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Previously I've already explained my worries about the future of Space.SE - now the end of public beta is about to come and according to Area 51 the site has good conditions.

Well, almost. Visits per day is too few, way below the expectations. Would it mean any trouble? Or is the site going to exist even if this criteria is not accomplished?

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    $\begingroup$ "atleast 90 days" writers is still in beta after 3 years $\endgroup$
    – user106
    Commented Oct 3, 2013 at 22:29
  • $\begingroup$ @RhysW Okay but I wasn't sure that the same may happen with other betas. I'm kinda new at Area 51 since new betas appear rarely. $\endgroup$
    – Zoltán Schmidt
    Commented Oct 3, 2013 at 22:30
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    $\begingroup$ no worries, just thought i'd let you know that 90 isnt a solid number, just the bare minimum, sites will stay in beta until the community managers decide they are ready or until the community managers decide they aren't good quality and will be shut down, which does happen, but extremely rarely $\endgroup$
    – user106
    Commented Oct 3, 2013 at 22:37

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Good news

Sites are allowed to remain in public beta indefinitely as long as they make steady progress. In the rare cases when sites have been closed, it's been because the number of people participating has dwindled away. That's certainly not the case for this site.

That said, now might be a good time to tell your friends (or anyone who might be interested) about the site.

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As can be seen from the Area 51 page, there are a lot of sites over 90 days old, in fact, the oldest are over 1000 days. That said, how do we stand so far?

First of all, I'm not a SE employee. That said, I'd say that this site is so far on a good path to sticking around for a while, I don't see it being closed anytime soon. We do need to keep up questions and answers, and invite more people here, etc, but we aren't in any immediate danger. Furthermore, there is a healthy community developing here, and our statistics except for page views look pretty good. Page views are the least important statistic for determining if a site will remain opened, so we should be good for now.

That being said, I don't think we are going to leave public beta anytime soon. Most sites don't leave public beta for an ever increasing amount of time, and as mentioned, there are sites with 3 years in public beta. I've asked the question as to if sites are staying in public beta too long, and Jeff gave a pretty decent answer. The bottom line is, they look for a kind of runaway growth in the site before they will take a site out of beta. And even at that, when the decision is made to leave beta, it seems that it takes several months at least until the site can be designed. Graphic Design was promised on August 6 that they were on the short list to launch fully, but they still haven't. Thus, even if Stack Exchange decides we are ready at 90 days, it'll probably be at least 3 months before we would graduate and become a full site, maybe more, just due to resources.

Stick around though, it's a good group;-)

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  • $\begingroup$ I think becoming a full site is just partially important. I can absolutely accept if we are going to stay in beta even for years. $\endgroup$
    – Zoltán Schmidt
    Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 12:54
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    $\begingroup$ See my answer on MSO meta.stackexchange.com/a/112838/155668 $\endgroup$
    – PearsonArtPhoto Mod
    Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 12:55

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