# Weekly question contests: Yes, no, or maybe?

Some stackexchange sites (such as science fiction) have had weekly question contests to generate interesting content.

I think this would be a good idea, because of our question/answer ratio.

What do I mean? There are few questions on here, but the average question generates a lot of good answers. My interpretation: Many users are looking for ways to contribute but find difficulty in thinking of questions to ask. Also, once a question is proposed, they find it easy to think of answers from their own experience.

My proposal: A weekly question contest with a chosen theme. Every week we choose a topic. Anyone who wants to participate may write a question on that topic. At the end of the week, the highest-voted question wins.

Now, the rules may seem dumb, so just like in the American children's game Four-Square, the winner's award would be the ability to change the rules of the next contest,and to pick the next topic.

Please let me know your thoughts below. If you want to try this out, consider suggesting a topic for this week's contest.

• We could use this to help get more questions in under-represented areas. Apr 20 '14 at 19:43
• Could you perhaps post a link to similar contest on another stack exchange site? Apr 20 '14 at 19:56
• @JimBelk I've edited in an example. They mention the cooking site doing it as well. They use cash funds and a drawing. Apr 20 '14 at 20:01
• The following seems closely related meta.matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/149/…
– quid Mod
Apr 21 '14 at 11:55
• @quid As you said, "Perhaps if at some point in the future it should seem that things slowdown too much, while we are still below a critical mass, then might be a good time to induce some extra effort via some "contest."" Perhaps we should see how many questions are asked 'organically' this week before trying a contest. Apr 21 '14 at 12:25
• Yes, at the moment I feel it is still a bit early for this for reasons along the lines given by Benjamin Dickman. But maybe we could bridge the summer months with something like this; chances are they'll be a bit more idle. But also then I would not be that much in favor of having a contest being decided by usual votes only. To optimize for votes often does not yield an actually good contribution. Many votes means popular, which should be related to but is not the same as good. Perhaps we could have some jury in addition. Not sure how to do this in detail; just a quick idea.
– quid Mod
Apr 21 '14 at 21:57

Brian - the idea is intriguing. My current question Method of Solving $5^x=326$ (Logs not allowed) might (?) fall into that category, as I believe I've formulated a rather elegant solution for the general problem.