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Comments on What should happen with inactive communities?

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What should happen with inactive communities?

+9
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The level of activity of the communities vary. Some are more active than others, which isn't exactly a problem. However, I'm a bit worried when a community becomes significantly less active than others and there is little original content being created by the group proposing it1.

This can mean different things, for example:

  • the suggestors don't have any questions right now
  • the suggestors don't have much time right now
  • the suggestors aren't active (anymore)

What should be done in these cases? Should we just wait and let the site open? Should we train some monkeys to write questions? Should we "freeze" the site and provide the contents for download? Should we close it down?

What do you think?

  1. I'd consider a combination of these two phenomenons "significantly less active": low number of active or new non-contest non-meta top-level posts2 and few users, where most have just 1 reputation.

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+11
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What should be done in these cases? Should we just wait and let the site open? Should we train some monkeys to write questions? Should we "freeze" the site and provide the contents for download? Should we close it down?

Let it be.

The only real harm inactive sites are doing is to their own future. People come by, see that nothing is going on, mumble to themselves "Screw this", and don't come back.

That's a bad situation, and indicates a site was prematurely launched, or launched without proper commitment of the proposers. However, what harm is it really doing? It might build to something good over time. The upside might be small, but so is the downside.

About the only downside is that the existence of an inactive site prevents a proper launch of a similar active site. For example, it might be better in the long run to scrape away the existing Photography site, wait a few months, then launch a new Photography site for real, this time with real commitment and marketing. However, that seems way too heavy handed, at least at this point and in the absence of a group with a solid proposal to do it right.

So again, let it be. We've only been at this a few months. Even if it was ultimately decided to kill a site, it should be given substantially more time than that. The site's core group should also be given notice, present a plan for turn-around, and be given time to implement that plan. This is not something that should be done lightly, if ever.

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General comments
luap42‭ wrote over 3 years ago

This seems sensible. As long as there is no spam staying around (which the Codidact team can handle for now), we should let them. I definitely didn't intend to "go around and kill communities" :P, at least not without much discussion and many "Why is nobody here?" posts