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On the 18th of July 2012, I asked my first question on Stack Overflow. The Google Developer Relations Team had announced that Stack Overflow would be the place for Google Apps Script questions. There I learned that asking questions and answering them, wasn't easy.

Somewhere in November 2012 I noticed Web Applications and ever since I've visited the site daily (now 323 consecutive days). I've answered 166 Google Spreadsheets questions and 53 Google Apps Script questions till now.

Phwd showed me where to get a graph that visualises the two tags in time:

enter image description here

I can't help but notice that there's an increase in questions on the two tags, about a year ago. Lately, my score ratio is very low, yet I keep on providing answers. Perhaps, it is because I want to answer all of those questions, people get some sort of Jacob Jan fatigue.

This is where I want to start the discussion. Down the line, everybody answering those questions, gets the same treatment and that's a bad thing.

How do we promote knowledgeable people to answer questions here on Web Applications, without them getting proper attention (upvotes)?

Updated chart:

Sheets v. GAS tag growth comparison

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    The hardest part is that the motivation is different for people, as is viewing and even voting on. Though for voting it usually depends on if you know what you're reading
    – Eight Days of Malaise
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 21:51
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    A little unclear what is being asked here. Is the question 1) How to promote posts so that experts see them? or 2) How to upvote answerers so that experts have more incentive to answer? Something else?
    – samthebrand Staff
    Commented Oct 18, 2013 at 18:42
  • @SamtheBrand I wanted to raise awareness for the two tags I'm active in and plea for more upvotes on expert answers (for these tags).
    – Jacob Jan
    Commented Oct 18, 2013 at 19:48

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Looking at the google-sheets tag info, in the last week, there are 23 questions and 73.9% of them are unanswered. Regarding google-apps-script info, there are 7 questions and 71.4% of them are unanswered. I'm wondering if making these stats more visible, as they could be interpreted that there are people needing help, could be a more effective motivator than votes but this cold lead to just switch the "answerer fatigue" from Jacob to another one.

Regarding how to promote knowledgeable people to answer questions here on Web Applicationsm, this could be a siblings "fight" as equivalent tags exists on SO.

By the other hand SO is promoted on the Google Apps Script official documentation and Google has its own user-to-user help program that includes Google Sheets.

I think that most of the askers on those tags are not interested in the Stack Exchange model, they just want to get help to solve their problem and many of the current answerers are most interest on proving help that on gaining votes.

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    @pnuts: Thanks for the heads-up regarding the tag info stats problem. I will think on rewording this answer later.
    – Rubén - Volunteer Moderator - Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 19:13
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    @pnuts: I was talking about "fighting" for expert time/attention not about their "love" (willing to help) :)
    – Rubén - Volunteer Moderator - Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 20:02
  • I have the impression that many questions only have one answer. It will be nice to have a high average of answers by question (3-4?) or are least more comments / edits helping to improve (update?) existing answers.
    – Rubén - Volunteer Moderator - Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 20:11

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