5

We are now almost at day 90 of our beta period, at there are no signs that this site will be shut down. Other sites "graduated" to a full site around days 90-110, depending on the pressure on Jin, the designer, to create a new look and feel for each site. This means we can expect to graduate at the end of November.

We can try to get some media attention then, or we could wait two weeks and time our graduation to coincide with the release of WordPress 3.1, planned for December 15.

Would this be a good idea? Imagine we can start on the day WP 3.1 is released, with some good questions (and answers!) about new features in 3.1, from people who participated in core development? On top of that, we also announce the 20(?) of the top 100 plugin authors who commit to do most of their support here?

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
2

I don't see how there is anything to be gained by tying the graduation of Wordpress.SE with the launch of Wordpress 3.1. There's no connection or linkage between the two events. But I'm open to ideas how a connection could be made.

The Ubuntu site launched on 10/10/10 because Canonical/Ubuntu community came to us with the support, community, and the partnership to push the site and promote it as part of a well-publicized launch event. It was a grass-roots effort and they made it happen. The Wordpress internet community at large hasn't really mustered up that type of support, yet. But that would be cool.

The "worrying" rating can be improved with more users and more voting and participation. Everyone has 30 votes per days to spend on their site. You have to use it.

Everything else looks look good. December 15th is about five weeks away. We haven't set launch dates out that far but, all things being equal, Wordpress.SE is about 7-10th in place of being launched. But that depends on the growth and progress of the site.

Blog post: When Will My Site Graduate?

1
  • The connection could be just the marketing gag. Just hype it out, the cheerleading will be there for free when WP comes out. Just release a bit early and blow all horns.
    – hakre
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 10:19
1

Not sure about timing release (that kinda depends on higher powers)... It would be nice but not especially important.

But I it is totally great and logical idea to have "What are new features and changes in version x.x?" answered in best possible way (probably as community wiki). Not only for 3.1 but for every release in the future.

This is exactly information that people need, search for and that rarely gets covered in really deep and thorough way.

0

I see this as a good idea to draw some extra attention to this site. I think the Ubuntu site did the same thing on 10/10/10. Don't know whether it was effective in gaining attention that day, but the timing was certainly right. So it would be for this site!

1
  • 1
    I'm still not sure rapid growth is a virtue, especially if we get lots move activity from people asking questions than answering them. I launched a company once and we grew 1750% over 5 years and looking back that level of growth was one of the worst things that could have happened to us. Frankly right now I'd rather not see it launch sooner than later for fear of getting overrun by too many unanswered questions in the short term. Of course maybe I'm missing something, so if I am I'm all ears.
    – MikeSchinkel Mod
    Commented Nov 9, 2010 at 8:58
0

Hi @Jan Fabry:

Based on our avid user stats on Area 51 I'm currently don't think we'll be "ready" in the eyes of StackExchange by then.

WordPress Answers Public Beta Status as of day 88

My guess is that we are likely to see ourselves in beta for quite a while, maybe even another 90 or even 150 days given it's taken 88 days to reach 55 avid users and it seems they want 150. So while I am pretty sure they are going to keep up open until we get there I don't think it will be soon (but maybe @Robert can chime in and say yea or nay?)

UPDATE

Here's what Robert said on chat today November 11 2010 (emphasis mine):

Looking at Area 51 (progress tab), any site past 90 days goes into a pool of sites to graduate. Jin is able to design about 1 to 1-1/2 sites per week so we have to come up with an order to launch those sites... Based on this blog post When Will My Site Graduate?, the sites with enough 2000 and 3000-rep users go first. The order after that is determined by the Area 51 statistics: The most Excellent, Okay, and Worrying, in that order. If I had to order all the sites today, it works out in this order... Tex, English, Money. The rest (which are not ready as of today because of insufficient rep) in this order: DIY, Unix, UI, GIS, Wordpress. But the order is re-evaluated each time a site is launched. These are just guidelines... not doctrine. But the ordering so far seems to be about right. You don't need to do anything on your end; This is all automatic. You'll know that your site is approaching graduation when Jin starts soliciting ideas for the design in meta. When he posts his design ideas for feedback, you're about 2-4 days away from launch.

-Mike

8
  • 2
    I think the Ubuntu site launched when it did even though it wasn't fully "ready", simply because of the timing of it. I expect that if this site is finalized when WP 3.1 is released, usage will grow more quickly.
    – Grant Palin
    Commented Nov 8, 2010 at 17:21
  • Regardless, we should not stop the efforts to look for more avid users as well :) - Even I do not think it's so strict, because Mike alone counts as about 20 avid users!
    – hakre
    Commented Nov 9, 2010 at 18:38
  • @hakre - True. Except that last part! :)
    – MikeSchinkel Mod
    Commented Nov 9, 2010 at 18:55
  • 2
    c'mon, we need to tweak those stats :)
    – hakre
    Commented Nov 9, 2010 at 19:27
  • @hakre - Suggestions?
    – MikeSchinkel Mod
    Commented Nov 9, 2010 at 20:05
  • Well the prev comment was a joke -hahaha- but I think we need to give this some time. I mean you can not compare each SE fork with the other. For example in WP we have a specific noob clashes pro ratio. I somehow tend to bash some noobs, but the point is, WP is somehow that complicated that even pros dislike it while there are some noobs with good intentions. So just give this baby some time and some love and things will evolve. I'm pretty sure that in less than four weeks this is much ahead. The avantgarde will overcome the gap to the base. We're attracting pretty good users as well.
    – hakre
    Commented Nov 20, 2010 at 3:14
  • And for the skake of a comments limit: Wordpress probably is before GIS in stats with UI I'm in conflict as WP is a UI wannabe (you can't provide UI if your general dev design sucks, as in FOSS U=User=Programmer or Hacker), so for the rest in the feedback you quoted I'm pretty confident. And just for the note: If it's getting a design for the site finished only, I have absolutely no problem to wait even for more months as a) the beta design is just very cool (e.g. see WPEngineer) and well, it's graf des. In the end I can help with that. So let's do a little more beta. No problem for me.
    – hakre
    Commented Nov 20, 2010 at 3:22
  • @hakre - I agree 100%.
    – MikeSchinkel Mod
    Commented Nov 20, 2010 at 4:52

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .