Glad you noticed! We must be doing something right =)
Every once in a while, an Area 51 proposal comes around that we think deserves a little extra help. That turned out to be the case for BPS&A, which had a few interesting things going for it:
- It is one of the rare technical proposals driven largely by a community outside the Stack Overflow audience.
- It covers a topic in a growing field dominated by "closed" and user-unfriendly mailing
lists and forums.
- It has an active proposal owner who reached out via Contact and made a convincing appeal for help. It was clear he and his community deserve it.
This criteria for network advertisement isn't set in stone. We are aware that Area 51 has its shortcomings, and we're working to improve the community building process to ensure strong and smart sites launch into private beta. This is just one small experiment in pursuit of that goal.