43

We've learned a lot by creating these per-site blogs for any site which asked for them. However, we at Stack Exchange have not been doing enough to make blogs work - neither for the contributors nor for the communities that are associated with them.

On our network, any site will have generated some amount of valuable content; it's what we’re set up to do. But ours is a platform that promises an engaging community, one that responds. We strive to eliminate those cases wherein someone finds a question they need solved, only to discover that it was posted 4 years prior with no response. This is why we shut down sites in private beta, and even public beta. Blogs aren't Q&A, but the spirit remains the same - a blog with content but no updates is a promise unfulfilled by our network.

Right now, out of the 22 community blogs on the Blog Overflow system, only 10 have posted within this year, only 4 of which were within the past 3 months. 6 more posted something most recently within 2013, and the remaining 6 posted last in 2012. This has caused the image of the blogs on our network, internally and externally, to be viewed as inactive and disused in general, drowning out those few who remain dutifully active.

Much of this is our fault: we never successfully integrated blogging into the normal experience of asking and answering questions. We may someday find a way to do this, but it won’t be tomorrow - and it’s not fair to anyone to keep encouraging participation in a broken system; their efforts would be better served finding ways to share their knowledge on the main sites.

Many thanks to everyone who participated in this experiment thus far - I do believe we’ve all learned something along the way. Existing blogs will continue to be hosted and supported as long as doing so is feasible, but no new ones will be created.

7
  • 1
    @Raff It's actually been in effect since May, but all the announcements were just quiet notes in chat when I was asked, or the deal on Meta Math. This post will make it easier to communicate the changes for future inquiries.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Dec 1, 2014 at 20:17
  • Sad.... But at least, a [correct] thing to do.
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 18:45
  • What would be the correct forum to discuss blogging in a way that works with the format of stack exchange? I have some ideas that could work, at least for one of the stacks I frequent.
    – Tritium21
    Commented Apr 22, 2015 at 2:15
  • @Tritium21 Discuss plans on your site's meta, probably, since that's the way to talk amongst the folks within that stack. Feel free to toss me a link here and I can weigh in on any thoughts as well - we're still looking into thoughts on better integration and so hearing new ideas is always helpful.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Apr 22, 2015 at 5:10
  • @GraceNote I just challenged to Magento SE Community to a vibrant discussion on how we might contribute to helping figure out a way to integrate the blog experience into the broader SE ecosystem through a self-directed attempt at a community-driven blog. Literally just posted the Question, but wanted to give you the heads up. meta.magento.stackexchange.com/questions/659/… Commented Aug 24, 2015 at 11:25
  • 2
    Hi Grace. You might want to take this (now incorrect) blog post down: blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow - or put a notice at the top "no more per-site blogs, only ones already created will exist" etc :)
    – James
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 23:52
  • A link to the followup announcement from 2017: We will no longer be hosting Blog Overflow
    – V2Blast Staff
    Commented Jun 8, 2022 at 16:40

2 Answers 2

12

I think this announcement be posted to the SE blog well as any other affected (archived) blogs. Perhaps an excerpt with a link to this question would be suitable.

2
  • 4
    I'll be updating the original announcement to reflect this change. We aren't archiving any blogs or anything, at least not yet - we're simply halting the creation of new blogs.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Dec 1, 2014 at 20:12
  • 1
    @GraceNote did you update that announcement? Or have you started accepting blogs again?
    – muru
    Commented Jun 18, 2015 at 12:47
1

Don't know if it counts as an answer, but I agree with you. Except for MSE blog, I didn't see any value in blogs. For me, those blogs announcements look like... someone starts a thought and begins to discuss it with himself. There can be discussion about anything that is related to the topic of this site but doesn't fit QA format. But why do we need it? If there are some real questions within it, they could be reworded to fit rules of asking and asked directly on the SE site, not their blog. Even If someone really wants to start such a discussion within SE... we have a chat!

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .