Tavern on the Meta

10:25 PM

Didn't there used to be a Stack Exchange site for startups?

John Dvorak

there did

was it deleted?

Lame!

The content there was really useful

Ridiculous! It shouldn't be deleted, it is way above the bar from other exchanges.

Like communitybuilding.stackexchange.com, which generally produces very questionable subjects anyway, like how to poison who cities.

12k users, 1.2 questions per day, 91% answer accept rate. Way above more than a dozen other sites.

@Shog9 - What is the process for appealing the closure of Startups?

@TravisJ twice

@TravisJ AFAIK, there ain't one

10:41 PM

The original one's stats were even more impressive

18k users, 4.9 questions per day, 98% answer accept rate

wtf....

That would be like closing code golf... or anime... it makes absolutely no sense.

user315433

@TravisJ The original one got imported in brightjourney.com which subsequently died like fish out of water.

@FTP What is your point? There is no user base there of course it would fail.

user315433

That it had some viability at first was due to someone being able to crack gravatar hashes in the dump and invite existing users to the new site.

Let's just leave it at it had no viability at brightjourney.

Stack exchange has millions of users, brightjourney had no chance.

user315433

Okay, forget brightjourney.

user315433

10:51 PM

Nobody wanted to moderate Startups.

user315433

So they got the death notice which is pretty similar to the one Productivity has now.

Q: Personal Productivity Stack Exchange will be closing on March 6th

It was closed 2 months ago, was there an election near that time?

user315433

We recently opened a call for new moderators to step up and help lead this site, which was met with a few upvotes and a lot of tumbleweeds rolling by. Given the non-existent interest there, we were forced to look more closely at the health of this site and whether this community is suitable to co...

user315433

(Of course, I can't link to the Startups version of that as it's offline)

user315433

@TravisJ It was a beta, no elections. A CM put up a call for volunteers. There weren't any.

10:53 PM

I would have moderated it to keep it open :(

Is that what happened to the first version as well?

Are meta posts included in the data dump from area51?

user315433

@TravisJ See web.archive.org/web/20171210234643/https://…

user315433

I think someone from here submitted it to Wayback. I should do the same with the Productivity post.

user315433

And yes, meta is a part of the data dump.

user315433

First startups trajectory was more or less the same, although at the time I was inclined to guess that Joel (who was active in v1) got annoyed with something there.

user315433

Startups v1 was an imported site, originally answers.onstartups.com (sad panda). The site onstartups.com still exists outside of SE.

11:02 PM

An imported site? You mean the original questions and answers did not come from Stack Exchange users?

user315433

I think it was SE 1.0 site, started elsewhere using SE software and then migrated.

user315433

But for most of its life it was an SE network site.

user315433

Original launch announcement: Answers.OnStartups: Community Q&A For Startup Entrepreneurs

user315433

So... how will all that knowledge (Startups v1, Startups v2, Productivity) fare in the post-SE internet?

What a shame all of that content is essentially wiped from the internet.

user315433

11:07 PM

Yes, a zip file and the quantum foam of shady mirror sites

I did download the dump, so it is available by some pretty specific inspection.

But still, google will never find it for example.

user315433

Is there a non-shady SE mirror site?

Hm? You mean for the data dump?

user315433

There are all those scrapers mirroring SE pages to get search traffic.

user315433

Sometimes within the license scope, sometimes not.

11:09 PM

Oh, I see, a non shady scraper? Nope. Not that I have seen.

They all just grab all they can get and remove all the credit or attempt to internalize the credit from what I have observed.

I have probably reported 4 of them using the contactus form

user315433

So... nobody has a post-SE strategy for knowledge preservation. :(

user315433

Theoretically, anyone can put up the content at least a static HTML pages. In practice... maybe someone already did, we wouldn't know.

Yup, and even if someone wanted to, a third party benefactor, they would need explicit permission to do so as it could constitute plagiarism and a violation of the cc with attribution if it is not possible attribute to an existing location.

No it wouldn't. As long as you keep the usernames with the post, that's attribution enough for the CC license.

Well at least you explained the why of it, but still, it is saddening to see that happen. There should be more warnings for a site, like a hit to the global inbox of every 200+ rep user, if it is going to be shut down.

11:21 PM

You can repatriate content as much as you want; the Open Science beta that closed has done that, to ask-open-science.org

@ArtOfCode - Skeptical.

@TravisJ trust me, I do this a lot

@TravisJ that isn't organic though.

It's true, it isn't.

But then again, why even post if you are going to let it organically die?

If an exchange is going to be deleted, whispering into a dark corner isn't exactly an attempt at making a change.

Cause a healthy community has sustained interest.

At least a small core set of users willing to moderate

11:28 PM

Their main moderator needed some time off and the site was deleted.

See 'main moderator' in itself is a problem

Not all sites are composed of community members who are familiar with the style of moderation expected at Stack Exchange.

To me, it had potential, and it is a waste to delete content like that.

user315433

@JourneymanGeek Those things are true for a finite time period. One may be willing to moderate, but not for the lifetime.

That means you have two other mods who lost interest

Now we are getting into the whole who watches the watchman thing.

Who ensures Moderators actually do their job?

11:32 PM

@FTP hence core set. It can change

A moderator was inactive for a year and no one appointed a new one.

@TravisJ there's a whole meta on that

@TravisJ in theory the mods and CMs

Unfortunate to blame the community for a mod or CM failure.

user315433

The ever-shrinking and overstretched Community team... unpaid mods who didn't sign up to handle flags until their dying day.

But communities can handle many of these things. You primarily need mods for more unusual situations

@FTP .... I thought they get paid....

Mods? That's about all we're essential for.

@TravisJ the mod replacement process is mostly moderator initiated

And ya - that's a situation where it breaks

@FTP well,it wasn't as shrunk then?

user315433

11:50 PM

At least one person has post-SE content strategy: George A. Duckett

user315433

Hm. Searching for "George A Duckett startups" I find that this book was available on Amazon and in other places but... was removed everywhere.

Heh. I knew it was the books guy.