Why is Area 51 NOT counted as a valid site for the commitment phase?

Question

Proposal: Synthetic Biology (But this applies to all proposals in commitment)

I committed to the Synthetic Biology proposal on Area 51 (see above) and noticed that in the commitment statistics, it said

3/100 committers with 200+ rep on any other site

So my question is, why is Area 51 not counted as a valid site for commitment, even when people have well over 200 Area 51 points?

Is this just a way to slow down the process, or prevent the example question posters from counting towards that percentage or something else completely? Any clarification would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Part of the Area 51 process is finding people familiar with the network model and know how other sites on our network operate. That experience is necessary in order for a new site to function properly.

Reputation on Area 51 is extremely different than on other sites. You can easily get large amounts of it by just having been the person to propose the site or referring others to commit to a proposal. Thus, the reputation here means absolutely nothing as far as proving your knowledge of the network. It only shows that you are capable of spreading the word about a new proposal.

To be quite frank, reputation here on Area 51 might as well not even exist. There are no real, useful privileges on Area 51 past the 150 reputation mark. That is a very low threshold that is immediately surpassed by any user who has the association bonus and verifies their email here.

So, Area 51 is not counted because the reputation here is meaningless. Even more so than people joke about reputation being meaningless on other sites.