Question

Now that the List of StackExchange sites has been reorganized by category, it should be obvious to some of us — if it wasn't already! — that we went off in the virtual "land-run" and laid claim to some identical topics. That's OK, there were no rules against doing so, and I trust each of us was as enthusiastic as the other.

Now, I usually count myself among people that would look to markets / capitalism (compete!), or evolution (survival of the fittest!) as appropriate models for dealing "naturally" with this problem, if you could call it that.

But I'm wondering if there are alternatives. How many of us are interested in building a community as opposed to a business?

Am I a sissy for hinting at consolidation, co-operation, win-win? I confess: I am Canadian. :-)

Your thoughts? (If you dare!)

Answer 1

Don't worry about the elephant!

Simple fact: only 10% of the original interest expressed in SE has materialized into sites, only half of those are intended to be public-facing (rather than internal/corporate) and only 10% of the public sites are going to endure on beyond the start of payments.

I have posted an analysis of the current meta.SE membership which, if you accept that signing up to meta.SE in the first place was an expression of interest, shows that only a minority of the less than 300 who were interested ever followed it up with any activity here.

Running a Web site is a big thing, much harder than it sounds, and running any sort of community site is ridiculously time-consuming. Everyone likes to fondly imagine that they have more time than they actually do. We all also suffer from the "Mythical Man-Month" problems of massively underestimating how long it will take to get a project off the ground.

The huge scythe hanging over SE sites in particular is the fact that we have a very limited amount of time to gain enough momentum to justify spending $129 every month. My guess is that the beta will officially end by Halloween and we will all exhaust our free month by the New Year. Many of us will try to give it a final push to drive membership, to ferret out the demand that we believe must be there, in the final weeks of the free month but, of course, the family and social demands of Christmas will slow us down and the New Year will see a massive drop off.

So, if you are truly determined to run a site on a particular subject, don't even think about that elephant, just fire ahead, seed, market and run your site as best you can, the competition will fall by the wayside one-by-one and you will probably inherit some of their users.

If you are serious about putting in the effort, and are realistic about the huge amount of time required, you will have a successful community regardless of subject. Just don't expect it to make money and remember that elephants like peanuts.

Answer 2

I think you are on the right track here.

In my view, the way to make these sites work is to completely focus on building a community and forget about the business aspect for now.

I think some people are getting the idea that they can just stick up an SE site and the people (and then the bucks) come rolling in. That's a very long way from the truth.

Building a worthwhile community is tough, hard and often painful work and if you are not doing it for the good of the community, the group-mind of the community will eventually cotton on and you will end up suffering the consequences.

If people are willing to put personal egos to one side and pool resources then there are many opportunities and communities that can spring into life.

Do I know what I'm talking about?

Well, I run InwardQuest.com which is proving to be quite popular at the moment.

But that community did not appear overnight...I spent 7 years building up a mailing list of people and earning their trust while searching for some way to allow them to communicate in a more fruitful manner than just another bulletin-board style forum.

Once I saw StackExchange, I knew I had found it.

So that's me, 7 years...how much work are you guys willing to devote to building a community? :)

Answer 3

I think as a new site tackling the same topic as an existing site, you have a few options:

• If the existing site just isn't taking off, and you think you can get more people, then just go ahead and do it.
• If the existing site is already established for that topic, is there an adjacent niche audience that you can serve that is underserved by the existing site? In that case I would actually try to make contact with the existing site and see if you can cross-promote with them.

For instance, you have to admit that A Curious Home has some overlap with moms4mom, but we've been able to forward a question to them when it was more "home" related than "parenting" related. We've also been able to forward a family/financial question to Our Lucky Dime. This helps to keep our site focused, and promotes community among the sites. We think it's win-win.

Answer 4

I totally expected topic collisions, so it's no surprise to me that http://photographr.info is one of 4 photography related sites that I know of. However, that's a drop in ocean compared to the number of photography forums and blog that already play in this space. Sharing a platform is just one additional thing that the new sites have in common.

I've gone to considerable effort to build a community on my site, using my broad skills and resources, and it's working. I welcome the efforts of the other sites to do the same, in the true spirit of openness, it encourages me to try harder. :)

Answer 5

I do wonder about the number of specialised software development type sites coming out of this, which as I see it, is competing with Stack Overflow and the idea they'd have the answer to every development question on there...

Answer 6

Talk about a mess in the categorising of the SE sites so far. Could not work out which was which and if it was already on the list. Every time that post would pop up to the latest in activity, kept trying to figure out what was and wasn't there already on the list and on isn't this one repeating the same topic as another?

Whatever. More power to the people starting these sites.

Some are languishing, some are thriving. What's most important is that they build up their community and tend to their crops like all shepherds and farmers should do.

On the surface they might be catering to the same crowd, but scratch it and it could be slightly different.

Those that die or whither away might see the users move to the other sites in the same topic. Survival of the fittest at work. Unless of course, they happen to be sharing the same userbase. In which case, if one does go away, that's just less of an attention drain.

Answer 7

Well, one thing to consider.

Eventually, the site will cost $129+ a month. Not many people can afford to fork over that kind of money every month in the spirit of keeping a community running.

Answer 8

donnacha is spot on. But, If two site make it past all the hurdles donnacha describes, they'll probably turn to specialization and differentiation.