchange' site *does* *not* count.  It must be one of the sites listed at:

	http://stackexchange.com/sites

And it's really not that hard ... ask a few good questions (make sure they're not a duplicate, or they'll mark you down), or answer some questions, and you'll get voted up.  Now, the thing is, some of the larger sites get so many questions that fewer people are going to look at them unless you make it really intriguing (which could get it marked down and closed as subjective).

So, I'd recommend sticking with some of the smaller sites, including these that haven't yet graduated out of 'beta'.  For example, likely relevant for those on here, being an intersection of MLS folks and programmers:

	Databases : http://dba.stackexchange.com/
	Drupal : http://drupal.stackexchange.com/
	Wordpress : http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/
	User Experience : http://ux.stackexchange.com/
	Graphic Design : http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/
	Unix / Linux : http://unix.stackexchange.com/
	Apple : http://apple.stackexchange.com/
	Ubuntu : http://askubuntu.com/
	
	English Language : http://english.stackexchange.com/
	Linguistics : http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/

	Project Management : http://pm.stackexchange.com/
	Academia: http://academia.stackexchange.com/
		eg, "Is there any world-wide ranking of conferences/journals?" : http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1199/
		or "Preprint services other than arXiv (for other fields)" : http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/84/ 

(don't bother with Literature -- it's going to be culled)

And of course, the original three:

	programmer questions :	http://stackoverflow.com/
	sysadmin questions : http://serverfault.com/
	other computer users : http://superuser.com/



So, and for advice on getting reputation ... writing good answers tends to be the best way to go, but you want to :

	Format it clearly.  (bulleted lists are your friend;  they use MarkDown, but there's an editor to make it easy)
	Use good grammar / punctuation (minor ones, not so bad ... if it looks like you're being sloppy and didn't even try ... not so good)
	Cite authoritative sources when appropriate
	Give an answer, not just a link (eg, summarize, then cite the authority)
	Speak from a position of authority and you're more likely to get voted up even when you're wrong... a 'it might be (x)' or 'have you tried (x)?' isn't going to go was well as 'As you said (y), based on previous experience, there's a good probability of it being (x)'
	Don't be repetitive; if there's already a similar answer, you're better off commented on that answer to improve it ...
	Answer quickly; most people look to see what they can answer when they first see a new question, and so if there's already a good answer there will vote it up ... two weeks later, not so much.  (although, I find that I'll get sudden bursts of lots of old answers being voted up ... and I know that if someone gives an interesting answer, I'll look at what else they've posted, which often leads me to vote their stuff up)
	

If you're going to ask questions:

	Make sure it's not something that can be answered easily with a search on the internet.
	Select good 'tags' for it.  (although, others may change the tags, but having good ones up front helps)


... and, I should add ... anything marked as 'community wiki' gets no reputation for the question or the answer.  (so if you want to help me on my attempt at documenting differences in cooking terms between English dialects, I'm not going to complain, but it won't help you for reputation : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/784/ )

-Joe