_{Increasing participation is a tough task, and most likely to be achieved as a result of many things/actions. But if we had to pick one topic per answer, my thoughts are.}

Which types of questions do get much more than average participation/voting?

If we can identify these, maybe there is something on them (like a pattern) we can try help replicating to other questions.

One small set of those engaged questions are the ones which makes the Hot Network Question (HNQ) list. Of course, after they turn to be HNQ, participation on them increases rapidly, but to make it there in the first place, it was already higher than average.

GIS HNQ questions can be seen here (thanks Midavalo). Quickly analyzing them, I see some patterns:

• posts mainly related to QGIS, but also
• with code (reproducible example) and/or
• screenshots.

Those are generally questions asked in hot subjects, but besides being well asked, aided with resources in the sense they are objectively understandable and answerable.

Hence, I think constructive feedback to help OPs improving their posts (both questions and answers) in all possible ways (whichever you think they are; code and screenshots are examples) can make a difference in increasing participation (voting is a consequence). Feedback through:

• system (design, interface, custom messages, features, etc.),
• meta. We could have more examples of how to ask posts per subject, like the one we have for arcpy in Writing code snippets to get quicker answers. The tag is only 9.1% unanswered (way below average), which means among other things arcpy posts have engagement (including votes).
• comments to OPs ('clarify that', 'add this', 'see link x', etc.).

The general idea is to continue 'giving the fish' (editing, reviewing, etc.), but at the same time making our best to try 'teaching how to fish' as well. And hopefully having more people joining the cause.

Which types of questions do get much more than average participation/voting?

If we can identify these, maybe there is something on them (like a pattern) we can try help replicating to other questions.

One small set of those engaged questions are the ones which makes the Hot Network Question (HNQ) list. Of course, after they turn to be HNQ, participation on them increases rapidly, but to make it there in the first place, it was already higher than average.

GIS HNQ questions can be seen here (thanks Midavalo). Quickly analyzing them, I see some patterns:

• posts mainly related to QGIS, but also
• with code (reproducible example) and/or
• screenshots.

Those are generally questions asked in hot subjects, but besides being well asked, aided with resources in the sense they are objectively understandable and answerable.

Hence, I think constructive feedback to help OPs improving their posts in all possible ways (whichever you think they are; code and screenshots are examples) can make a difference in increasing participation (voting is a consequence). Feedback through:

• system (design, interface, custom messages, features, etc.),
• meta. We could have more examples of how to ask posts per subject, like the one we have for arcpy in Writing code snippets to get quicker answers. The tag is only 9.1% unanswered (way below average), which means among other things arcpy posts have engagement (including votes).
• comments to OPs ('clarify that', 'add this', 'see link x', etc.).

The general idea is to continue 'giving the fish' (editing, reviewing, etc.), but at the same time making our best to try 'teaching how to fish' as well. And hopefully having more people joining the cause.