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I know that sites have two main stages once they leave Area 51: beta and graduated.

In order for a site to graduate from beta, it must meet a few requirements such as

  • A certain number of questions per day (10 I think)
  • A certain number of users above a specific reputation level

However, I was wondering if a site that has graduated, Movies & TV for example, could be reduced back down to beta level if they drop below these requirements?

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  • If a site doesn't get closed what would de-graduation even mean? drop their design? related: What happens when a graduate SE site becomes inactive?
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 16:18
  • 1
    @rene revert back to the beta phase and all that entails
    – caird coinheringaahing
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 16:26
  • 3
    @cairdcoinheringaahing You probably mean degeberate as it's currently happening with Stack Overflow. The balance of houskeepers and party girls seriously goes out of trade.
    – πάντα ῥεῖ
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 16:27
  • @πάνταῥεῖ "degeberate"?
    – caird coinheringaahing
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 16:29
  • @cairdcoinheringaahing #cofeve sorry :-P
    – πάντα ῥεῖ
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 16:36
  • @πάνταῥεῖ In the terms of post/month, it is roughly constant since 2014. I think it is not so bad. The reviewers are too few.
    – peterh
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 17:05
  • 2
    Relevant: The Windows Phone SE site has been archived
    – V2Blast StaffMod
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 18:16

1 Answer 1

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Generally speaking, no. The idea behind "graduation" is that the site is healthy and active enough to continue indefinitely and grow further. In practice, many sites hit that state before they "graduate", so we've also been talking about dropping the term "beta" and reorganizing some parts of the site lifecycle...

But, back to your question... to my knowledge, we've never closed a graduated site or put it back in "beta". I don't think the latter makes sense in any event. Could we potentially close a dead graduated site? Probably. Would it take a long time with lots of discussion and attempts at revival to get to that point? Absolutely.

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  • 2
    Worth mentioning what happened to Programmers. While not closed or "degraduated", it did go though very major changes.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 19:45
  • 3
    @ShadowWizard Eh, that's a whole different ball game. None of the changes for ProgSE were motivated by a drop in the stats referenced in this question.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 19:55
  • There's been a long standing ingrained habit by most SE users to post questions in SO, when they really belong in another site. However, there are cases when the questions really belong in SO, and are unfairly moved to other sites. Has SO grown into such a huge unmanageable monster?
    – Joe R.
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 2:44
  • @FrankR. Not sure I follow... Your question seems unrelated to what the OP brought up or my answer. Sounds like a question for Meta SO? (Although I probably wouldn't phrase it quite that way. :) Maybe something more in the "how do we prevent unnecessary migrations?" idiom.)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 2:50
  • was just wondering whether migration is being used for populating questions on new sites. this happened to me when i posted an sql related question in SO [Informix]. The question was perfectly living in SO, and it got migrated to the then recently created Database Administrators site, and we all complained about it.
    – Joe R.
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 2:56
  • this is the question i am referring to. Read the comments: dba.stackexchange.com/questions/21000/…
    – Joe R.
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 3:02
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    @FrankR. Migrations to new sites are discouraged (and impossible in case of private betas, if I recall). Flooding a site with questions from elsewhere doesn't help grow a new site or its community. There's some margin of error, though, that's true. Having said that... DBA is over 6 years old. I don't know if your experience from back in the day is representative of now. Might be that new launches were more noticeable then since the network was a lot smaller and folks got excited, if nothing else.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 3:04
  • We weren't "excited" to see my question get migrated away from SO. More like irritated to have to keep track and visit yet another new site.
    – Joe R.
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 15:50
  • @FrankR. Not you. People who did the migrating. "Oh there's a new site that looks like a better fit, MIGRATE ALL THE THINGS".
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 15:54
  • Is there any chance my question could be migrated back to SO[Informix]? I feel it lost audience and feedback when it got migrated to DBA.
    – Joe R.
    Commented Jun 5, 2017 at 15:59
  • @FrankR. Nearly 5 years after it was posted? Not really. This boat has sailed, I'm sorry.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 21:19
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    I'd speculate Windows Phone to face closure eventually, despite graduation.
    – gerrit
    Commented Nov 1, 2019 at 15:07
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    @gerrit Yep, indeed.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Nov 17, 2022 at 19:05
  • 3
    Relevant: The Windows Phone SE site has been archived
    – V2Blast StaffMod
    Commented Nov 18, 2022 at 18:17

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