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There are 12 users that have received more than 10 reputation in the last month and 22 with more than 100 in the last year, number one beeing somebody who hasn't been here in that year. I don't think there has been an question or an answer (or at least a relevant number of) with more than 10 or even more than 5 upvotes in the last months, possibly year(s).

What can we do to get this site more attention, more questions and more people answering questions? Does anybody know if there is a way to go back to area51 or something like that?

Or is it only me thinking this site has almost died out?

Who is even still here, reading this? Give me a sign (comment?), please ;-).

Oh and I was thinking we could create the tag "revive-site" for further discussion/other questions concerning this topic, if you are interested. But I can't create tags, so somebody else would have to.

Related: Ask Patents needs a cleanup , https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26073/can-ask-patents-be-referred-back-to-area-51

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For my part, I suspect it might come down to a function of the scope of the site.

The underlying aim of Ask Patents is to eliminate low quality US patents, essentially through crowdsourcing prior art searches. And we still get some questions along these lines now. However, for my part, I don't really give these as much attention as they perhaps deserve: I tend to avoid doing that kind of analysis even when I'm getting paid for it; doing it for free seems the high of tedium.

Nevertheless, this aim has informed the scope of the site, such that potentially quite interesting areas are off-topic (notably non-US matters, though this is rarely enforced). However, it is these questions which actually really interest me, and are the ones that seem to get the most attention from other users too.

To my mind, it seems that broadening the scope of the site to include all kinds of intellectual property and in all jurisdictions would help. It seems rather too often that the answer to a question is "well that is copyright, so go ask elsewhere". Maybe even a merger with Law.SE would be beneficial.

Certainly this is contrary to the original purpose of the site, and would likely diminish its role as a venue for crowdsourcing prior art. But I feel it might at least make it more interesting for this one user.

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  • +1 for saying exactly my thoughts (apart from the merger, I don't think patents would survive there). Is there a way to redefine the scope?
    – user18033
    Dec 20, 2016 at 16:33
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I've been contributing recently and have a thought. I understand one mission of the site is to challenge bad patents/applications. Many are in fields I'm not an expert in. Perhaps we could have a method for exposing the requests for prior art to other StackExchange sites where appropriate experts reside. For instance, a software prior art request could go to http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com. I think there should be some internal vetting of the question to make sure it is well written and appropriate before promoting it to other sites.

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  • Interesting idea!
    – user18033
    Dec 30, 2016 at 23:47
  • Thanks. Ideally the question would be cross posted between the two sites, but I'm not sure that is a feature of StackExchange. Also it might be off topic for the other sites. Given the importance, other sites might allow it anyway.
    – Eric S Mod
    Dec 31, 2016 at 0:19
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    @DonQuiKong I really think finding a way to crosspost Prior Art search questions to the appropriate SE site is important. Is there any way to get traction on this?
    – Eric S Mod
    Mar 30, 2017 at 22:19
  • I don't know. Maybe asking on meta of the destination site if they would accept the question could work.
    – user18033
    Mar 30, 2017 at 22:39

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