What can be done to encourage users to broaden the ways in which they participate?

Question

In many communities, particularly ones that rely on member participation for policy building and content guidance, growth and development rely on core members being active in a variety of ways (editing, flagging, creating content, providing guidance to new members, participating in policy creation, etc.).

However, I keep seeing situations where users who are clearly heavily invested in the community completely neglect certain key aspects of keeping the community healthy. It seems fairly common for the most active users to focus almost exclusively on content, and sometimes other areas such as voting, flagging, editing, etc. are almost completely ignored.

Is there a way to encourage the core users to participate in these less-glamorous, yet still essential tasks without appearing to nag or harass these valuable members of the community?

Answer 1

Two models you can try to emulate:

• The gamification model proposed by Stack Exchange is very successful. Provide points for up votes, badges for milestones, increased privileges/mod capabilities based on "score", and ensuring that all aspects of the site are gamified (e.g., tasks & link sharing earn badges, ranking is visible, etc.).
• Make "boring" tasks something you have to "earn", as is done on Slashdot (used to be done on? haven't been there in a while). Posting good posts over time earns you a few "mod points", which you can then use to moderate other users. It makes you feel like you're contributing rather than performing garbage cleanup.