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As discussed elsewhere on meta.crypto, we need more questions from existing private beta users.

Can they be contacted? If so, what pitch should we make?

One element of it that comes up for me is to remind them that Area51 users are limited to only 3 active commitments, which are only satisfied when they make sufficient contributions (I'm not sure how much), or after the sites they've committed to make it out of public beta. Since new Area51 topics come up regularly, if you want to be involved in new ones, you have to pitch in on the ones in progress. (Links to the exact rules would help.)

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I think the rules for when a commitment is fulfilled are intentionally not public, to avoid gaming the system. But it looks like 10 questions and/or answers are about the level to be enough. – Paŭlo Ebermann♦ Jul 27 '11 at 0:34

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I think the biggest problem is that the questions are all very much expert level questions. Any questions even slightly off of this seem to be pushed to security. While I understand this desire, the level most of he questions talk at is above the level of people wanting to get involved in cryptography that are not at the expert level.

Start some fun questions that people can get involved in. I know there are some. And if you see a softball out there you do not have to swing for the fences just because you can. Leave some out there for the enthusist to answer. No one goes to the buffet that never has anything good served up.

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Interesting point. But I see only five closed questions at all, of which one is a duplicate, one is an open-ended list question, one about using a particular software. Then Cellular phone cloning and Encrypt HardDrive of a Mac?. I see no questions being closed as not-expert-level-enough. – Paŭlo Ebermann♦ Jul 29 '11 at 18:39
I am not saying they are being closed. They are migrated to Security SE I think. Not that they do not belong there... But doing that takes out questions that could have been answered here. – Chad Jul 29 '11 at 18:43
Sorry, I did not see a migration at all, yet. Maybe this was done when I was offline, but I doubt it. Go ahead, ask your question. (There are questions which would be better on security instead of cryptography, but the difference then would be not the expert-level, I think.) (If you prefer, we can discuss this on chat instead of here.) – Paŭlo Ebermann♦ Jul 29 '11 at 19:54
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Everyone who committed to the Cryptography proposal has been contacted to let them know that the site has been launched. We can't really force them to follow through with their commitment and you have to be careful about flogging them too much with email reminders.

As for needing more questions, are there any big industry events or news items that can be used as a catalyst for asking interesting questions you come across in your day to day work? Any event that gets your community going — a hot new release, an upcoming convention, any news-worthy event — I'm talking about some Cryptography-equivalent analog to what Joel is doing on Ask Different:

Now that Lion is out, help promote Ask Different!

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