Is it just me or has M4M lost a bit of quality and enthusiasm?

Pageviews are actually growing slowly but steadily since the first of the year. I think that's a testament to the amount of questions that have already been asked and answered. People are finding their answers on moms4mom.

You've asked a really good question. I'm going to explore it here with some thoughts, and I invite everyone to comment:

1. A topic like programming is constantly changing at a rapid pace, so there's always some new framework or something to ask questions about. On the other hand, parenting just doesn't change that fast. A lot of the questions we have now are the same questions parents had a decade ago, or longer. Perhaps the answers change, but the questions are the same.

2. People are more willing to ask a programming question online than a parenting question. Parenting is just one of those things you're supposed to "know" how to do. It's built into our culture that to ask for parenting advice is to admit failure at a most basic human activity. On the other hand, the programmer culture has always been exceptionally open and supported sharing and learning.

3. We've deliberately pounced on opinionated people with the back-it-up principle. I believe this has kept quality really high, but in some cases opinionated == passionate. We're deliberately excluding some people who would be passionate contributors, but it's in the spirit of being selective and better. What we're left with is a community who are great to hang around with, but are less enthusiastic because none of us have an agenda we're trying to push. Someone who's taken up the cause of banning vaccines is going to be a lot more motivated and committed to their cause than a skeptic saying, "yeah, but show me some proof."

So I think, as a community, we need an agenda. We need some shared vision of what M4M is going to be. For instance:

• We're all about the back-it-up principle, because it separates the signal from the noise.
• Tammy is absolutely adamant that M4M be a safe place to share your experiences, and find that there are others out there having the same problems. That's because sometimes you don't need a "right answer", you just need to know that you're not alone.
• I'm in favour of "evidence based parenting", and it ties in nicely with the back-it-up principle.

One of the main reasons behind meta.M4M was to start engaging everybody in this process. I propose that we hammer out some of these core principles as a community, figure out what we want to accomplish, and then start going down that path.

Tell us what you want M4M to be.

Scott, not much enthusiasm, but does anyone actually come here on meta?

I must admit that I've also noticed a slow down, but then I've been 'distracted' by area51 and meta recently ;) Even Jon Skeet hasn't been back in a while.

I have wondered personally if the SE1.0/2.0 thing hasn't discouraged some people - but I'm not sure how many of the 'regular' M4M users are aware of or influenced by that issue.

As we've already discussed, I'm highly sceptical about SE2.0, and the proposals mechanism. I think it will prevent creation of sites that might otherwise have been viable. In the meantime, I think it has also diluted support and attention (mine in any case)...

But I think that Emi is right that we shouldn't just be asking questions for the sake of it.