The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
We are coming up on two weeks in private beta. I regret having to say this, but based on the current Q&A and activity levels it doesn't look like this site is going to make it.
Why? Well, we see a couple of primary issues here:
The turnout and the activity are very low. Only 24% of the folks who committed to this proposal actually joined the site. Only about a fifth of those people are actually posting questions and answers. When we look at meta, that number gets even lower.
A Stack Exchange site cannot thrive unless there's a dedicated and passionate community behind it.
There doesn't seem to be a clear direction for the site's scope and there is a fair amount of disagreement within the community here on what actually belongs on the site. Out of the 79 questions currently posted, only 57 are still open.
Normally scope issues could be something worked out during beta. However, the purpose of the private beta is to set up a site that's ready to welcome users from the general public and has worked out all but a few minor issues. The concerns here, unfortunately, are more fundamental than that.
Judging by the meta discussions and the example questions on the Area 51 proposal, it seems fairly clear that this proposal was backed by several distinct groups of people, and "digital preservation" means something different to all of them. To some, it means asset management within a company. To others, it's about preserving legacy software. To others still, it is about manipulating file formats. The end result is that none of these groups is served well by the site we have now.
We have sites that may welcome the different factions of Digital Preservation. For example, general questions about file formats could likely land on Super User, while issues of long-term preservation of content would not be out of place on Libraries and Information Science.
That doesn't mean that there cannot or should not be a separate site handling these topics, but unfortunately, as it stands, this site isn't it. Barring any act-of-god scenarios, the site will be closed on March 18th and the data archived for download. That should give you sufficient time to save your favorite posts and discuss ideas about how to move forward.
This doesn't have to be the end. If you still believe this subject can work, feel free to try again through Area 51. We simply have to explore the harder questions of what this site is about, and to figure out how to regain (and retain!) all the support lost from the original proposal. If the support is there, your efforts should go quickly the second time around. If not, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.
Good luck!
Anna Lear
As expressed a few times in the comments above:
"…given how long the Area 51 proposal was given to develop"
That is likely part of the problem. Less than a third of the folks "committed" to this site showed up for the beta. That is a new, all-time low! in participation and support.
To build a successful site, you'll definitely need more of a running start to make it viable. This subject is all over the place. By time we start slicing off the stuff that doesn't belong here, there's even less to work with.
If you still believe your site will work, restart the proposal. I mean that sincerely; this is not busy work. It is a proven way to re-capture the focus, the enthusiasm, and the support lost somewhere along the way.
I'm very disappointed with this outcome and decision. A lot of the enthusiasm we need has happened here: Digital Preservation Questions on LIS Stack (the most popular topic on that stack). We had been under the impression that moving this earlier work across to the DP stack would be a good thing. But then nothing happened.
I thought the scoping issues we're being worked through with lots of lively but positive debate. I was putting lots of effort into helping with this. It would have been useful to have had some moderator help to enable editing of the FAQ and a formalisation of the result of meta discussions.
Regardless, with such a small follow through from the Area 51 commit, to seeing it through and getting involved, these other issues are academic. I guess us enthusiastic types have to just go back to LIS Stack.
I don't have easy access to the numbers, but let's look at what you are saying in your post.
Only 24% of the folks who committed to this proposal actually joined the site.
This is arguably a very poor turnout no matter how you slice it. In raw numbers, that's right around 90 people.
Only about a fifth of those people are actually posting questions and answers.
I take it you mean about 20% of the people who committed. So 75 people are actually active on the site. That's close to 85% of the people who actually did join, which doesn't sound too bad to me. Certainly there are more than 20-ish people who have posted questions or answers here.
When we look at meta, that number gets even lower.
Isn't that a common theme, though? Especially given that if someone has already stated what amounts to your opinion, an upvote on the question and/or answer expresses that?
Out of the 79 questions currently posted, only 57 are still open.
75 people have posted 79 questions in two weeks, and of those, 57 are still open. That's about 0.4 still open questions per active participant per week (or about 0.5 questions asked per active participant per week). I certainly don't ask one question every two weeks on StackOverflow.
It seems to me like a two week private beta period is much too short from which to draw any firm conclusions about the site's long-term viability. Right around three weeks from when I received the private beta invitation email and the announced closure date.
Judging by the meta discussions and the example questions on the Area 51 proposal, it seems fairly clear that this proposal was backed by several distinct groups of people, and "digital preservation" means something different to all of them. To some, it means asset management within a company. To others, it's about preserving legacy software. To others still, it is about manipulating file formats.
The only real guidance thus far is the FAQ (and those very meta
discussions). The FAQ simply says that "Digital Preservation - Stack
Exchange is for
professionals working to ensure long term access to digital objects."
I'd argue that the examples you list all pretty much fall into that
category, given appropriate form. You can't find something efficiently
without some form of asset management in place, and an unsearchable
archive is effectively useless. Preserving legacy software may be an
inherent part of the ability to ensure that information is useful, not
just accessible as bits of data, in the future. Discussions about file
formats fall well into that, too; if you're going to migrate data to
another file format for long-term preservation, you don't want to have
to re-do that work in five or ten years if you can avoid it,
particularly if the conversion is potentially lossy.
Of course, one could always argue that asset management is equally applicable to libraries regardless of the type of asset in question (and thus a "better" fit for LIS), that questions about various file formats is a general computer question (making it a "better" fit for e.g. SuperUser) and so on. But that assumes that there are no DP-specific issues at hand because, frankly, how many digital preservation experts hang out on SuperUser on the off chance that someone asks about the century-long prospects of various image file formats or long term storage of disk images? (Shameless plug; taking two examples of questions I have answered and which are still open on DP.SE.)
I do believe this site deserves more than two weeks of private beta before being declared non-viable. Maybe it'll turn out that it indeed isn't viable as-is, or that the scope is too broad. But it seems much too early to make such a firm statement. If the site needs more work before going public beta, I'd argue that a longer private beta period to actually hash out those issues is a better alternative than killing it outright.
Like many users who were "regulars" during the public beta, I'm disappointed in this outcome. If there's a statistical threshhold beneath which proposed sites are considered not viable, I understand, but the quality of discussion here was IMO quite high and worth reflecting on. (Disclaimer: I'm a StackExchange noob, so I don't know if similar issues have been discussed in the context of other stacks.)
Even during its short lifespan, I learned a great deal from this stack, and I agree with Ben's objection to the description of differing views as "factions." Given time, I think that we could have developed a clear and reasonable definition of the site's scope.
Digital preservation is an emerging field that overlaps with a number of different disciplines and skill sets. Different practitioners understand the field differently -- but it's very helpful to be able discuss and apply these understandings in the context of practice. This is an opportunity to move the field forward and (perhaps) resolve some of those differences. Direct engagement with other practitioners' day-to-day problems helps reveal and clarify the underlying assumptions of our shared discipline.
As the title of a recent symposium put it, there's a "Digital Curation Gap" between researchers at large institutions and the on-the-ground practice of working LAM professionals. I'm an archivist in a small repository with limited resources. Although I try to keep up with the professional literature, I'm not directly involved with any major academic or governmental research projects. I found participation in the stack useful both in sharpening my own understanding and in confirming the correctness of my practice by helping to solve other people's problems.
I realize that Stack Exchange isn't the best forum for thornier questions of professional identity, but I do think that (as Ross and other commenters have alluded to) this stack had the potential to provide a service beyond simply being a problem-solving resource. I'm not aware of any other spaces in which this sort of informed but practical discussion is taking place. (If there are, let me know and I'll join!)
If there's an attempt to restart the stack in the future, I'd be happy to up the level of my involvement. In the meantime, I'll monitor the digital preservation tag on the LIS stack.