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    you list clarifies, but fyi, trying to optimize numbers from passive consumers isn't always consumer-friendly. Ex. making a popular web search engine worse to drive up search numbers when people make more searches to compensate.
    – starball
    Commented Jul 8 at 16:07
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    @starball: You want to provide correct answers to the passive users as quickly as possible, not fudge the numbers to look good. Lots of people looking at wrong answers will drive them away from your site. You need to provide what they need with a minimum of fuss. That's what used to bring people to the stack system, and that's what Stack Exchange needs to work on - and what they need to gather and publish statistics about.
    – JRE
    Commented Jul 8 at 16:11
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    (@ first sentence clause,) debatable. I think most meta people will say speed to answer is not necessarily a good thing. and the statement should be qualified to on-topic questions only. but yes, many passive users regularly express outside of the SE platform that wrong or outdated answers are a pain point.
    – starball
    Commented Jul 8 at 16:18
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    Notice that Wikipedia has a huge problem with a declining number of authors. While driving up the number of passive consumers, some activation is still needed to keep the ratio right.
    – Bergi
    Commented Jul 11 at 1:36
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    Contributing on Wikipedia is a pretty miserable experience and it’s the users that make it that way. Just like once in a while I see highly active users here behaving in a way that would definitely turn off new users that could eventually become contributing users.
    – Rig
    Commented Jul 16 at 3:35
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    And unlike wikipedia, SO is rotting away, its content becoming more obsolete on a daily basis. My work isn't SO friendly, but I work web stuff occasionally and find myself on SO. The problem is most of my search results are 10+ years old. SO is for webdevs and the problems they run into working with the fastest changing tech in existence. I don't want to see a 12 yo answer in my result set unless nothing better exists. It's a chore and I avoid the site entirely because of it.
    – Ed Swangren
    Commented Jul 17 at 2:25
  • Users moving from the "Find solution on Stack Overflow" stage into the "Join Stack Overflow" stage seems like a natural progression you want users to take if they find your site provided them with helpful resources. In the scenario you described, regarding passive and active consumers, you don't provide any means for passive consumers to become active ones. It seems like you're making the case that this site has enough active users and we don't need any more.
    – Matt K
    Commented Jul 18 at 17:18
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    @MattK: I'm making the case that most people are not interested in the slightest in volunteering their time and effort. It is also the case that the stack system is intended to be a reference - like a library. Libraries have a really lopsided user/creator ratio. You've got to expect that.
    – JRE
    Commented Jul 18 at 20:06
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    @JRE Definitely correct on that expectation, but that doesn't mean you give up. It's incumbent on them to attract more users to engage with the site and provide valuable answers, otherwise it will remain stale.
    – Matt K
    Commented Jul 19 at 18:54