Pondering a 'better' model of site creation - can we encourage more generalist sites?

Question

While the most recent round of changes were meant to improve the chances of successful site proposals, I feel it's useful to revisit it.

We're past the point of rapid growth in site numbers - and a significant number of new sites seem to be related to cryptocurrency. While I'm not going to comment on the viability of these sites - to some extent, the current model tends to encourage specialised sites, with knowledge siloed out, and generally there's a lower chance of more generalist sites.

Fundamentally - our current model encourages niche sites (and from the occasional attempts at bootstrapping sites with puppet accounts - there's still a certain cachet to having a SE site), and there's a certain difficulty/unwillingness to propose more general sites - which might lead to both more quality Q&A as well as broader reach.

In some cases - the viability of a specialist site might not be dependent on interest - Windows Phone is currently a ghost town, not due to lack of enthusiasm by its fans, but rather because the parent company of the product killed it off. A more general site might be better for these.

While its a little late for a grand unified cryptocurrency or mobile-tech site - I wonder if there's areas of interest to the tech/SE community that we're not covering and if we could work out ways to build viable sites. Things like smart TVs and other appliances don't really have good homes on the network, and we're in an age where people might want to work out why their washing machine is uploading a gig of data a day.

For niche topics - at this point nearly anyone can spin up a small/private Q&A instance via Teams - could a viable site be proof of concepted there? While there's no migration, it would still prove the viability and show what sort of questions/scope might work.

Fundamentally - could the company and community identify generalist topics we can build new communities around - and figure out ways to cluster and direct niche communities to existing/shared resources to better meet their needs?

In a sense - could we change our model of community creation from staking a claim to building planned communities to help fill gaps in support?

Answer 1

I think your idea of using Teams to trial proposed sites is a good one. Initially, someone wanting a particular new site could start a Team and have up to 49 others join it at no cost or SE company effort. That could become (an option for) the Definition phase of the Timeline of a Stack Exchange site.

I think "right-sizing" any new sites is well worth the discussion. I have been surprised by the number of sites related to the flavors of cryptocurrency and would favor new sites being less granular than those.

Answer 2

Sorry for going on a little bit of a tangent, but I wanted to bring focus to a specific detail of your post, where you mention using Teams as a tool for creating a community proof-of-concept– I think this is absolutely an idea worth exploring. A Teams-esque model might be usable for building the community that's needed to sustain a new site, which is something that the current Area 51 model is not designed to do.

In the comments of the Area 51 changes post you linked, there's a comment to this regard:

It would be helpful to have answers or suggestions to the inevitable question: If I can't start building the community at Area 51, where and how could I create a community that I could bring here? This is a non-trivial question, as there typically is no sufficient pre-existing online community for the subject. – Joonas Ilmavirta

The same sentiment is echoed further down, on the top answer of that post by @curiousdannii (some emphasis mine):

I think it's interesting that Robert's post above focus so much on communities - the idea that a site proposal should be made with an existing community in mind is new to me, and none of the site launches I've been part of really had a true community before the site launched.

Fundamentally this is a problem because nothing in Area 51 is set up to foster community development. On launched sites communities develop through the Q&A process. But Area 51 is deliberately not a place where questions actually get answered. And you can't really use the Area 51 Discussion Zone to build a community either. [. . .]

The current model is built around bringing a community to Stack Exchange, rather than building it here. Teams, or something similar tailored for this purpose, could possibly fill this gap, which would be a huge deal, because it would allow new-site communities to be built and "trialed" on a platform that's already inside the Stack Exchange ecosystem, something that isn't currently practical on Area 51, or elsewhere on the Network. It would also help alleviate the disconnect between the fact that Area 51 provides no tools for community-building, but also requires a community to be built on a new site in order for it to succeed long-term.

Related to the thoughts here:

• Where should I start building the community for a new Stack Exchange site? – The answer given is basically "you don't," or at least not on SE; you need a preexisting group of enthusiasts to stand up a new site.