The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
After over a year in beta, it has become evident that Libraries SE simply can not sustain itself. We'll be closing the site in ten days, at which point a dump of the content will be available on the site's Area 51 page. Please take this time to take stock of your content and flag any great questions that might have a suitable home on another site for moderator attention to be migrated. I'll go into some detail of what went, or is going wrong and then close with some advice on what another generation could do differently for this topic to work.
Think of this as an opportunity for analysis and a more focused try in the future. This was a hard topic to hit in Q&A format, and those that participated gave it a good try.
In short, those that actively participated in building Libraries SE did an excellent job, there simply wasn't enough active participation to sustain forward momentum. The site received barely one question a day, which in and of itself isn't a show stopping problem, but compounds quite disturbingly with the additional following concerns:
We were unable to source leadership from within this community. While two moderators were handling the extremely light load that tasked them rather well, we found it alarming that we could not fill a vacuum when another left.
The average time that it takes for a user to receive at least one answer to a question wildly fluctuates. While some questions receive answers in just a few minutes, many take days, weeks or months. A hallmark of a thriving Q&A site is the fulfillment of the expectation that a question will be answered quickly and satisfactorily, even when it doesn't receive very many questions.
This, your Meta site has not seen very much participation, especially recently. There's no evidence that a sufficient amount of people are still vested in the site.
This essentially echos our worst fears around a site going quiet, something that presents us with no choice but to act. There are, however, new beginnings.
The common denominator of the concerns we have is definitely a lack of interest in, and evangelism of this community. For another generation to tackle this topic in Q&A form, they'll need to be excruciatingly committed to a bit of a long haul. Long term evangelism and promotion within the industry will be absolutely essential for this topic to succeed.
Additionally, the right people just weren't finding your content through search engines. Long term manicuring of questions (in particular, titles) after doing comparative searches will definitely be needed in order to help ensure like minds searching for knowledge actually find you so you can engage them. Self-evaluations are designed in part to encourage this, more skilled eyes on them should help to ensure success.
While this attempt didn't make it, there was enough good here to show that the topic is definitely viable if a small but already established, cohesive community wants to take it on in the future. To all of the users that stayed and continued to work on the site, in particular the remaining appointed moderators that stayed faithfully at their posts, we'd like to extend our thanks. You folks have laid the ground work for this topic in Q&A format.
Please use the answers below for discussion on what you feel could have gone better with Libraries SE and any ideas you have for trying again over the next few days. We look forward to seeing those that remained active on the site trying again, with the help of new and passionate people.
Tim Post
Well, it's been fun. Personally, I think the main issue with a Q&A site for librarians is that we are all researchers by training, so there just isn't a burning need. A future site might attempt to recruit membership among library school students, who are still learning and need answers that are based not only on research but also on experience.
I echo Tim's "Thank you". Thank you to everyone who asked/answered a question or flagged a question or performed an edit (etc., etc.). Thank you for your enthusiasm for the site. Thank you to the Comm Team for your continue support, Meta answers (especially shog9), and the whole shebang.
As things began to dwindle, I knew that this moment might be inevitable, but I hope that the site can find new life on Area 51 with an enthusiastic group of overseers (I'm nodding in your direction, Mary Jo, not to single you out, but I think you were a leader here more than you could imagine), and perhaps with a slightly different scope.
I hope that for people that were new to Stack Exchange that this is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end for your participation on the network. Join Area 51 and make a new/better proposal, or find another site on SE that you can enjoy and give your passion to.
Lastly, but definitely not least, I want to thank Ashley for being a fantastic co-mod. We faced some difficult decisions all along about scope, and we addressed them well. It was a fun ride, and I'm sad that it's over (for now). Would I mod with you again? YBYA, IAHB.