What (if anything) positive can we salvage from a sad situation?
In particular: Area 51 attracted a bunch of users who are still completely unaware of cs.se.
if it is really true, as @GraceNote claims, that os.se was competing against cs.se and so, then shouldn't cs.se be attractive to those users if they knew it existed?
my suggestions to WL, nominate as "outreach coordinator". (mods are rather busy for this stuff, & gilles already proactively working to migrate good questions)
(fyi, not all chat rooms are public. there are mod-related ones etc.)
WL you can invite users into a chat room. have you used that feature? its a bit obscure. you have to be currently in the chat room & then look up the (chat) user, & then a button appears on their chat profile.
area51 failures really are not very uncommon. its too bad there isnt a simple browsable history of this somewhere. but ofc se doesnt really want to make it all that visible...
no question area51 functions like a limbo "no mans land" at times... criticism of it/ frustration with it quite legitimate...
lets face it though, bottom line, its really precisely reflecting the substantial difficulty of forming engaging/ "sticky" online interest groups...
speaking of "limbo" have you ever noticed how many se groups are "still" in beta, for long periods?
For some reason the majority of people who participated in the os.se private beta seem to have had an easy time finding the Area 51, but (seem to be) completely unaware of the existence of cs.se. (Despite postings during the commitment phase.)
My real question is "how did they find the Area 51 proposal?"
Because if we knew that, and could replicate it, we could help them find the appropriate site they should have found in the first place.
yes it is interesting how area51 definitely brings/ reveals different talent/ interests & shows that maybe the se groups have significant/ potential but "not comfortable" minorities aka "lurkers"...
@WanderingLogic we can improve the tagging. There are still few enough questions for that (unlike SO where it's a lost cause). As our (CS.SE) resident OS expert, I nominate you to make a proposal on meta.
> 224 users committed > 57.6% signed up for beta > 0% fulfilled commitment
people are "merely" clicking on area51 "commit" buttons to signal, roughly, "yes, like this idea, want others to build it for me & then will browse it"...
presumably this is not a communication problem. se sends out emails when it starts private beta right?
WL did you get an se email announcement when beta started?
@vzn Ummmm. Well, yes, but I didn't actually see it in my email box. I only realized the private beta started when i happened to visit Area 51 a couple days later.
Using Area 51 for good instead of evil
Using Area 51 for good instead of evil