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Questions tagged [beta-sites]

For posts that are related to those Stack Exchange sites which are currently in beta phase.

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497 votes
15 answers
96k views

Congratulations to our 29 oldest beta sites - They're now no longer beta!

If you're a user on a long-toiling beta site that's been waiting 7-8 years to get out of beta, this may be the post you've been waiting for. The 29 Beta sites that are 7+ years old no longer have the ...
Catija's user avatar
  • 109k
409 votes
15 answers
19k views

Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites

Back in April of 2010, Joel shared our assumptions about the role of small sites in the newly minted Stack Exchange network: If a site does not have enough activity at the end of 90 days, it will be ...
Ana's user avatar
  • 6,195
218 votes
11 answers
27k views

Congratulations to the 59 sites that just left Beta

This is an exciting day for all of us who work on community here, and for the communities that have given thousands of hours of their time to build sites on the Stack Exchange network. Today, we are ...
Rosie's user avatar
  • 13.8k
135 votes
1 answer
1k views

Let's set better expectations for how long beta lasts

Back when the idea of beta sites was young, the expectation was that beta was a fairly quick process. Even now, Area 51 sets the expectation that 90 days is a good "start thinking about graduation" ...
Monica Cellio's user avatar
116 votes
4 answers
780 views

Beta sites should be in the Data Explorer

The Stack Exchange Data Explorer is a very nice and useful tool, but it has one very large drawback: Beta sites are not included at all. Excluding beta sites probably made a lot of sense when the ...
Mad Scientist's user avatar
106 votes
1 answer
3k views

The Real Essential Questions of Every Beta

The blog post Seven Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta gets linked to prominently from every beta's meta. However, this blog post is somewhat inaccurate and misdirects new users. In almost every ...
105 votes
8 answers
2k views

Should we rename or remove the "beta" label?

So there's news on SE's policies regarding beta sites and graduation. One important take-away was that perpetual beta status is definitely a thing, which doesn't have to mean the site isn't being ...
Martin Ender's user avatar
  • 5,184
105 votes
5 answers
5k views

Design-Independent Graduation is on for early September!

This is a follow-up to an earlier discussion Feedback Requested: Design-Independent Graduation. Like the title says, design-independent graduation will go into effect and become our new regular ...
Ana's user avatar
  • 6,195
104 votes
15 answers
6k views

Should introspection be encouraged in light of the new standards for graduation?

Summary With the introduction of new, simplified graduation requirements, we're preparing to shut down the venerable Community Eval review process. Years of waning participation, combined with a ...
Shog9's user avatar
  • 453k
104 votes
4 answers
3k views

Let's break up with "Graduation" and remove a bunch of "Beta" labels

Over two years ago now, we made a big shift in how we handle "graduation" - nearly severing the connection between "graduation" and site design. We also talked about removing the &...
Catija's user avatar
  • 109k
54 votes
1 answer
934 views

Did all sites just graduate?

Seems like all beta sites just lost the "Beta" status and have increased privilege requirements. I assume this is a bug, what happened here? Did a unicorn ate the wires again? Even though we at Code ...
Simon Forsberg's user avatar
51 votes
5 answers
533 views

Do not expire single use tags on Beta sites

Tags that have exactly one question are automatically pruned after six months, leaving their questions untagged, and their wikis orphaned. This is problematic on Beta sites, where it's not uncommon ...
yannis's user avatar
  • 56.3k
50 votes
2 answers
2k views

What is "Ask Patents" and why is it secret?

Looks like our SE overlords are about to launch a new Stack Exchange site - Ask Patents. I've been hinted at its existence by a user who committed to the (now closed) Software Law proposal on Area 51. ...
mindcorrosive's user avatar
44 votes
3 answers
965 views

Why is Code Golf & Programming Puzzles still in beta?

Checking Code Golf & Programming Puzzles Area51 profile page you can see that the page fulfills the requirements to graduate. Why is it still in beta?
Eduard Florinescu's user avatar
43 votes
11 answers
882 views

What should the criteria be for Stack Exchange sites to leave beta?

Today SE removed the "beta" label from 29 established sites, recognizing a need that has been plaguing many of our sites for years. Until today, under SE's rules there were two states: "graduated" if ...
Monica Cellio's user avatar
41 votes
3 answers
882 views

Did SE change its Q&A format to just-another-Internet-forum?

The “TL;DR” is at the bottom of this posting, which reads: So did SE change its Q&A policy, is Sound Design a failed beta, or are there just different rules there than on all other SE sites? ...
tchrist's user avatar
  • 12.9k
41 votes
4 answers
760 views

Are Stack Exchange 2.0 sites remaining in beta for too long?

One of the interesting things about Google is that they tend to have products in beta for a very long period of time, despite the fact that they for all purposes ceased to be a beta product some time ...
PearsonArtPhoto's user avatar
36 votes
2 answers
314 views

Allowing CSS customization of beta sites

One of the biggest challenges for a Beta SE site is attracting enough people to attain critical mass necessary for keeping the site productive. Whereas cosmetic appearance isn't nearly the most ...
yuttadhammo's user avatar
35 votes
1 answer
428 views

Stack Exchange beta sites have some dust on them

I was browsing around the exchange and noticed a speck of crud on my screen. Only, when I tried to wipe it off, it turned out to be part of the site. Have a look at some SE question between the &...
blahdiblah's user avatar
  • 16.3k
34 votes
1 answer
210 views

Can we hide the visitor stats until they're fixed?

As detailed in this question there is currently a network-wide issue impacting the visitor, views and visits statistics resulting mostly in zero amounts. Since this doesn't seem to have a quick fix—it'...
Helmar's user avatar
  • 3,573
33 votes
4 answers
856 views

Keeping dead beta sites as "archive sites"

This is not a duplicate of Keeping closed sites in suspended animation: a modest proposal because the main point of that is to allow for a process in Area 51 to "reopen" a closed site, while this one ...
Ephraim's user avatar
  • 3,108
33 votes
2 answers
333 views

Concern over the effects of 3-week private betas

In this post on Meta Hardware Recommendations (requires registration through A51 to see), Robert Cartaino tells us that the Stack Exchange team have decided to extend the private beta period to 3 ...
ArtOfCode's user avatar
  • 36.3k
31 votes
2 answers
454 views

What is the typical growth pattern of a new beta site in the first few weeks?

I've been involved with matheducators.stackexchange.com and a little bit with expatriates.stackexchange.com. I've noticed that both had very high activity during private beta and then about half as ...
Brian Rushton's user avatar
31 votes
5 answers
730 views

Strategies for handling beta community quality evaluations

Periodically, the Community Team will evaluate the quality of a beta site. In addition to examining general site traffic stats and Meta activity, we check the content quality by selecting 10 random ...
Grace Note's user avatar
  • 84.9k
31 votes
2 answers
246 views

Do the new graduation policies have any effect on migrations to Beta sites?

A little while back, Stack Exchange announced new policies related to graduation and site closure. In short, graduation is considered once a site consistently received 10 questions per day, sites get ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
  • 54.1k
30 votes
1 answer
178 views

Allow sites in Beta to be chosen for the Today's Featured Site

As described in How is the featured site chosen? - How is the featured site chosen? - It is a random selection from the list of graduated sites. Could we allow Beta sites to rotate as well ...
alecxe's user avatar
  • 1,305
29 votes
3 answers
1k views

What was it like being a GenAI.SE stakeholder?

For those who don't know, Generative AI Stack Exchange (now in public beta) was an initiative started by Stack Exchange here slightly over one month ago, and involved "stakeholders" (who ...
Rebecca J. Stones's user avatar
28 votes
2 answers
245 views

De-emphasising the beta designation by removing it from the banner on perpetual beta sites

I've lost count of the number of times I have had to reassure people that the site I help to moderate isn't going to just go away. The association between a site being labelled as "Beta" and an ...
Mark Booth's user avatar
  • 4,511
28 votes
3 answers
319 views

New beta style is much harder on my eyes; looking for CSS overrides to fix

The new beta theme has made some changes to text styling that I find much harder on my eyes. My vision isn't that great to begin with and beta sites, particularly metas, are a lot harder for me to ...
Monica Cellio's user avatar
28 votes
1 answer
310 views

It's been a year: What's the takeaway from design-independent graduation?

So by now it has been a year since Design-Independent Graduation has been announced "new process" In the "Feedback Requested" and the announcement of implementation Q&A there's been a lot of ...
Vogel612's Shadow's user avatar
28 votes
1 answer
1k views

How can we preserve Area 51 sites that get closed during the beta?

This is the second time I've been hit by an Area 51 site I got really involved in (Productivity.SE), being closed due to "not enough activity" (the first was Startups). Productivity.SE was ...
Dan Dascalescu's user avatar
27 votes
1 answer
535 views

Where have the site self-evaluations gone?

Many beta sites have gone more than 3 months without a self-evaluation. Italian Language: February Computer Science: February; next one scheduled for Aug 9 Reverse Engineering: February Cryptography: ...
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil''s user avatar
27 votes
1 answer
169 views

Can a beta site be re-promoted to its committers at its one-year anniversary?

Has the Community Team ever sent out a follow-up email, or SE-inbox message, to all committers who haven't been seen on the beta site for a few months, giving them an update on the site's growth, and ...
410 gone's user avatar
  • 6,698
26 votes
0 answers
171 views

In beta sites, link to Site Stats on Stack Exchange leads just to list of sites

Each beta site has such box in the right sidebar of the homepage: Expected behavior when clicking "stack exchange" is the list of sites displayed and auto scrolled to the relevant site, or ...
Shadow Wizard's user avatar
24 votes
3 answers
260 views

How exactly are Area 51 beta stats calculated?

How, exactly, are all the Area 51 beta stats calculated? For example:      This shows an answer ratio of 2.0. Yet, unless my query is broken, I couldn't get that number (even with today's freshly ...
Jason C's user avatar
  • 26k
23 votes
0 answers
206 views

Earth Science SE and Spanish SE have the same icon [duplicate]

The beta sites Earth Science and Spanish have the same icon. Icon of Earth Science: Icon of Spanish: They both have "ES" in a blue speech balloon. Can they please have different icons?
ProgramFOX's user avatar
  • 12.8k
22 votes
2 answers
461 views

Should we reconsider the requirements for making new cryptocurrency sites?

This post by Sara Chipps says that "Area 51 lifecycle" is one of the things that SE plans to work on in the next month (June 2021), but it's not clear what exactly is going to happen. ...
user1271772's user avatar
  • 6,770
22 votes
1 answer
182 views

Answer ratio trend stats for mods

Since the answer ratio (average number of answers per question) is one of the five health parameters mentioned in Area51 for beta sites, it would be great to have a historical trend graph for this ...
Sklivvz's user avatar
  • 36.4k
22 votes
2 answers
217 views

Why are site stats graph for beta sites not available to public?

Currently, on all beta sites, the current site stats is placed prominently on the front page, which is great for knowing how the site is currently doing. However, it doesn't say anything about the ...
nhahtdh's user avatar
  • 5,562
22 votes
0 answers
462 views

Why was the main criterion for graduation specifically chosen as 10 questions per day?

Prior to July 2015, site graduation was basically decided subjectively by the SE team, based on the site's Area 51 statistics and the capacity of the design team. From what I recall, it was basically ...
Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog's user avatar
19 votes
3 answers
536 views

Do some Stack Exchange sites have nicer cultures than others? How does one develop a positive culture in beta?

Do some Stack Exchange sites have nicer cultures than others? How does one develop a positive culture in beta and afterwards? What makes an SE culture decline in civility (even in long run, and ...
CoolHandLouis's user avatar
18 votes
3 answers
637 views

Beta site degrading in quality, per-site Meta discussion reveals that it's not perceived as a issue; what more can I do?

A beta site is slowly getting worse, in both questions and answers. The Meta for that site shows to me most users do not care about the quality of the site and would much rather focus on sillier ...
yuritsuki's user avatar
  • 3,952
18 votes
2 answers
309 views

What can be done to promote beta sites?

One of the problems that affect the users of beta sites is that they don't get enough views for their questions. So they post off topic questions on reputed SE sites. Usually, when I post a question ...
Hariprasad's user avatar
18 votes
0 answers
164 views

Allow suggested edits on beta site metas

There is a long standing ban on allowing suggested edits on per-site meta: Why can't I suggest edits on SE meta sites? I would like this relaxed on beta sites to allow broader participation to ...
bmike's user avatar
  • 8,511
17 votes
4 answers
710 views

Please tell me the beta footer is just for April Fools

Way to mess with my muscle memory! It's going back to normal tomorrow right? Right? Please?
Kate Gregory's user avatar
  • 75.1k
17 votes
3 answers
248 views

Can a beta site voluntarily recommend itself for closure?

If a site in beta seems to have taken a wrong turn somewhere and has serious issues in developing and retaining an active user base and community, Can the residual community somehow recommend the ...
Нет войне's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
141 views

Default election question about reaching 10k or 20k rep is inaccurate for sites with beta-level privileges

One of the default questions in election questionnaires is In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep? (source) That was ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 253k
17 votes
1 answer
137 views

Escaped line break tag in tooltip on election page

Over on Lifehacks (a beta site with the standard beta template) we're having an election. I just cast my votes and was presented this tooltip: Please fix the escaped line break tag so it either ...
Mooseman's user avatar
  • 13.6k
17 votes
1 answer
123 views

Does it makes sense to have the same graduation criteria for all beta sites?

Different SE sites cover a wide range of topics. And the thought process in generating a question is VERY different from one to another. In programming related sites, I can come up with many question ...
Camilo Rada's user avatar
17 votes
0 answers
142 views

Can communities come up with their own site design?

What if a formerly beta site itself (on the site meta) comes up with a temporary design and provides all the needed images in the required formats and resolutions? Would Stack Exchange consider such a ...
Timur Shtatland's user avatar

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