It's hard to imagine how it could survive. Even the Startups site (supposedly) didn't meet the StackExchange criteria because it only averaged 4.9 questions/day:
StackExchange replaced Q&A sites that were completely backward in their approach (eg. requiring signups to see answers), but StackExchange itself is becoming a little bit backward. Questions that might involve some healthy discussion rather than a straightforward answer get shut down too easily, and they forfeit decent sites (eg. Startups, after 3 years!) just because they didn't meet some arbitrary minimum activity criteria. The data dump download doesn't even work, so now there's just a tonne of information that people contributed which is lost.
(edit: data dump download actually does work, but it's still such a waste to discard the momentum, Google indexing, etc.)
I think comparing it to the startups one is a good example of why it could work. There are plenty of places to go to get information about startups. The places you can go to get information about government policies/procedures/etc… is a lot like searching for Q&A sites that were completely backward in their approach.
You could argue there's not a big enough audience… but I think the utility of it is there.
Now... I actually agree that we can do more to help with questions that are less black and white. It's harder than it sounds - being a little rigid, and downright intolerant of questions that descend into religious debate "which language is better overall?" is a key part of what makes SO and our other sites work. But, I completely agree that we could probably do more to help more with a lot of more subjective or nuanced questions, and we're devoting a lot of energy to figuring out how to do so without undermining what's working well today. In summary, I agree with your point. :)
As to Startups, the main issue wasn't just questions per day. We have a lot of sites with less activity that we think are doing really well for their communities.
Re: B&W <-> Religious debate spectrum, I agree with you. You don't want to host arguments, but the current approach is a bit overly rigid. The "which X is better?" is a question that probably should be shutdown, but "what are the differences or strengths of X versus Y?" is a question that hopes to be objective, might have higher-than-normal risk of descending into a debate (but won't necessarily), and from what I've seen, will probably get closed. I suggest tolerating such threads until they show signs of devolving.
Re: Startups issue, in that case, the Area 51 page for Startups is wrong. It says:
"This site has been Closed
...
This proposal didn't have enough activity during the beta."
Your thesis is that "StackExchange itself is becoming a little bit backward", but the statements you use to back that up have been part of Stack Exchange from the beginning. Also, the things you point out that are 'broken' are part of the formula that makes the network succeed.
Stack Overflow was not built for discussion. The FAQ says: "Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers." I understand that you may want those types of questions to exist there, but that's not the original purpose of Stack Overflow. (Sidenote: different sites, depending on their topic or maturity do allow more open ended questions, but I believe you may be referring to 'closing questions' on Stack Overflow). I sympathize with this point though because I believe that there are probably a class of questions that could exist on SO, that are currently closed, but may need to be treated in a different way than normal Q&A.
Your second point about closing sites that aren't working is also intentional. Some of your complaint was about the fact that the data dump was not available, which was actually not true. It's also intentional that the data dump exists so that if we decide the site is not a good fit for our goals, everyone else can still reuse that data ( i.e. http://www.brightjourney.com/ ) This might be related to your first complaint which boils down to 'It's not hurting anyone, why not just leave it there?' The answer to that is more complicated than I can summarize here, but there are many different things that go into making a successful community, and one of them is defining what 'successful' (and 'not successful') means. And there is a process for dealing with 'not successful' which is transparent. The criteria is not arbitrary. It's reasoned.
I understand that it's intentional and what StackExchange perceives as being necessary, appropriate, etc.
The problem is that this approach is under-serving the needs of StackExchange's users.
I don't think that SE needs to be transparent here. It's up to you guys to decide how you want to run your site. I just think the current approach will result in the success of competitors that are less trigger-happy on shutting down questions.
In what way does the data dump download not work? I'm no one who can fix it, but I'm curious if you have any more details which might shine more light on what could be a serious issue in need of fixing (given my understanding of the commitments made by the StackExchange folks, though I may not be up to date there).
Apologies - Chrome was initially giving me an error (I don't recall which type, except that it was suggesting visiting sstatic.net instead) when I was trying to download it.
Startups wasn't shut down because of the number of questions per day. There are no hard rules for that, and some sites launched with fewer than 5 questions/day.
The Area 51 page certainly makes it look like it was shut down for that reason. It says it didn't have enough activity, and provides a summary of the activity that is all "Excellent" except for questions per day, which "Needs Work".
Perhaps it was shut down for another reason, but that's definitely not how the Area 51 page makes it look.
Comments
It's hard to imagine how it could survive. Even the Startups site (supposedly) didn't meet the StackExchange criteria because it only averaged 4.9 questions/day:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6243/startup-busin...
StackExchange replaced Q&A sites that were completely backward in their approach (eg. requiring signups to see answers), but StackExchange itself is becoming a little bit backward. Questions that might involve some healthy discussion rather than a straightforward answer get shut down too easily, and they forfeit decent sites (eg. Startups, after 3 years!) just because they didn't meet some arbitrary minimum activity criteria. The data dump download doesn't even work, so now there's just a tonne of information that people contributed which is lost.
(edit: data dump download actually does work, but it's still such a waste to discard the momentum, Google indexing, etc.)
I think comparing it to the startups one is a good example of why it could work. There are plenty of places to go to get information about startups. The places you can go to get information about government policies/procedures/etc… is a lot like searching for Q&A sites that were completely backward in their approach.
You could argue there's not a big enough audience… but I think the utility of it is there.
Disclaimer: WORK THERE. BIASED.
Now... I actually agree that we can do more to help with questions that are less black and white. It's harder than it sounds - being a little rigid, and downright intolerant of questions that descend into religious debate "which language is better overall?" is a key part of what makes SO and our other sites work. But, I completely agree that we could probably do more to help more with a lot of more subjective or nuanced questions, and we're devoting a lot of energy to figuring out how to do so without undermining what's working well today. In summary, I agree with your point. :)
As to Startups, the main issue wasn't just questions per day. We have a lot of sites with less activity that we think are doing really well for their communities.
Re: B&W <-> Religious debate spectrum, I agree with you. You don't want to host arguments, but the current approach is a bit overly rigid. The "which X is better?" is a question that probably should be shutdown, but "what are the differences or strengths of X versus Y?" is a question that hopes to be objective, might have higher-than-normal risk of descending into a debate (but won't necessarily), and from what I've seen, will probably get closed. I suggest tolerating such threads until they show signs of devolving.
Re: Startups issue, in that case, the Area 51 page for Startups is wrong. It says:
"This site has been Closed ... This proposal didn't have enough activity during the beta."
Your thesis is that "StackExchange itself is becoming a little bit backward", but the statements you use to back that up have been part of Stack Exchange from the beginning. Also, the things you point out that are 'broken' are part of the formula that makes the network succeed.
Stack Overflow was not built for discussion. The FAQ says: "Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers." I understand that you may want those types of questions to exist there, but that's not the original purpose of Stack Overflow. (Sidenote: different sites, depending on their topic or maturity do allow more open ended questions, but I believe you may be referring to 'closing questions' on Stack Overflow). I sympathize with this point though because I believe that there are probably a class of questions that could exist on SO, that are currently closed, but may need to be treated in a different way than normal Q&A.
Your second point about closing sites that aren't working is also intentional. Some of your complaint was about the fact that the data dump was not available, which was actually not true. It's also intentional that the data dump exists so that if we decide the site is not a good fit for our goals, everyone else can still reuse that data ( i.e. http://www.brightjourney.com/ ) This might be related to your first complaint which boils down to 'It's not hurting anyone, why not just leave it there?' The answer to that is more complicated than I can summarize here, but there are many different things that go into making a successful community, and one of them is defining what 'successful' (and 'not successful') means. And there is a process for dealing with 'not successful' which is transparent. The criteria is not arbitrary. It's reasoned.
Joel Spolsky elaborates on this in the following talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpGA2fmAHvM
(I work for Stack Exchange.)
I understand that it's intentional and what StackExchange perceives as being necessary, appropriate, etc.
The problem is that this approach is under-serving the needs of StackExchange's users.
I don't think that SE needs to be transparent here. It's up to you guys to decide how you want to run your site. I just think the current approach will result in the success of competitors that are less trigger-happy on shutting down questions.
In what way does the data dump download not work? I'm no one who can fix it, but I'm curious if you have any more details which might shine more light on what could be a serious issue in need of fixing (given my understanding of the commitments made by the StackExchange folks, though I may not be up to date there).
Apologies - Chrome was initially giving me an error (I don't recall which type, except that it was suggesting visiting sstatic.net instead) when I was trying to download it.
Startups wasn't shut down because of the number of questions per day. There are no hard rules for that, and some sites launched with fewer than 5 questions/day.
The Area 51 page certainly makes it look like it was shut down for that reason. It says it didn't have enough activity, and provides a summary of the activity that is all "Excellent" except for questions per day, which "Needs Work".
Perhaps it was shut down for another reason, but that's definitely not how the Area 51 page makes it look.