Timeline for Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
97 events
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| Jan 18, 2021 at 11:45 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://blog.stackoverflow.com with https://blog.stackoverflow.com
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| Jun 3, 2020 at 13:30 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Mar 25, 2019 at 4:11 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited body
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| Nov 27, 2017 at 20:34 | comment | added | Ana StaffMod | @Catija Good thinking! We updated Joel's blog post a little further down, where Joel lays out the old site life cycle (under #6), with a link back to here. | |
| Jul 3, 2017 at 14:48 | comment | added | Catija | Hey Ana, is there any chance of putting some sort of note at the top of Joel's blog post so that new sites don't think that it's still active policy? | |
| Apr 8, 2017 at 7:54 | comment | added | Pandya | Discussion related to QPD | |
| Feb 8, 2017 at 14:11 | answer | added | q9f | timeline score: 12 | |
| Aug 12, 2016 at 9:01 | comment | added | q9f | Philosophy just graduated with 5 QPD and it was said it "met our threshold for graduation-worthy sites" while linking to this article. While I understand that the 10 QPD is not the only factor weighted in, what's the point of this article if sites are cleared for graduation without meeting the main criteria and without any further explaination on why and how this happened? | |
| Aug 19, 2015 at 1:58 | comment | added | makerofthings7 | TLDR - Stackoverflow is trying to be more competitive to Quora by being more flexible to the "long tail" or niche communities that exist. K. Got it. | |
| Jun 4, 2015 at 17:14 | comment | added | Jon Ericson Staff | @Emrakul: We've gotten quite a bit of feedback already. At some point, it stops being something we need to advertise to every site on the network. Most of the people who care have had a chance to see this post. | |
| Jun 4, 2015 at 16:33 | comment | added | user206222 | I am confused. Why was the featured tag removed? | |
| Jun 4, 2015 at 3:04 | history | edited | AnaStaff |
removed the [featured] tag
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| Jun 4, 2015 at 2:02 | comment | added | Joe Murray | @Homegrown Tomato: cool. We hadn't thought of asking to place ads with other SE communities but will definitely pursue this. Thx! | |
| Jun 4, 2015 at 2:01 | comment | added | Joe Murray | @Ana - thanks for encouragement but others seem to be addressing beta limitations more systematically already. | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 20:33 | comment | added | user259867 | @JoeMurray I'd like to clarify: beta sites can and do propose Community Ads to be shown on other SE sites. E.g., see Space Exploration organizing this effort, or the HSM site. The restriction on betas is that they cannot host such ads for other sites. | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 19:45 | comment | added | Ana Staff | @JoeMurray Good point. Your best bet is to start a separate Meta question dealing with just this piece of the picture. | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 15:23 | comment | added | Joe Murray | As a moderator of a site at day 70 with Excellent for number of questions and questions answered but Needs work for users with 200+ rep and visits per day this is a relief. It seems perverse to restrict beta sites to not having Community Ads as this can be a means of increasing traffic - could this be reviewed? | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 5:16 | comment | added | Adam Lear StaffMod | @DigitalArchitect Why do you think we have a daily rep cap in place? Clearly so that employees can't get too much rep on meta with important announcements. | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 3:37 | comment | added | user159773 | I'm accusing @Ana of rep farming with this post. | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 0:28 | comment | added | Ana Staff | @vzn A central idea here is that sites don't particularly need to graduate. Your observations about quality standards sometimes affecting numbers are on point, but our real goal is for communities not to need to lose sleep over whether or not they hit 10 questions/day. | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 0:01 | comment | added | Aquarius_Girl | do you mean that if a site remains in public beta forever, it will never get the coloured designer theme? Can you do something about it if your answer is no? | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 20:21 | comment | added | vzn | great news & glad for the long-needed/ awaited clarification. one quibble. have observed se mods tend to be fixated on question quality and quickly closing perceived low-quality questions, almost religiously insisting that low-quality questions drive away experts. the 10Q threshhold does not seem to take into acct that site closure policies/ dynamics may vary widely. & am not really a fan of sites that have "quick trigger fingers" on closing (however admit that in some cases it maybe related to low incoming question quality). | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 20:02 | comment | added | user3459110 | This signifies that Stack Exchange values quality over quantity +1, thank you :) | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 19:39 | comment | added | Rand al'Thor | @Pops and Ana: I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Puzzling yet. I check the Area 51 stats almost daily, and we've been on more than 10 questions per day solidly for months now. Does this mean we're officially a candidate for graduation (even given the site's relative youth)? | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 17:56 | answer | added | Deer Hunter | timeline score: 6 | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 17:41 | answer | added | user56reinstatemonica8 | timeline score: 8 | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 16:34 | comment | added | Deer Hunter | @Pops - can you post a Q on meta with the statistics behind your threshold? | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 16:10 | comment | added | Ana Staff | @onebree good question! There may still be a blog post at some point outlining how we got to these conclusions. In the immediate term, we knew that folks on meta would care about the details of the Stack Exchange site lifecycle the most, so we opted to start here. | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 16:01 | comment | added | user261278 | Somewhat random, but why is a post like this, an announcement, posted in the meta Q&A? Why not on the SE Blog? Just curious. Thank you. | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 14:39 | answer | added | Jay Neely | timeline score: 21 | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 11:18 | answer | added | fredley | timeline score: 15 | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 11:05 | answer | added | Mad Scientist | timeline score: 12 | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 10:58 | comment | added | Alecos Papadopoulos | With pleasure, I have to seriously congratulate Stack Exchange for this evolution of its perceptions and policies. | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 2:48 | answer | added | nhinkle | timeline score: 6 | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 2:20 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | @HDE226868 good point. Done. | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 2:19 | answer | added | Monica Cellio | timeline score: 90 | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 1:46 | comment | added | HDE 226868 | @MonicaCellio You could expand that into a new post. | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 1:15 | answer | added | user158781 | timeline score: 16 | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 0:00 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | Thanks for clarifying @Shog9. The main thing I'm suggesting for long-running betas is that there be some way to check the community's feelings periodically about their appointed mods -- nothing fancy or binding, but some invitation to say "thumbs up", "meh", "we could use some new leadership", "that crossover Writers/Worldbuilding mod is a terrible idea", whatever. Maybe an annual-ish quickie poll or some such; not sure of the form. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 23:57 | comment | added | Martin Ender | Since no one has done so for four hours now, I've followed Pops's suggestion and made a separate post to discuss what can be done about the beta label. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 23:38 | answer | added | ChrisW | timeline score: 20 | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 23:25 | comment | added | Shog9 | Not strictly limited to elected mods, @Monica, though practically-speaking it is even less likely to come up on a pro tempore team than it is on an elected one. In practice, concerns about moderators tend to cluster at the extremes: minor disagreements blown out of proportion, or catastrophic meltdowns from which there can be no return; still, the process remains for those rare situations where it might one day be needed. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 23:11 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | @AnnaLear I think impeachment is specifically for elected mods (or that's what Shog said when I asked back then). SE appoints pro-tems so you can remove them if you need to, but in practice you usually don't unless something blows up spectacularly, & there've been some non-spectacular blowups that could've used SE action. Giving the community a way to send feedback about mods without standing up on meta and calling out specific people (which most don't want to do, of course) seems like a good idea. BTW, I've been a pro-tem mod for 2+ years & don't recall that email. (Got it on a grad site.) | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 23:06 | comment | added | Adam Lear StaffMod | @MonicaCellio Interesting point. We do have a way for other moderators to "impeach" one of their own, but it could perhaps be a bit better publicized to new moderators coming on board. We also send emails every year to elected mods to remind them to let us know if they need more help, but if I recall (don't have the code in front of me right now) that doesn't include pro tems and perhaps it should. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 22:55 | comment | added | JohnP | @MonicaCellio - Agreed. I know of a couple beta sites where at least one mod has been absent for a year. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 22:44 | answer | added | Wrzlprmft | timeline score: 112 | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 22:03 | answer | added | user160606 | timeline score: 32 | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 21:51 | comment | added | Wrzlprmft | @RubberDuck: Look at the very bottom of this page: Audio and Video Production, Writers, Homebrewing and Board and Card Games are longer in Beta than Code Review. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 21:25 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | Related (maybe we can address this now?): meta.stackexchange.com/q/239464/162102 | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 21:24 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | Have you thought about whether appointed mods should be "for life"? When beta was only a year or two it didn't matter; does it now? (Real question, not a leading one.) Right now beta mods only leave if they step down or they do something really egregious and get fired, but I've seen some cases where long-term mods were doing harm but not get-fired levels of harm, and the community really can't do anything about that. Nor did it choose them. I don't think you want term limits (let mods who are doing a good job keep doing it), but maybe some way to check in w/the communities periodically? | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 21:22 | comment | added | user160606 | @Pops this might also be a good time to do something about the 7 essential meta questions blog post: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/201776/… | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 21:20 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | Thank you for this change. I participate on some old, smaller beta sites that are healthy but not voluminous, and I'm glad we get to stay. There probably are a few ghost towns out there, but if they're not attracting (untended) spam then the only harm is to SE's positioning, so if you're cool with it then everybody else should be. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 21:20 | comment | added | Pops Staff | @HDE226868 there isn't a hard date when a site suddenly becomes eligible, but we are thinking roughly a year at least, maybe a little less. The 90 day graduation is truly a thing of the past. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 21:18 | answer | added | Joe | timeline score: 16 | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 20:47 | answer | added | HDE 226868 | timeline score: 57 | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 20:38 | comment | added | HDE 226868 | Is there a minimum age for a site to graduate? I would assume that 90 days - just to reference the old benchmark - is a bit early, but would something like a year be fine? | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:55 | comment | added | Ana Staff | @michaelpri Sorry to startle you and rene! Subject has been edited. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:53 | comment | added | Josiah | As someone active on sites with <8QPD, mostly as an answerer, I find low volume sites are not as easy to interact with. On higher volume sites, there's always something to do. Maybe 10QPD isn't necessary for a thriving site, but it sure is helpful. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:52 | comment | added | michaelpri | @rene: That was my first thought, too. I was terrified. | |
| S Jun 1, 2015 at 19:43 | history | suggested | Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Re-worded title to avoid confusion that this post is about the new Health.SE site.
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| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:42 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jun 1, 2015 at 19:43 | |||||
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:40 | answer | added | Dɑvïd | timeline score: 99 | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:30 | comment | added | Dilaton | Too bad that Theoretical Physics SE has become a victim of the earlier bad SE practice of shooting smaller (very high-level expert) communities down because of their naturally longer turning time, disregarding the fact that world class physicists have been active there producing for the international physics community immensely valuable content. I really hope that SE has learned to appreciate smaller high-level expert communities a bit more by now ... | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:29 | comment | added | yuritsuki | We should adopt Steam's stance and just call it Early Access from now on :^) | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:28 | comment | added | Pops Staff | @Jefromi assuming you are asking about the minimum level of moderation for us not shutting the site down, yes, that would be fine. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:28 | comment | added | rob | @Ana thanks for the clarifications! Woodworking.SE will be coming up on 90 days soon, and although we have some great content, I've been a little concerned about the slow trickle of questions coming in lately. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:26 | comment | added | RubberDuck | @LittleBobbyTables you mean there's a site that's been in beta longer than Code Review? | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:21 | comment | added | Cascabel | What if it's only the diamond mods who are doing the moderation you mentioned? Is that an acceptable state of affairs long-term, or does the site need to eventually have enough users with enough rep to share the load? | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:11 | comment | added | Pops Staff | @HomegrownTomato feel free to start a meta post! | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:08 | comment | added | user259867 | @JonEricson Are you (& rest of team) open to suggestions for a better name than "beta"? We could brainstorm something while this post has everyone's attention. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:06 | history | edited | Mooseman | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Link directly to the post rather than the Google redirect url
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| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:02 | comment | added | Pops Staff | @KevinReid I'm happy to see your comment! One growing concern that I and the other CMs have had for a while now is that we've been passively making members of small sites (like Ham) feel like they were somehow failures for not getting to graduation, and that just isn't the case. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 19:01 | comment | added | Jon Ericson Staff | @hichris123: This might be the moment to say that we have long considered "beta" to be a bit of a misnomer. Many people think of beta a being a very temporary state. I tend to think of beta sites in something of the same category as Gmail, which was in "beta" for 5+ years. That's also part of why the beta theme was redesigned a few years ago. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:56 | comment | added | Pops Staff | @200_success the health of the community with post-graduation rep thresholds definitely still is an important criterion; it's something we'll look at in the manual review, and one possible reason why a site might not graduate despite reaching the QPD threshold. (Oh, and as an aside, have a grammar pedant brownie point for using "criterion" instead of "criteria.") | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:56 | comment | added | Kevin Reid | As a member of the beta site Amateur Radio, I'm very pleased to see this announcement. I've been constantly worried that we'd be shut down because we have little activity, and saw no good way to fix this. With this statement of policy, I am now reassured that I can focus on making our site have high-quality content, not high quantity. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:55 | comment | added | Ana Staff | @hichris123 "Are you saying that it's possible for a site to stay in beta forever?" Yes. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:52 | comment | added | Pops Staff | @JoshCaswell at the moment, it's a raw value. The correlation was already present without adding the complexity of checking to see what later happened to the questions. However, we did consider the possibility that some misguided users might try to "pad" the stats by posting lots of junk as a result of this announcement. Our graduation review process includes looking for funkiness in question closed/deleted/downvoted stats (whether a recent spike or an unusually high overall number), and if this turns out to be a problem, we'll reevaluate the trigger we use internally. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:52 | comment | added | 200_success | When Code Review was undergoing its graduation assessment, one major concern was whether there would be enough high-rep users to take on the moderator-like tasks (closing, deleting, etc.), and by extension, whether there was enough voting activity. Is that no longer a relevant criterion? | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:48 | comment | added | hichris123 | This feels like a mindset shift to me. Are you saying that it's possible for a site to stay in beta forever, @Ana? | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:47 | comment | added | Ana Staff | @Doorknob You're right that graduation needs to happen on a case by case basis. This is why Pops' 10QPD threshold is viewed as the trigger for a conversation of whether a site should graduate, not the decision itself. What about smaller sites which probably won't hit that 10QPD threshold? I say above "Success and graduation are not the same thing". Maybe now we need to look at how non-graduating communities can get recognized for their success. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:43 | comment | added | Cat | Enforcing a certain amount of questions per day also makes it harder for sites invested in graduating to be okay with disallowing certain types of questions. Our policies should emphasize quality, and should not regard quantity as a good measure of such. Traffic would be a better indicator since that is generally proportional to the number of people a site is actually helping. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:22 | comment | added | jscs | Is this 10 questions per day that "survive" -- i.e., aren't closed/negatively scored -- or just a raw 10 posted per day? @Pops | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:20 | comment | added | Doorknob | Overall, I don't think that the one-limiting-factor idea for determining site graduation is a useful one. Each community is different and unique, and in an ideal world, there would be a single, universal factor/process that can decide whether a site is ready to graduate or not, but I really don't think that can ever be the case. There are so many components that make up a great Q&A site that the only reasonable method for figuring out whether to graduate a site is to decide, at least in part, on a case-by-case basis. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:11 | comment | added | Doorknob | @Pops Perhaps sites which reach that (seemingly arbitrary; some statistics would also be nice) magical 10-per-day mark also typically develop these other important factors of site health, but this does not necessarily mean that the reverse is true. There is no reason to think that 10 questions per day is necessary for a successful and thriving site, and there are plenty of communities that are more cohesive and accessible than even some graduated sites, despite not having as high of a volume of questions. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:05 | comment | added | Pops Staff | @Doorknob indeed, you're absolutely right! The interesting thing I found was that in many if not most cases, by the time a site reaches 10QPD, it also has developed the other healthy things that you mentioned. Sites that don't have those healthy things often never manage reach 10QPD. To be clear, I'm not declaring causation here, just a pattern of correlation. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:05 | comment | added | Ana Staff | @HomegrownTomato that's good thinking but experience has indicated a community of content creators is the hard part, and when there's excellent Q&A, traffic tends to follow naturally. For now, we see no reason to create additional thresholds for site traffic. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:02 | comment | added | Doorknob | Even the SE team has repeatedly emphasized that the current A51 stats do not matter as to whether a site will be graduated, as there are far more important (and subjective) goals, such as sense of community, self-moderation, user retention, etc. etc. For many sites (such as Code Golf), such an increase in question volume would mean a decrease in overall site quality. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:02 | comment | added | Doorknob | Initial reaction: I hope this isn't a hard and fast rule for which sites are allowed to graduate and which aren't. You mention a slight amount of leeway ("and some sites might still graduate "earlier" or "later" than their question activity alone would suggest"), but a simple statistic is hardly a universal metric for site health and/or a signal of whether a site is ready to graduate or not. (cont...) | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 18:01 | comment | added | Pops Staff | @MadScientist there are a lot of sites and potential situations out there, so I was being intentionally vague to keep things flexible... but that's what I was attempting to cover by saying that CMs will still be making final decisions manually. If we notice that a site is rocking out and just has a topic that doesn't lend itself to a high question volume, it can still graduate. 10QPD just happens to be a really strong signal. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 17:54 | comment | added | Unihedron | What about sites that were previously hinted to graduate but are still a few off to reach the 10 questions per day line? | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 17:53 | comment | added | bjb568 | CB is still d00med right? :p | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 17:53 | comment | added | user259867 | CiviCRM is getting more than 10 questions per day, but I imagine it's a long way from graduation. Having content is good; but if the content doesn't have readers, not so much. I think it would be more realistic to add a traffic-based condition: 10000 visits/day (or 5000, if you want to be generous). On my bubble chart, the sites above 10000 visits and to the right of 10 q/day are clearly the most graduation-able. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 17:51 | comment | added | rene Mod | At first glance on your title I expected this post to be about the closing of health.se ... | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 17:50 | comment | added | Ana Staff | It means public beta is their default state for the foreseeable future, and we believe that's entirely okay. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 17:43 | comment | added | Mad Scientist | Skeptics graduated with 5.7 questions per day, and I think there were a few other low-volume sites that graduated. How do you plan on handling those sites that inherently have a much lower question value, and might not reach 10 questions per day any time soon? | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 17:35 | comment | added | Pops Staff | As indicated above, I teamed up with Ana on this, so I'm leaving a comment to be more easily @-pingable. | |
| Jun 1, 2015 at 17:34 | history | asked | AnaStaff | CC BY-SA 3.0 |