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I remember a post in Gamification meta which warned about the reasons why that site was likely going to close down, and now apparently it has.

I was expecting it, or at least its meta, to remain up for a little while, instead it already is in the "download the data dump" state.

Wouldn't it be useful for the SE sites as a whole, to have the meta of a dead site be active for a while (and the main site read-only), to discuss what went wrong?

Edit: thinking a bit more about it, I see no reason to close the metas at all. I understand that you want to close the main site, to prevent polluting google with links to a dead site, but meta would still be useful anyway, especially for future reference, and for discussing things relating the closed site.

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  • It did remain up. There was a notice on the site that it would be closing down a few days before it did.
    – Andrew
    Nov 12, 2013 at 20:09
  • @SantaClaus "a few days" is not really useful, I'm not sure why everyone here at SE is in a hurry, but the timespans for pretty much everything should be way longer.
    – o0'.
    Nov 13, 2013 at 8:56

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The goal of Area 51 and the site beta process is to create great sites that will eventually graduate to become full members of the Stack Exchange network. But every site is, in a sense, an experiment. Sometimes experiments fail. If this were an experiment isolated from consequences in the world outside of the experiment, we'd be more than happy to give sites more time. But since people are involved and time is limited for all of us, we have an obligation to end sites quickly to avoid wasting people's time. Having been a part of failed experiments in the past, the worst moment is when it's clear the current situation won't last, but the plug has not yet been pulled.

We always allow for a week for closed sites to wrap things up. In our experience, that's more than enough time for people to say and do what they need to do. Extending the time spent on a failed site would be a waste of time.

The Gamification site was not a complete loss, thankfully. Ten questions were migrated to Cognative Sciences. In addition, a new proposal has been started. The proponents are already trying to apply the lessons learned from the previous site.

Please consider taking postmortem discussions to the Stack Exchange meta site. (See, for instance, the Theoretical Physics closure.) That venue has a number of advantages, not the least of which is that discussions are more likely to be permanantly available.

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