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There are two major sports events this summer, the UEFA Euro Cup, starting June 8, and the 2012 London Summer Olympics, from July 27 to August 12. Although it's a bit late to specifically target the Euro, I think we have time to organize ourselves for the Summer Olympics, perhaps with some help from Stack Exchange (I'm looking at you, CHAOS).

One fun idea I had would be to add small Olympic inspired design elements to the site, a couple of weeks before and for the duration of the Games, but that's certainly something that we need Stack Exchange to help with. A full theme wouldn't really be feasible for an early beta, as Abby notes.

Thoughts?

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    4 days until the Olympics and we've made 0 progress...
    – Dynamic
    Commented Jul 23, 2012 at 14:52

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I think it's a great idea for this community to try to rally around the Olympics. Unfortunately, we won't be able to re-skin this site for the event, as Sports is still a very young beta. Site takeovers and redesigns are one of the privileges reserved for graduated sites, simply because our designer resources are very limited (and poor Jin is backlogged enough already!).

This potential event will be a great opportunity for you guys to band together within your own community to create some quality content. It should help you to address some of the issues that came up in your recent quality eval and encourage some of your more "casual" users to get involved and become more active on the site. A strong community will build a strong site with good content, and that's what will encourage "drive-by" visitors to stick around and join the fun.

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  • How about an Olympic themed logo? I know a full theme is a bit of a stretch for a beta, and I should have made it clear in the question that I had small touches in mind rather than a full theme.
    – user313
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 16:19
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    @Yannis A logo would be cool, but I'm not sure how possible it would be due to the IOC's (ridiculously) aggressive protection of its trademarks. Plus, a logo's really just a neat little hunk of art that might supplement the cool work that you guys do in conjunction with the Olympics - which is the important part.
    – hairboat Staff
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 17:16
  • Yes, it seems that the IOC has trademarked even the Olympic Rings. Well, we can always use the kotinos. But of course participation is the more important part.
    – user313
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 17:27
  • Maybe the Olympic flame?
    – Dynamic
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 20:41
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    what about starting some questions about general olimpycs issues???
    – gbianchi
    Commented Jun 7, 2012 at 17:01
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I like the idea of a change in design, but I don't think it'll promote us, just promote the Olympics to the people already using the site.

What we can do is:

  • Have a cool way to track our countries' standings on the site.
  • Popularity contest? See which Olympic sport gets the most questions asked and/or views during the games.
  • Stay active. I feel like this site can blow up if we just kept working on it, and had a few more addicts :P.
  • Share everything. Whenever you see a post that gives off positive vibes, share it (Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Google+, etc.).

I think we can do really well with this. Let's go!

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    Promoting the Olympics to the people already using the site, could be an incentive for those people to start asking Olympics questions en masse. If that happens, we could then promote the site to people outside Stack Exchange, as the site where you go to ask your Olympics' questions.
    – user313
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 15:26
  • @YannisRizos Well if you put it that way, you could use that method for several different events, not just the Olympics e.g. FIFA World Cup.
    – Dynamic
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 15:46
  • No. The Olympics is the largest and more illustrious sporting event in the world, I'm not suggesting we do this every time. We could, but after the site graduates.
    – user313
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 15:49
  • @YannisRizos I see what you mean...
    – Dynamic
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 20:40
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Nice question.

One thing we definitely need to be doing is being active ourselves during the two competitions.

We need to be asking and answering questions about the events as we go along so that we've got the content to be found when others are googling the same questions.

New visitors are more likely to join in if the site looks active as well.

Social media will play a big part too. We need to monitor what is trending on Twitter and share links across Facebook, Reddit and the likes.

This kind of links in to my "Should we have a high effort week" meta question. We should make these two sporting events high effort periods.

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  • My first though was to post this as an answer to your meta question ;) I decided to make it a separate question to poke CHAOS a bit, after the comment discussion in this answer.
    – user313
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 11:08
  • Makes sense to have this as a seperate question as yours is targeting specific events and may carry a theme.
    – Ste
    Commented Jun 6, 2012 at 12:10

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