Any suggestions on how to increase the number of posters and contributors? Please vote and write in your suggestions.
Thank you!
Gather up 10 of the most interesting problems that have been solved here recently, especially those with novel solutions, and publish an article about them in a journal. Advocate this forum as the premier example of the UNIX/Linux community solving problems together.
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One possibility might be to encourage word of mouth. I got here after getting a reference by a colleague, who used a snippet of code he found.
I think what Pludi says will help the most - though I currently have no idea how to implement it. The rules are okays as they are.
What I can suggest is that to make some kind of contest which can motivate members and may also invite other new members to register and well also to send out email to members while there is something new feature or informing them to participate in the contest.
And I guess advertising on other similar sites and making link with them might help too like www.linuxquestions.org.....:rolleyes:
All in all, there are also enough genious members who are volunteer to help!!!
I would say
less infraction to new users,
word of mouth
allowing anonymous posters - am sure would be big discussion around this point like sanity of the message posted, advertisements etc 
at any cost - I would like/love the guidelines to be as strict as before and not to bend ourselves in that 
---------- Post updated at 07:23 PM ---------- Previous update was at 07:17 PM ----------
I would like to add this point specifically.
There are lots and lots of sites that helps/deals with shell scripting, perl scripting, unix for dummies etc. But there are only few sites that explains about the internals of unix, operating systems in general and various other operating system related concepts like memory management, virtual memory, scheduling, kernel programming, kernel compilation etc ...
This would be in particular great interest to members like me and others who wanted to know "How stuff works than just knowing how to make stuff work?" Especially students would be interested to know. My personnel experience as a student is its quite difficult to go in the right track with respect to system internals unless someone is eligible and knowledgeable says/teaches you about that. Whole student community will bless us for that not just praising ! 
We have so many members who are champions in unix internals - internal concepts of operating system in general and they can explain it here. Then this would become the "The" place for unix internals.
My 98 cents ( not just 2 cents )
New users get infractions for the same reasons old users do; why should the rules be applied unevenly? It's not like being edited for code tags actually does anything to them. Even the most egregious offenders haven't had anything worse than editing of their posts done to them unless I'm highly mistaken.
Naturally, but that sort of thing's hard to encourage more than it already is.
Considering the number of accounts here that were one-post wonders, maybe this isn't entirely wrong. But it'd have to be controlled one way or another.
We already have a forum for schoolwork.
That's not entirely accurate. Users could ultimately serve short bans for continually failing to heed advice about using code tags. Some users have.
For me, the idea of issuing fewer infractions to new users is exactly so that they are not driven away. And for the most part, new users who don't use code tags, or who do bump up or double post, get the message just as quickly with or without infractions. For repeat offenders (new or otherwise), the rule should be the same.
As for anonymous posters, I think that's not necessarily a bad idea. Their posts could be automatically moderated, although this could create a lot of extra effort for moderators.
Just an idea for the "anonymous posts" direction: allow them, but with restrictions. Eg. no links, enforced preview before submit (maybe with a captcha), limited to a separate sub-forum, and give the forum advisors the power to moderate posts in that forum. That way one-shot posters could state their problems without cluttering the main forums, while spam is at least reduced (if it can't be avoided)
Also, I myself wouldn't discard KenJacksons idea of writing an article. With the raw brain-power combined here, across all kinds of computer related problems, I think we could come up with something strong. There are only 3 challenges: deciding on a topic, gathering all parts by a certain deadline, and have someone who can proof-read it and smooth out stylistic differences.
I like this idea, but I don't think there's an option in vB to allow a usergroup (Advisors) to moderate a specific forum - short of making all Advisors moderators and assigning them to that forum.
I bounce around to lots of forums and post a few messages and then bounce on. Some forums measure my absence and send me an email saying they miss me. I assume it's automated.
On the one hand, I don't like that. I view it as quasi-spam. But on the other hand, I can't help myself--I frequently reward them by logging in and responding to a few posts. A compromise would be to send not only the initial welcome email, but another one or two sometime after their first and third post or so.
Another twist on the article idea is to identify 10 or 20 influential bloggers in the UNIX/Linux world and personally contact them and ask them to mention something positive about this site. I'm not big on blogs, so I'm not sure who that would be.
Maybe you could bribe them with a tee shirt or coffee cup.
Speaking of that--do you guys sell tee shirts or coffee cups?
We used to automate this, but a number of people complained about it being spam, so we discontinued it. However, we actually had more people thank us for the reminders than people who complained. When we used to send out these email reminders, our active member monthly numbers were about 30 to 50% higher; so this method works, but the downside is that some people can get very angry about it; so we stopped (and for a large forum, it can generate a lot of email traffic, sometimes effecting performance).
I've been toying with the idea of a using the symbol of the three legged raven (samjogo) holding a global computer network (or a Penguin, LOL) in one of the claws, similar in idea to the JP Football association, but a bit different.
My idea was to have the three-legged raven holding a penguin and the a circle around the logo with the text "The UNIX and Linux Forums" on the top of the circle and "www.unix.com" at the bottom. I've not had time to find a graphic artist to draft something to review, but this sounds like it could be a good symbol, combining the three-legged raven idea (a symbol of power) with the raven holding a penguin in it's claw, in a circular style.
I get a lot of ideas to increase the number of contributors, some of them..
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Organizing Unix/Linux trainings in different places with the help of our existing contributors, and attracting more users.
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Always, the number of readers ( reads answers ) and writers ( contributors ) ratio is 95:5 .. which has to be increased by letting them realize that, "when some answers saves your lot of time, you have to contribute back in any way as it is a time of other who investigated a lot and came up with the answer for you ...
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as suggested above.. get tie up with some big bloggers -- which can benefit both the side. Post some interesting news/investigation and link to here...
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i answer here for unix/linux stuffs... but i read and understand a lot of new things because of this.. thats why i continue to be here... ( how about rephrasing this, and putting it as a banner ?!
)
Will continue...
---------- Post updated at 21:41 ---------- Previous update was at 21:31 ----------
and obviously, allow posts without logging in...
many a times many people want to post and hide their identification ( because of various reasons ), and get answer !!! ( including me ), so why not allow them ??
may be, they dont have the time to register ?!
do you want a proof for that, many of you might know perlmonks, a very famous forum which allows users to post without logging in. when you post without logging in, it will come under the user anonymous monk, and right now there is 52700 posts ?! refer Anonymous Monk
yes, then there has to be a lot of restrictions on how to deny spam in that ... kind of things.. we may also follow something similar as pm which is approve posts, which any eligible user can do. so what do you say ?
OK, created a single forum for anonymous posters:
Public discussion here:
Should we leave it where it is, or move it to the top?
Can we have some background as to why increase of the community is necessary? Are you specifically referring to users as opposed to visitors?
The "community" are people who post, not just visitors. That is why many people have made excellent suggestions like a mechanism for anonymous posters, etc.
Ok, so the background is generating more content, in particular from prospective posters that see registration as an obstacle to communicating their ideas.
Disabled because vB does not natively support an editor toolbar for unregistered users.
If we want to increase the number of people who actually post, we need to be sensitive to the fact that not all posters are technically competent. They may only be in the very early learning stage of a programming language or operating system.
We also need to be sensitive to cultural differences in the way questions are posed by posters. Anybody who has traveled extensively or lived in different parts of the world will understand what I mean. Those that have not will not fully grasp this cultural difference.
In particular we need to think carefully before closing a thread on a poster without a really good reason. Potential posters are not stupid and dumb; they see this behavior by moderators and simply migrate to using other forums where they are made to feel more welcome.
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That's a good point fpmurphy. Thanks for reminding everyone!