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This answer can be considered semi-official. It's a mix of "what we currently appear to be doing" and "how I'd want it do be".

1. There is a [site suggestion category here on Meta](https://meta.codidact.com/categories/10), where everyone with a community can **suggest a new site** by using the [proposal] tag. If you have a nice idea but no community and you want to do some kind "interest-check", there is the [idea] tag for you. Your proposal should contain stuff like some statement defining the scope, a site name, where you got a community from and whether the community will need something special.

2. These proposals can be **voted on** by other users, who like (or dislike) the proposal. Comments and answers can be used to **discuss** the merits and details of the community. *Potential community members are asked to join in there, so that we can estimate, how many people support a proposal.*

3. At the same time, the Codidact team will initially review the proposal and look, whether it is viable at all or whether there is some reason, we can't host such a community. If the proposal seems to have merit, it'll get a [status-definition] tag, otherwise it becomes [status-declined] with an explanation of the reasons.

4. Proposals with a [status-definition] tag will be continously reviewed by the team. When we see, that all major questions before launch (see below) are resolved and that a large-enough community[^1] is there to give it a try, we'll change the tag to [status-planned]. If there are still open issues, we'll probably comment here and there to start some useful discussions.

    There is no time-limit for the definition phase, but we'll probably slap [status-declined] on some posts that have been in definition for a few months. :)

5. Once the proposal is planned, we'll consider the last details (mostly URLs, logo and primary header color). If there are suggestions from the community, we'll take them into account, too.

6. Once this internal process is finished, we'll launch this site. As all of our devs are volunteers (and only few people have access to the production systems), this might take some time. Once done, we'll edit the post to link to the new site and add a [status-launched] tag to the suggestion.

The questions communities *need to* answer are:

* site name (ex. Cooking or Writing, not potential brand names)
* site scope -- what's on- and off-topic (only overview, details will be clarified later in the meta category)
* special features needed (more categories, MathJax, Syntax highlighting, ...)[^2]

These questions *can but needn't* be clarified before launching. If they aren't, we'll make preliminary decisions:

* URLs (X.codidact.com)
* logo ideas
* who should be the initially appointed moderators


[^1]: Factors we take into account are mostly count of users engaging at the proposal (should be around or more than 10) and count of site "kickstarters" (should be at least 2-3).
[^2]: If this needs some development time, the launch might be delayed. If it's too complex, we'll probably ask, whether it can be deferred until after launch.