The team behind Stack Overflow have launched a mechanism whereby anyone can propose a new Q & A site run along the same lines as Stack Overflow itself.
You create example questions and vote on them. If enough people join your proposal and you get enough good (and bad) example questions the site progresses to the next stage. Once there it has to garner enough support from other users to go into beta.
The first week is a private beta for those who committed to ask and answer really good questions and fine tune the boundaries of the site. After a week the site enters public beta and anyone can join in. If the site generates enough interest in terms of questions asked, users signed up and daily visits then it goes fully live.
The Area 51 home page
So head over to Area 51 and see if there’s something you’re interested in. There’s one site – Web Applications in public beta and a couple more in private beta. I won’t link to those as unless you committed you can’t see anything. If you want to join in then commit to a site, up to a total of three at any one time, and you’ll be able to join the private beta. If you’re too late for that you’ll just have to wait a week for the public beta. You can also follow sites at the earlier stage of the process.
You don’t have to follow a proposal to post a sample question or vote on other questions, but it shows you’re interest and a site needs followers to progress to the next stage. Following a proposal doesn’t force you to commit to it, there’s no limit to the number of proposals you can follow.
UPDATE
The Gaming site has now gone into public beta, so any gamers out there get over and get answers to those questions you’ve never been able to find the answers for before now.
UPDATE #2
There are whole load of sites now in public beta from DIY to User Interface, via Electronic Gadgets and Photography (to name but 4). Not all will make it to become fully fledged sites, but that’s part of the process – seeing what works in terms of the number of users, the quality of the questions asked and how many questions get good answers.
The first sites are due to come out of beta in the next few weeks so it will be interesting to see where they go from here.
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