what-is-gfh-missing-to-retain-experts puts forth the argument we need more experts, and at least several of the answers propose we need more questions. One issue this site has is a chicken and egg issue that the existing reasonably small community of contributors only covers a small portion of the genealogy waterfront. If we aren't naturally hitting particular groups of users, should we try harder to 'target' those groups. Example groups might be:
- ancestry.com users
- myheritage.com users
- werelate.org users
- familysearch.org users
- gramps users
- NEHGS users
- varous lineage and heritage societies
- professional genealogy societies
Most of these sites have Q&A of their own and quite a large number of people viewing. The monthly 'people' for some sites above are:
- ancestry.com 8.5M individuals
- myheritage.com 1.3M individuals
- werelate.org 84K individuals
- familysearch.org 1.3M individuals
- NEHGS users 140K individuals
- Mayflower Society 14K individuals
- Association of Professional Genealogists 20K individuals
To help calibrate GFH is currently at 120 individuals ie two to four orders of magnitude smaller. To be fair, the above sites have been around for years, have tremendous amounts of content, and many have huge advertising budgets. But it's still worth targeting them. So other calibration points are other SE sites in beta. Salesforce.se is at 1500 individuals at day 135 of beta (ie a few months longer than GFH). Robotics is at 150 individuals at day 51 of beta (ie a few weeks shorter thand GFH). Note I'm using 'individuals' as they measure them at the data gathering site. Avid users and users are slightly different. Individuals includes 'outsiders' who just googled and got the answer they needed.
Attracting just a small portion of the millions of people above would greatly increase our community.
Is there anything in particular we should be doing to target any of these communities or others like them?