How do I Re-open a Closed Proposal?

Question

We in the Selenium community were trying hard to get Selenium a dedicated site at Area 51.

Of late there was discussion about merging the Selenium proposal with a software testing proposal. There was great opposition from the Selenium community to merging with the more general software testing proposal.

We got notified today that the Selenium proposal has already been merged with the software testing one. Also that the Selenium proposal has been closed, which is very very sad.

We want to know -

1. When there was great discontent about the merge, why did the merge still happen?
2. How could we reopen the Selenium proposal?
3. If SE sites are all about openness then why was such an autocratic decision made?

Remember we already have Google-Groups for Selenium users which receives the highest amount of traffic for Selenium qs. The idea was to close Google-Groups once we had a dedicated Selenium area51 site.

When we don’t have a dedicated Selenium site, Google-Groups would also continue and there would be fewer questions on Selenium asked on the new merged site, or on any other site for that matter.

Refer to this discussion about the merge on Google Groups which shows how helpless we feel.

Answer 1

Remember we already have Google-Groups for Selenium users which receives highest amount of traffic for Selenium qs. Idea was to close Google-Groups once we have dedicated Selenium area51 site

Yeah... I think I know what's bothering you, and I'm afraid it comes down to a misconception about what Stack Exchange can be used for.

See, we don't really like to do product-support sites. That was an idea early on - prior to and during the SE 1.0 days - that ended up just not working out well. As the platform has evolved, it's become clear that running an effective site requires some careful management: the Q&A format works very well for some topics, and extremely poorly for others.

An example of something that doesn't work well is long-format discussion: we kinda allow this on the Meta sites, but it's - at best - a poor substitute for a proper forum. We actively discourage such questions on the main sites.

So setting up a site for a particular product, and then letting users of that product talk about... whatever... is a dangerous suggestion. We could easily end up with a really crappy forum / bugs database / social network instead of an awesome Q&A repository. Instead, the idea is to put together a community of expert users in a particular field and let them answer questions on topics germane to that field. Could browser automation be considered a "field"? Could Selenium alone be? Maybe...

But it doesn't appear that this was actually anyone's intention. Reading the posts in your Google Groups, the prevailing idea seemed to be that you were trying to do just what you stated above: shut down the groups and move everything over to SE. That's a bad idea for both of us!

• We can't import existing posts, or existing users. You just can't convert arbitrary threads into structured Q&A and expect it to work.

• We can't operate like a mailing list - so mailing-list users like Bob McConnell would be unhappy.

• We don't really have support for lengthy back-and-forth discussions - so it's unclear that this would even work for replacing the developer mailing list. (FWIW, it's telling that while the Area51 proposal did include "contributors" in the target audience, all the example questions are on usage.)

In short - for developer discussions, announcements, and other non-Q&A topics, you're probably best off staying in Google Groups rather than trying to hammer your square peg into the round hole that is SE. For questions on working with Selenium, we very much hope you'll find the proposed Testing and QA site a welcoming environment.

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I'm sorry if you feel ignored or otherwise offended by this decision. We're trying to create the best possible site for SQA engineer and testers, a place for sharing knowledge, and that includes knowledge of web automation software - just as it does desktop automation software. Yes, you'll be a small fish in a big pond relative to both the proposed site and your current situation... But that's kinda the point: you'll have room to grow, exposure to people who aren't currently Selenium users.

Answer 2

1. You've already asked this same question here and here. It makes life a lot easier for mods if we can answer in just one place versus three.

2. It's not like this was a surprise. Robert opened Expand Selenium to cover the field of Software Testing and QA? for discussion on 6 April.

3. You mentioned that same Google group half a dozen times on Robert's discussion—and again, it's not really relevant. If the people in that group want to make their opinions known on Area51 proposals, they have to do it on Area51. There's no way of knowing which of them will/won't ever use an SE site. If they can't be bothered to help out to make a site happen, then their opinions simply don't matter.

4. If the Google group members are happy being on Google groups—great! And whether they are or aren't, they're welcome to follow the selenium tag on sqa.stackexchange.com.

To answer your particular questions:

1. When there was great discontent about the merge, why merge still happened?
   It was clear that you were not happy with the idea. You not being happy ≠ "great discontent."

   And not that it's a vote per se, but Robert's suggestion (merge the "Selenium" proposal with the less tool-specific scope of "Software Quality Assurance) received 20 upvotes to 6 downvotes. I find it difficult to see 14 votes net for the merger as "great opposition" to it.

2. How could we reopen Selenium proposal?
   You already asked that question on Discuss.Area51, and that's probably the best place to keep it.

3. SE sites are all about openness then how such autocratic decision was taken?
   You not being happy about the result is not the same thing as "autocratic."

   You got three weeks to make your case, and you tried. At the end, it didn't appear that continuing to postpone the decision would make any difference.

Answer 3

I'm one of the people who's uncommitted to the Software Quality Assurance and Testing proposal after being forceably committed to it as a result of the merger of the proposals. I believe Selenium is broad enough to have a Q&A site of it's own, but if it's not, then I'm quite sure "browser automation tools" (including Watir, WatiN, HtmlUnit, and Selenium in the open-source space alone) is large enough to support it's own Q&A site. It is not necessarily true that "browser automation tools" == "software testing"; this is the point many in this discussion are missing, and was made far more eloquently than I ever could in this blog post. I've spent several days trying to calm down enough about the situation to provide a measured response to the (seemingly unilateral) merger. I've gotten past my anger about it; now I'm just sad. So much for, "We don't run [StackExchange], the community does."

Answer 4

Disclaimer: Just so you know, before reading question post, I didn't know what Selenium was or that it even existed.

When I first read your question, my thoughts were exactly like Ivo's (these guys want their own precious little site and don't want to share it with others). But after some more reading (the discussion on area51, the google groups, the link provided by JimEvans, ...) I think you guys actually have a point here, but it just is scattered around on all these places, and sometimes buried under the noise.

You might want to make a case here, clearly formulate your arguments against a merge on a central place (be it here or on the area51 discussion zone), so people don't have to dig for them.

For instance the argument brought up in the blog post JimEvans links to sais "Selenium is NOT a testing tool". Which I think is the best argument not to merge it, but I didn't see that argument anywhere else.