This is pretty much a follow up question to my previous one about my impression that we're not getting as many questions about new games as we used to.
The main reason I propose this, and also the main reason why I am concerned about the low question volume is that the very early phase after release is important to actually establish the site as a place where you get answers about a specific game. We're not like other SE sites, we essentially change our topic every few weeks and can't rely on older posts to establish our credentials.
I'll also have to clarify what I mean by "seeding" questions. There are very problematic forms of seeding, but what I'm thinking about is nothing else than simply asking questions that we encounter while playing the game. One huge difference is that I consider it useful to ask any question that seems like it would be useful to other people, no matter whether we can actually solve the issue ourselves. We're a site that is limited by the volume of questions, not by the capacity of the users answering them. We need more questions, and I'm convinced that we can deliver better answers in a more useful format often enough that duplicating existing knowledge is a negligible drawback.
I'll use Dragon Age:Inquisition as an example as it is the most recent AAA game I played, and one where I intentionally seeded questions about the game on the site. It is also a good example of my impression that we're not getting many questions about new games in the first days they're released. During the first few days around 3/4 of all the questions about DA:I I asked myself, there was hardly any activity aside from that.
A few more users turned up later, but our content for this specific game is a bit disappointing in my opinion. We simply don't have a critical mass of users playing this specific game yet to get excellent answers to most questions. We have something like three or four regulars posting in this tag, which can't be enough to cover the game sufficiently (especially for such a huge game).
The main purpose of seeding questions would be to get a set of common questions about the game on the site, and use those to attract more users interested specifically in this game. Unlike other SE sites we can't rely on our older content to attract those users, unless we have content about the new game already they won't find us if they search for answers to their questions. Getting more users than a handful of regulars involved is important to actually cover all the areas of the game and ensure that we get some good answers.
Should we encourage the regular users of this site to ask questions about new games they're playing? Even if those questions could be solved by googling for them?
