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Briefing.

November 16, 2013. In response to a not-so-shiny Stack Exchange Community Managers' review of our favorite Stack Exchange site and seeing that about 10% of the site's content consisted of zombified posts, the Mug formerly known as retailcoder invited the then-tiny CR community to counter the zombie invasion. How? By answering unanswered questions and, equally important, by voting.

And we succeeded, with numbers to back it up: from 88% answered, CR went up to 96% and stabilized at or around 95% for pretty much a whole year now, and in the mean time we had our long, long-awaited graduation announcement - what more could we ask for?

95% answered is something to be proud of. But Code Review has literally doubled in size since September 2013, and that means the missing 5% is, in absolute figures, pretty much exactly the same amount of zombifying questions as the missing 10% we had back then: a whole army of a thousand zombies is walking - and growing every day:

steep, VERY steep increase of walking zombies in the past few months

The number of Quick Answers per week has dramatically improved, and that's thoroughly awesome. But the light blue-ish purple series ("10's of Zombies Still Walking") is what we're looking at. That trend cannot be allowed to keep going, we must do something!

Great, let's do something. But what exactly?

Simple. Kill zombies. If every single avid user (per Area51's standards, users with > 200 reputation - that's 2,088 users) shot a zombie tonight, they'd be exterminated.

  1. Fire at will. Most zombies are easy to take down: all they need is an upvoted answer. Find your zombie here.
  2. VOTE. Is your profile on this page? Don't just pile-up-vote on the hot questions and great answers; look for zombie-killers - good answers without upvotes on old questions. Votes are your ammunitions, and you get 40 per day, everyday. Spend them!
  3. Have FUN! Reviewing code is fun all by itself, but there's more: join the regulars in The 2nd Monitor, earn imaginary Internet points, badges, race someone to the next privilege level, or better, race someone to collecting 10 Necromancer badges as fast as possible!

Any ideas on what else we can do as individuals? As a community?

2015-03-13 (ooh, Friday 13th!) - \$1,187\$ walking zombies at the time of this writing. The highest registered zombie population ever.

Last week:

  • \$170\$ incoming zombies (new questions asked) | \$24.3\$ per day
  • \$286\$ answers given | \$40.9\$ per day
  • \$1,252\$ answer votes spent | \$178.9\$ per day (~4.5 users running dry on ammo)

2015-03-27 - \$1,240\$ zombies...

Last 2 weeks:

  • \$365\$ incoming zombies (new questions asked) | \$26.1\$ per day
  • \$531\$ answers given | \$37.9\$ per day
  • \$1,187+365-531 = 312\$ zombies down | \$22.3\$ per day (+3.8 zombies daily)
  • \$2,054\$ answer votes spent | \$146.7\$ per day (~3.7 users running dry on ammo)
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  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ Anyone looking for good answers to vote on should feel free to peruse the objective-c and swift questions, which typically just have me to keep them company. \$\endgroup\$
    – nhgrif
    Mar 13, 2015 at 2:32
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ There's also this: data.stackexchange.com/codereview/query/265223/… -- 133 zombies with answers but without votes, potentially (but not necessarily) ripe for killing. Feel free to fork the query, or suggest improvements in the form of a code review \$\endgroup\$
    – janos
    Mar 13, 2015 at 10:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ You might want to add that zombie = unanswered question. That might not be clear to everyone. \$\endgroup\$
    – Simon Forsberg
    Mar 14, 2015 at 0:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SimonAndréForsberg right... I did link to the memes page though.. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mathieu Guindon
    Mar 14, 2015 at 0:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ In the sense of this 'question', I still have a doubt: are 'zombies' unanswered questions? \$\endgroup\$
    – Ismael Miguel
    Mar 20, 2015 at 17:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ @IsmaelMiguel Yes! \$\endgroup\$
    – Mathieu Guindon
    Mar 20, 2015 at 17:41
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Mat'sMug I have 2: codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/75512/php-mimetype-class and codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/70098/… (both mine). Maybe they are of low quality? Any advice to improve the questions? (I won't use bounties anymore. Last time I used one, it fell in waste) \$\endgroup\$
    – Ismael Miguel
    Mar 20, 2015 at 17:43
  • 5
    \$\begingroup\$ @IsmaelMiguel, you might also consider self-answering your question if you have already made some improvements by yourself. I did so with one of mine very recently. \$\endgroup\$
    – glampert
    Mar 21, 2015 at 18:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ @glampert I know, but if I had any improvement to make, I wouldn't leave the questions unanswered. Specially the 2nd. I even gave a bounty of 100! \$\endgroup\$
    – Ismael Miguel
    Mar 21, 2015 at 19:48
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @Vogel612 added what I could get from the Site Activity SEDE query. The numbers are indeed in a completely different ball park. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mathieu Guindon
    Mar 30, 2015 at 2:22
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ Does the number of zombies include the closed questions? It seems that there has been a number of closed questions these days compared to some months ago. \$\endgroup\$
    – Morwenn
    Apr 3, 2015 at 8:41
  • \$\begingroup\$ I don't quite get why I see questions with accepted answers using the search \$\endgroup\$
    – greybeard
    Jan 12, 2016 at 23:41

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