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Congratulations to all the members of our community!

As far as I know, now privileges reputation caps are raised and so less people can work on review queues. Or maybe those who participated in private beta have more privileges than usual users?

What else is different now?

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    Congrats, everyone! Feb 28, 2017 at 17:17
  • Technically we still can be closed, but probability is quite lower. (We may want to investigate what happened with those two closed public-beta sites in 2013 and 2015.) Official rules of closing and graduations are here. But these don't fully define our objectives, because there is quite large gap between closing and graduation (so we should choose our way ourselves). As for raising reputation requirements — I know that is happens at the end of public beta — I didn't know that [..,to be cont]
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 19:01
  • [...inued] it happens at the end of private beta too.
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 19:01
  • 1
    @Sasha I guess it should be an answer. "If a site does not have enough activity at the end of 90 days, it will be closed down.", "If a public beta site does not produce consistently helpful content, and lacks the caretakers needed for flags and spam to get handled and our Be Nice policy to be upheld, it will be closed."
    – Artemix Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 19:05
  • @Artemix, ehmm, if I understand that post correctly, <s>"If a site does not have enough activity at the end of 90 days, it will be closed down."</s> is no longer true (that was old policy, abandoned in Jun 1 2015). The "If a public beta site does not produce consistently helpful content, and lacks the caretakers needed for flags and spam to get handled and our Be Nice policy to be upheld, it will be closed." is a new policy and is described below: [to be cont...]
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 19:12
  • [...inued] "Past experience had led us to believe that “small” and “unhealthy” would mean the same thing: we took it as a given that quiet sites would develop spam and obvious broken windows, while high quality sites would always grow big and graduate. But you proved us wrong! Five years later, we have lots of tiny sites which have been in public beta for months or years, each consistently producing excellent Q&A which helps people with real problems. Small, consistently active sites are great!" [to be cont...]
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 19:14
  • [...inued] "What does this mean? If there's enough moderation for a public beta site to consistently remain free of spam, for flags to be cleared, and for our Be Nice policy to be upheld, your site will remain open. However, if community leaders drop off, flags sit without being addressed, and we can’t find any suitable volunteers to step forward, the site gets closed."
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 19:15
  • 1
    I'll update this as soon as I'll have possibility. But, if I understand correctly, now (after passing private beta) we're almost free. I.e. we may be closed for spam/dirt/not-Being-Nice, but not for low activity (at least, it should be tremendously low to be closed). IMHO.
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 19:19
  • Why I didn't posted this as answer — because I first interpreted your question (mainly due to its title) as being about global objectives. But I haven't even thought about that yet, just wrote a bit about technical restrictions. If you wish — I can it into answer — later.
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 19:53
  • Just not to forget what I want to do (or no): (1) I think we may want to write some welcoming/clarifying posts for new users in Meta (because everything about SE is in English, so not everyone can read it; or maybe they'll allow us to make these pages bilingual?); (2) I think I'll should try to politely write in global meta about enabling Ukrainian stemmer (because it should be not so hard, as Lucene/Elastic got builtin Ukrainian stemmer in the newest versions; but should investigate first and then maybe (?) ask).
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 20:01
  • (3) Are they, at least partially, Ukrainians? (I mean their surnames and the place of the conference.) Maybe we should politely inform they about our site (if they don't know yet)?
    – Sasha Mod
    Feb 28, 2017 at 20:07
  • @Sasha Are you sure that Sitecore has something to do with StackExchange? Or I'm missing the point?
    – Artemix Mod
    Mar 2, 2017 at 12:42
  • @Artemix, SiteCore is just another site on Stack Exchange (like us, like russian, like SO). I don't know any of the SiteCore members. But recently I accidentally visited their Meta and found this discussion. What I found interesting in that discussion is: (1) their conference is in Dnipro[petrovsk]; (2) their surnames are Shevchenko and Bobrov. This lets me think that at least some part of their community are Ukrainians.
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 2, 2017 at 14:35
  • Being Ukrainian doesn't necessarily mean being interested in UkrainianSE. They may be Russian-speaking, have other interests in life or be non-Ukrainians at all. Still, it may happen that they would be interested in something like UkrainianSE, just don't know about it yet; in that case they may become important new members of our community (i.e. every new member is important, but those who not so long ago passed 3-month period themselves and have experience in SE — especially). So, in my opinion, it makes sense to politely try to "make a contact" (e.g. in chat).
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 2, 2017 at 14:35
  • (Guys at LiteratureSE were quite friendly, e.g. "you also in private beta? wow! what site? :)" — even though they have absolutely no intersection points with us.) If they (few possibly-Ukrainian members in SiteCoreSE) appear not interested or not Ukrainian at all — no problemo; if they are — wow, new (experienced) visitors.
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 2, 2017 at 14:35

2 Answers 2

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1 березня 2017 року ми успішно пройшли період «приватної бети». Що це означає для нас?

  1. Ну, власне, нас відкрили. Тепер на нас можна зайти не лише за спеціальним посиланням, а й за прямим. Навіть незареєстровані користувачі можуть постити питання і відповіді. І, звісно, нас почали індексувати пошуковики.

    Ми маємо позначку «бета» біля назви (публічна бета). Як і 12 з 15 інших розділів про мови. (Всі, окрім японської і двох англійських.)

  2. Значно зменшений ризик бути закритими.

    Приватна бета (пройдений етап) — це був період «іспиту». Він мав фіксовані часові межі — і за цей період ми мали щось показати працівникам Stack Exchange (наприкінці цього періоду вирішувалося, чи будемо ми існувати далі). Зараз ризик бути закритими значно менший (хоча все ще є).

    До 2015 року StackExchange-івці вважали, що малі спільноти — то погані/хворі спільноти. І низка активність могла бути причиною для закриття навіть протягом публічної бети. Але в 2015 році політика змінилася: «ви переконали нас, що ми були неправі; ми маємо багато мікроскопічних сайтів, але вони продукують прекрасні питання-й-відповіді, що справді допомагають людям; малі, але постійно активні сайти — це прекрасно».

    Відтепер основною причиною закриття сайтів, що пройшли приватну бету, вважається явна занедбаність (спам, незакриті флаги, не слідування Be Nice), а не просто недосягнення якихось рубежів активності. Хоча за зовсім наднизьку активність, мабуть, все ж можуть закрити, так. Але сайти в публічній беті тепер закривають дуже рідко.

  3. Чи маємо ми довести до кінця травня (тобто за 90 днів, зазначених тут)?

    Наскільки я знаю, ні. Як я припускаю, оці 90 днів — це скоріше рудимент зі старої системи, коли вважалося, що треба досягти певних рівнів, інакше ти «лузер». Наскільки я знаю, тепер перехід між першими 90 днями публічної бети і тією необмеженою в часі частиною публічної бети, що триває потім, нічого не означає.

    Закрити сайт в публічній беті теоретично можуть в будь-який момент — за повну занедбаність або просто (ну, юридично ж Stack Exchange є власником серверів і нічого формально не зобов'язаний). Але перші три місяці, наскільки я знаю, в цьому плані нічим не відрізняються від наступних.

  4. Що на нас чекає далі?

    Ми можемо скільки завгодно довго бути в публічній беті. Але в фіналі у нас є дві кінцеві точки шляху:

    • Закриття. Формально останні політики (за 2015) звучать так: «Якщо лідери спільноти „самоусуваються“ (відходять від справи), флаги не вирішуються і ми не можемо знайти ніяких підхожих добровольців, щоби переступити через це, сайт закривається.» Що я зробив би, якби в мене був час — це, мабуть, подивився історію (останньої?) закритої під час публічної бети спільноти (Arabic): бо загальні політики — це добре, але хотілося би знати конкретику.
    • Вихід з бети. «Якщо сайт починає постійно збирати десять нових питань щодня, ми розглядаємо його як кандидата на „випуск“ (це не автоматична система; менеджери будуть вручну перевіряти окремі нюанси).» Я не знаю, які в нас ресурси, але я б особисто на це не розраховував, бо якщо росіяни чи китайці (з їх кількостями) або німці/французи/іспанці (зі світовими мовами) ще не вийшли — то й нам нема куди поспішати.
  5. Висновок.

    Нас все ще можуть закрити.

    Але головний «іспит» ми пройшли.

    Може, я недооцінюю ризики, але мені знається, що варто розслабитися, забути про цифри/характеристики/відповідність і думати про те, що по потрібно самій спільноті як такій (а не дивитися з позиції «що робити щоб не закрили»).


English translation: TODO. (I will translate faster I know somebody needs it.) (If somebody wants to translate — you're welcome.)

2
  • @maccstax, дякую.
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 6, 2017 at 22:43
  • зрозуміло, дякую за пояснення! Попередні коментарі стер, оскільки вони вже не актуальні
    – maccstax
    Mar 6, 2017 at 22:50
3

I just saw a question from the Ukrainian Language site in the Hot Network Questions feed and hopped on. Thank you everyone who spent enormous amount of time and effort to get this site up. As a Ukrainian, I feel very proud and would like to contribute to the website as much as I can. My Ukrainian is not very good, but I would like to contribute to the policies to make this site grow.

It is useful to define the target audience first.

A good way would be to split users/visitors into bilingual, Ukrainian speaking, and English speaking.

As a Ukrainian living abroad, I know there are a lot of people curious about Ukraine but get lost in translation. I would like this site to generate more content that bridges the gap between English and Ukrainian.

The questions foreigners have about Ukrainian language are usually simple and have to do with common phrases and ambiguous translation.

It is also important to start growing traffic from search engines. It would be nice to have answers here to very common questions that people often google. For example, the first question that came to my mind is that one that I googled myself many times before:

What is the right way to spell Ukrainian capital Kyiv or Kiev?

As I posted it, it highlighted a few problems:

  • It seems like a duplicate of a Ukrainian version of the question, but it is not to a foreigner who cannot read Ukrainian

  • It seems too simple, yet it is hard enough to confuse world leading
    journalists and business people trying to write a correct address for their Ukrainian office.

  • Ukrainian version won't be googled up if someone asks it in English

A good policy would be to answer questions in English predominately in English and questions in Ukrainian predominately in Ukrainian and see if such answers generate higher viewer count than mixed answers.

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    "It seems like a duplicate of a Ukrainian version of the question, but it is not to a foreigner who cannot read Ukrainian." Yes, Ukrainian questions can't be duplicates of English ones, and, similarly, English questions can't be duplicates Ukrainian ones. Those who said it's a dublicate, just did a mistake.
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 5, 2017 at 13:48
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    "A good policy would be to answer questions in English predominately in English and questions in Ukrainian predominately in Ukrainian and see if such answers generate higher viewer count than mixed answers." Yes, we're trying to do right that (if you look on existing questions, you'll see that most of the questions follow that scheme). (Still, it doesn't relate to comments and to the Meta site — here we currently use the mix of the languages.)
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 5, 2017 at 13:51
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    Thanks for joining us. We're glad to see you.
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 5, 2017 at 13:51
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    BTW, could you please create a new discussion for that purpose with the exact copy of this your text ("I just saw a question from...")? I'll copy all my comments there. (Because it looks more like another discussion rather than as an direct answer to Artemix's discussion. Though, if you did it intentionally — not by mistake — i.e. it's your vision, then, of course, you can leave it as is.)
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 5, 2017 at 13:57
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    As for "What is the right way to spell Ukrainian capital Kyiv or Kiev?" — personally I voted to close it not because a "duplicate" (it is not), but because it's out of the scope. IMHO, of course; I may be wrong. We can discuss it if you'll open a new discussion on the Meta. Chat is another possible place (still there're usually less visitors on Sat/Sun, if I see the trend it correctly).
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 5, 2017 at 14:05
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    @ArthurTarasov I've found a way! Ask about pronunciation, not about spelling! And tell everyone you want to know how to spell it right, that's why you need to know, what is the right way to pronounce it in Ukrainian!
    – P. Vowk Mod
    Mar 6, 2017 at 22:02
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    @P.Vovk, theoretically — yes, it is a way to ask some kind of questions. But then you won't be able to use answers on these questions to argue for "right" romanisations. (As foreign spelling isn't obliged to follow Ukrainian pronunciation — do you care how Chinese pronounce «Пекін» or Austrians pronounce «Відень»?)
    – Sasha Mod
    Mar 6, 2017 at 23:00
  • @Sasha I do, but i suppose i'm a minority
    – P. Vowk Mod
    Mar 7, 2017 at 0:33

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