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The main reason I launched my Q+A site is because, if Area 51 had their druthers, they would have fragmented the community into five niches: machine learning (
by bravura 16y ago
The main reason I launched my Q+A site is because, if Area 51 had their druthers, they would have fragmented the community into five niches:
machine learning (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-learning http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-learn...)
NLP (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-language-processing-and-computational-linguistics-nlp-cl http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-langu...)
statistical analysis (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-ana...)
data mining (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4229/data-mining http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4229/data-mining)
AI (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-intelligence http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-in...)
This niching is completely wrongheaded. As I wrote in a comment on this blog post, the last thing we need is for ML people, NLP practitioners, and statisticians to communicate less. The fact that these groups attend different conferences is a BUG not a feature. My site was designed so that these adjacent fields can crosspolinate information.
As we’ve learned from StackOverflow, it’s better to pick a broad topic and have a lot of experts in one place, communicating and helping with each other’s problems.
- ErrantX 16y agoAs we’ve learned from StackOverflow, it’s better to pick a broad topic and have a lot of experts in one place, communicating and helping with each other’s problems Yeh, solid point. All the current sites are highly active because of their broad domain overview.
- spolsky 16y agoI don't think that it's a foregone conclusion that Area51 generates niche sites, just because it generates niche site proposals. I for one believe that it's the big blockbuster stackoverflow-size sites that will actually make it to the end of the Area 51 process and will actually get created. And, if I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet against StackOverflow's monthly 7 million users. In fact I would be betting on the statistics Stack Exchange site launching in the next couple of weeks and getting critical mass very very quickly.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- blasdel 16y agoNot without an existing community to build off of you won't. You'll fail miserably. The people in the Area51 proposals are generally meeting there for the first time — they didn't know each other already. MetaOptimize is building on top of an existing well-targeted community like MathOverflow did. Really, just like you did originally with your and Jeff's blog communities. AskMetafilter is successful because it was an outlet for an existing community — it wasn't attempt to start a new one. Area51 is scavenging small clumps of people that happen to overlap with your existing main sites. That your sites are so QA-focused makes it very difficult for an actual community to grow within it — there's no outlet for chat and friend-making, for fucks sake even your moderation site is the same QA format! At least you've integrated it a bit more so that Meta isn't a completely separate community with it's own account system…
- TalGalili 16y agoI also wonder when will they incorporate more "social network" features into SO. I feel how it is needed...
- kunjaan 16y ago>if Area 51 had their druthers, they would have fragmented the community into five niches I agree. I would see these new stackexchange clones every other day at /r/machinelearning. It would have hurt the ML community if all of the sites started competing for eyeballs. Anyway thanks a lot for the initiative. I wish you all the best.