Request to re-open

Question

Proposal: Performance riding

I'd like to request to the voters to close this proposal to please re-open it. I made the proposal knowing full well about the already existing "Motorcycles" proposal.

I know these overlap, but what I would like to see is a site that works as knowledge base for improving riding technique, bike modifications and setup. I have not yet found any forums on the web with this scope. There are, on the other hand, literally hundreds of forums with a broad scope like "Motorcycles" on the web. (actually, most are not quite as broad: many are for only one brand or make, and others are location specific). Of course you CAN find technical advice about riding techniques and tune-ups on these sites. The problem is that these questions drown in posts about people's favorite bike, their favorite MotoGP rider, so it's like looking for the needle in a haystack...

There is a need for a site like this; Many of the riders in my community have expressed their interest for it.

I see that only one of the people who voted to close the proposal has motorcycles as one of their listed interest, so I don't expect the others to appreciate this situation.

Finally, what is the point of closing a forum already in the definition phase? Why can't both proposals live side by side, and then we will see which (or both) pan out?

Answer 1

This may be an interesting topic, but you must note interesting is insufficient to start a new SE site.

Getting site into private beta is quite easy. Visit some fora, gather some friends, suggest topics, ask for upvotes. Getting it out of beta, to maturing is much harder.

Some things you will need:

• a constant stream of at least 10, better 15 questions per day. That's at least 1350 until first beta evaluation. Currently you posted 3, other 7 followers - none. If the scope is too narrow, the site will simply die from lack of questions.
• at least 200 dedicated users. Recently a "Digital Fabrication" site died because out of 325 committed users only about 40 decided to follow up on their commitment and proceeded to the beta. So, getting people on random fora to sign up and click "Commit" here is very counterproductive if you can't get them to participate actively.
• a team of experts. The biggest failing of some sites is the userbase which can only answer easy questions. Ask something complex and you'll get wrong, oversimplified and otherwise faulty answers. ( astronomy.SE really needs a real astrophysicist. )
• users with a certain social skill and organizational knack. Ones to promote the site, gather participants and create an active community. The belief "let's make a proposal and they will come" is a failing of many. No, they won't. If they did, someone else would have proposed that site in the past. The thresholds are set at such level that without promotion the site has a really slim chance of making it.

So, if you want this to be anything else but yet another forgotten whim-of-the-moment proposal, better start building the community and improving the proposal actively. At least starting with using up your remaining 2 questions, editing the one badly phrased, and getting at least a few more example questions from others in.

Answer 2

I don't necessarily know if "Performance Riding" will make a good site, but it is simply too early in the process to say one idea/suggestion should be summarily closed in support of the other. The older "Motorcycles" proposal is only 12 days old (with two close votes) and nine example questions. You don't know that "Performance Riding" will necessarily become on topic for that site, or even if the original "Motorcycles" proposal will work at all.

Scoping a site is tricky business and you don't always know what is going to work. Differing ideas should be allowed to compete. If "Motorcycles" was already a widely-adopted, late stage proposal, I could see the case for closing this as an unnecessary distraction. If we get to the point where the two proposals are blocking each other from wider adoption, there might be a call to be made. But I would suggest that closing a proposal should be reserved for egregious problems — like TOS content violations, or a duplicate of a proposal that already has a lot of support, or a large collection of example questions that are already completely on topic on another well-established site.

Proposals are simply suggestions and ideas, not sites. I see a lot of close-votes referring to duplicates of a failed or failing proposal, or duplicates that are not on topic on another site. And, frankly, a lot of proposals get close-votes on assumptions before anyone can possible know what the idea was supposed to be about.