I recently discovered Code Review. As a beginner programmer who wants to improve, I consider the site essential. I want it to move beyond the Beta phase.
I read in this post that the key is upvoting. So I spent about 20 minutes upvoting everything I could find.
But, really, will that help? Or is there some more constructive (and, well, more honest) way to move Code Review from Beta to the next stage?
Upvoting everything is not a good idea.
I think our primary goal shouldn't be to get out of beta, it should be to be an awesome site for code reviews. And upvoting everything does not help that goal, actually it hurts it.
If you want this site to succeed (and get out of beta), you should be active (post good answers and questions; upvote good questions and answers from others etc.) and promote it to people who might be interested in it.
Or put differently: if you actually want to help this site, 20 minutes today won't do much. What is needed is more of a long term investment.
Looking at scorecard, 'upvoting' isn't even on the list. What helps is good questions, good answers, and getting others involved (which good Q&A does, but you can also contact people you know directly and get them involved).
According to my reading of scorecard, what will help most is a little bit higher rate of questions (so send in more code to be reviewed), and a higher answer ratio (more people answering a given quesiton - so review code!). It appears to me that this site is already over the hump many other sites face of getting enough hits. It just needs a little bit more content creation.
Having said that, we do need more people upvoting. You need to reward good behavior - ie don't upvote everything. Upvote good questions and good answers. And comment on those that aren't 'good' so people know how to improve them (which will result in edits and then in upvotes). Upvotes get people reputation and it appears this site has alot of visitors but appears to have not as much participation (since not a lot of voting).
