Timeline for Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 3, 2017 at 8:41 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/ with https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Sep 12, 2015 at 0:05 | comment | added | feetwet | ... and, as you predicted, here's Robert Cartaino's unsatisfying and tangential response. | |
| Sep 11, 2015 at 20:45 | comment | added | feetwet | Well I think it deserves a straight answer, so here's a straight question! | |
| Sep 11, 2015 at 14:21 | comment | added | feetwet | Jay and @rbwhitaker - I'm not involved in either Startup instance, but that's very sad. Have you made a request of SE to "Giv[e] us our profiles and our content back, merging it into the new site...."? I can't find any meta posts on the subject, but I would hope (and vote) that such a thing could be done for any closed sites that are resurrected. | |
| Jun 8, 2015 at 3:15 | comment | added | DVK | @AnnaLear - tangential question: were you open about the issues with that site's moderation situation? I never ventured onto that specific site; but I can tell you that there are less-active sites which I like where I (a) would not even remotely volunteer to moderate in normal case - I even rejected an SE offer to be ProTempore once [as I'm by nature unsuited to moderator position] BUT (b) would volunteer in a flash if I was informed that what stands between the site I care about being closed vs. open is availability of such a volunteer and nobody more qualified is available. | |
| Jun 4, 2015 at 21:02 | comment | added | Adam Lear StaffMod | @JayNeely Re: "why are metrics still being displayed?" - Area 51 is pretty much in maintenance mode and we avoid making changes to it unless things are dire. Having said that, I agree with you. We need to do something on the proposal page that sucks less and I can think of a couple things that we could do that wouldn't be very complex in terms of work required. | |
| Jun 4, 2015 at 20:49 | comment | added | Jay Neely | 3) "Not a single site currently active in our network is at risk of being closed," so the current Startups SE presumably has its moderation in good order, even if by all the public metrics (which surely are good for something?) it's doing poorly in other areas. I understand you don't want to re-open closed sites. But if you want the existing one to succeed, are you really dismissing out of hand, without discussion, the idea that bringing at least profiles / user accounts from the old site might attract a bunch of us back to the new one, and give it a valuable boost? | |
| Jun 4, 2015 at 20:49 | comment | added | Jay Neely | @ Ana @Anna Lear - I understand these are difficult decisions. I still wish the communication had been handled better, and the community had been given a chance to fix the issues before our content was trashed. But focusing on the present and future, there are three things that suck about this situation that I hope you'll fix: 1) If the Area 51 metrics are so shitty, why are they still the only ones being displayed? 2) In addition to metrics, why is there a such a gap in standards (749 avid users = "excellent" according to Area 51, being derided here by Anna)? (continued..) | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 5:25 | comment | added | Adam Lear StaffMod | @rbwhitaker I assume your comment is aimed at me. I never participated; startups aren't my thing. But, I did watch - that was my job as a community manager. I watched moderators go inactive, I watched issues not get handled except by one overworked person for a long time, I watched us be unable to find new moderators to supplement the team. Having said that, we did learn something from Startups as well as other sites we shut down or let pass in the past. I'm not saying we were always right, but none of those decisions were made lightly and those lessons are where these new guidelines are from. | |
| Jun 3, 2015 at 3:08 | comment | added | rbwhitaker | I don't agree that the active user to signed-up-at-one-point user ratio is a good metric either though. A community's strength should be measured based on the number of users it actually has, "hit and runs" aside. By no means would I call 750 a massively thriving community, but it beats the pants off of 110. Even percentage wise, the old site has the new one beat. Were you there at the end of Answers.OnStartups? I don't remember you. What I remember was that in the last month or so, we had picked up a surprising number of new enthusiastic contributors. There was no disintegration. | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 17:49 | comment | added | Adam Lear StaffMod | 749 avid users (read: over 200 rep) out of 18k+ isn't exactly "active" and "doing well". The A51 metrics are spectacularly ill-suited for giving an accurate picture of a site's overall health. Answers.OnStartups wasn't retaining new users, and the community has practically disintegrated. More details here: discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/12630. I really hope the second attempt will do better. That's not unheard of. Not every community gels on first try. | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 16:13 | comment | added | Ana Staff | We want to give existing communities every possible chance to succeed and be awesome, but we won't be reopening closed sites. Sorry to disappoint. | |
| Jun 2, 2015 at 14:39 | history | answered | Jay Neely | CC BY-SA 3.0 |