My option is that the site life cycles are somewhat broken. *Communities* are too and need help.

Originally there was a focus on growing these smaller communities - AKA Stack Exchange 2.0 and the associated projects, such as team [CHAOS][1], and having dedicated, fairly engaged staff across the company on many of these sites.

Unfortunately the choices that were made – a rather strong focus on SO adjacent products – ended up meaning most of the smaller sites got neglected for years.


In addition, Communities have had a *lot* of damage done to them over time by choices made by the folks who run the company over time. Healthy communities need commitment, care and work. In addition to *neglect*, we've lost/had people driven away who were good at *running* these communities.

While to an extent communities have been resilient the sum total of this is the core of many communities have gotten gutted, and fixing this hasn't been a priority. And this means outside a few hardcore people remaining, a lot of communities have not recovered from traumatic events, or people have simply drifted away.

I'd say (optimistically) it'll take a few years of some degree of dedication–no getting distracted by the next shiny object, and downsizing of community centric staff to make profit margins look nicer to make a dent on it.


  [1]: https://pvm-professionalengineering.blogspot.com/2011/08/chaos-team.html