After the recent CM departures, are there plans to shut down network sites or Area 51?

Question

Yesterday, there were some major staffing changes, and the end result is that two long-time Community Managers, Shog9 and Robert Cartaino, are no longer with Stack Overflow, Inc. This seems to be a nonsensical move at a time when the Community Team is stretched thinner and thinner each day. Firing two of them would seem to be at odds with keeping the network healthy and functioning.

We haven't been able to get more than a cursory response from the company as to what the heck is going on. I've been able to formulate maybe a couple explanations where a move like this makes an ounce of sense. Foremost among them - and one that I think is in the front of the minds of many - is that the company needs fewer Community Managers going forward because there will be fewer communities to manage. Area 51 - where Robert was the guiding soul - could be formally shut down. Many of the smaller network sites could be at risk - after all, efforts to bring them out of beta or form new sites seem to have ground to a halt.

If this is the case, it would be nice to know. One thing I have yet to get an answer to from a CM is whether or not either Area 51 or network sites are at risk of being shut down. I'm not trying to be alarmist; I'd simply like to go to bed tonight feeling slightly more confident that I won't wake up to HSM or Mythology gone tomorrow. Other questions have addressed SO's broader goals and community management strategy, but I don't think anyone's explicitly asked the question:

Are there plans to shut down Area 51 or beta sites across the network?

If someone has, I can't find the answer. I wouldn't mind getting one. If I'm completely misreading things, I think a "no" should be easy enough to get, and I'd like to see it out in the open.

Update, April 14 2020

It looks like for the first time in about a year, a new site has entered private beta - Drones and Model Aircraft. This seems like a really promising sign. This doesn't necessarily indicate that Area 51 is here to stay for any long period of time, but it does mean that SO is not opposed to the creation of new sites.

Answer 1

TL;DR: We're not planning to shut down any SE sites. The future of Area 51 is still uncertain.

Last week the CM team met with Teresa, our new CPO, and we talked about what the future of the network looks like. The conversation started off with the understanding that shutting down SE sites was off the table. So, unless we stumble upon the usual reasons for shutting down a site — that is, if no one's willing to step up to help moderate it — everything will keep going as usual.

As Teresa noted in her blog post sharing the Q1 roadmap, we're working on our commitment to responding on MSO, MSE, and the Moderator Team. And as you point out, the CM team is a bit... leaner than usual: so most of our attention is going to SO and MSE for the time being. But once that commitment's been in effect for a while, I hope that we'll be able to define a similar type of commitment for the rest of the network too. That being said, this doesn't mean we'll stop paying attention to the network in the meantime — despite the sheer number of sites, they don't generate a proportional amount of work for the CM team, so we should be able to keep adding stuff to our backlog, and assisting the moderators and communities as our time permits.

Area 51 is a bit trickier... While shutting down healthy communities is off the table, we still need to make a decision on whether or not we're gonna be able to sustain new ones coming into existence. I know the launch of new sites has been somewhat declining over the years, but even so we're not sure of whether we can provide these new communities with the level of support new communities on the network have become accustomed to. Furthermore, none of the current CMs have touched Area 51, in a moderation capacity, in... maybe forever, really? We'll provide updates on this once we've made a decision.

Answer 2

I think the obvious answer is "Yes".

SE, as a company, is very clearly in the process of re-thinking their core competencies, in ways that make them attractive to investors. That was, after all, what the whole battle for inclusivity was about, and to some degree, why they took such radical action against Monica. There is a determined effort to

1. Prove the community is inclusive to everyone
2. Prove that SE is no longer elitist

This is both an effort to raise engagement numbers, and, i'm certain, to assuage worries that the community is toxic. Overall, the sentiment from the loop is that meta is no longer useful, and i'd expect to see it die in the next few months. The recent firing of community managers is another cost saving at the expense of the community move.

At a more "meta" level, you can see how the focus SE has shown recently is aimed at teams and their "core" site, stack overflow. The loop survey only wanted feedback from SO users, not the wider community. The recent hiring of a new CPO without as much as a whisper on their blog or meta, is a further hint that as a whole, SE has realized that all the side communities, not just meta, are neither profitable, nor useful to their long term goals.

In the search of profitability, I expect Area 51 to die, and soon all the minor communities that have experienced mod attrition. If not directly axing them, then letting them die on the vine from neglect, and then in a few months/years, axing them with the excuse that they're "not active enough".

EDIT: Some of the replies to the Dietrich question heavily support the idea that SEI is pivoting hard, and you should expect A51 and associated subsites to be at a minimum neglected.

Answer 3

I'm not capable of answering the question you want to hear answered, but I am capable of not stoking any more conspiracy theories.

I will state, though, I don't believe that it'd be a wise move to shutter the smaller sites.

I haven't been to Area 51 since Anime and Manga SE was pioneered, but it's often the case that people come to this site looking to create a community (when the inverse was always championed instead). So, it's understandable that the site's traffic is... not that high. It's also the case that the long-term sustainable engagement isn't high either, since...well, once the community you support is created, you don't have much impetus to hang around on Area 51 anymore.

To be blunt: Area 51 was a ghost town long before any of these changes started happening. The amount of staff engagement and community engagement never seemed to be all that high to begin with, and thus, this seems to be a natural progression for this site.

What would keep people on Area 51 is if there was constant compelling and engaging feedback and support for sites which are in beta or have launched centralized there. The tricky thing is, the CMs engage directly with the sites themselves once they're established - which is The Right Thing™ to do there anyway - and Area 51 is treated as the slightly burnt launch pad that the site once used to get off the ground and into its own orbit. So...there's not much reason to stick around and engage on that site, really.

Then we have to grapple with the harsh and fundamental reality. There's only one site on the network which drives the majority of revenue. If raising revenue is important, then the primary focus needs to be on that site as opposed to others.

I understand that Stack Exchange has committed to doing what they can for smaller sites, but that's not quite the same as having people explicitly working on or focused on those smaller sites.

However, the smaller sites on the network still have a place, and removing those sites would fly counter to what the official word from staff actually is.