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Proposal: Coffee

The beer beta had a flurry of activity to start, and then quickly tapered off. There was nothing to keep it going.

I'm of the opinion that a general 'beverages' SE would be more appropriate.

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    What's the way of Beer Beta?
    – FolksLord
    Jul 27, 2014 at 19:08

5 Answers 5

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The beer, coffee, wine, tea, cocktails, and other liquid-drinkers' site?

Personally, I doubt very much that we would be able to find a passionate and engaged community to rally around a subject called "beverages." That is just my opinion.

There's a point where you're just piling on the subjects into a catch-all room just to hit the numbers… and the term you come up with to describe them all becomes so ubiquitous that you're not describing a community at all.

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  • I get the feeling that there's significant overlap between people who like gourmet coffee, and people who like craft beer for example. Similarly, they're probably also intersted in what makes a good red wine, etc.
    – dwjohnston
    Jun 23, 2014 at 23:20
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    I don't this ubiquity is a problem at all. On StackOverflow there are people discussing PHP which has no interest to people dicussing Java.
    – dwjohnston
    Jul 3, 2014 at 21:49
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    @dwjohnston I'd say "programmers", even when split up by language, comprise a cohesive community. "Liquid drinkers" don't. The liquid drinkers community comprises just about everyone on the planet.
    – hairboat
    Jul 30, 2014 at 16:38
  • @abbyhairboat - I think that's like saying that StackOverflow is a community of 'Computer users'. It's not, it's a specific group of computer users. Similarly beer, coffee, whisky aficionados have a particular interest in certain liquids.
    – dwjohnston
    May 28, 2015 at 22:54
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Sad to read/hear that a Beer group just barely missed out on Beta (I haven't been on here in a while).

DW might be on to something if it were kept specific enough - Craft Beverages, Handmade Beverages, etc. to feature wine, beer, & coffee questions, practices, devices, etc. The tea-lovers could probably even jump on the bandwagon... but then Robert's point starts to sound valid about the group becoming too ubiquitous, killing the passion of the niche.

What about a Brew Group? If you can brew it, you can talk about it - I guess that'd still include tea, coffee, beer, kambucha...

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    The beer site still exists. It's just rather sluggish in terms of activity.
    – Logan M
    Jul 3, 2014 at 22:04
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    @LoganM "rather sluggish" is an understatement. With 0.1 questions per day, it has no chance to survive.
    – Shadow Wizard Chasing Stars
    Oct 21, 2014 at 11:42
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I think it is good to be open enough to reach a big enough target to grow the site, but also keep it special enough for people to think that this is the site for their need. I would say that coffee and tea would be an optimal mix, as many techniques to achieve a good result is common.

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Chances are you're pulling a lot of coffee addicted workaholics from the other communities. Guess it is save to say that anyone active on SE sites is passionate about what they do and they drink... a lot of coffee! ;-)

Where beer is more appropriate for certain moments of the day. Coffee is something that is being drunk during the process of all those questions and answers around stack exchange.

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My initial reaction to this repeated suggestion is negative. I am less interested in participating if the focus starts to become too broad, since I don't have much interest in using SE for topics like beer, wine, or tea. Diluting the subject gives me less reason to show up, since it worsens the signal to noise ratio.

The contrary position is that other sites are popular with very broad subjects, like History or Scifi & Fantasy. Both include loads of different interests that might be able to fill entire sites themselves. But sometimes that means the site first page fills up with a lot of stuff you might not want to read, like when History gets full of WWII questions or SFF is full of Harry Potter questions. An appropriately narrow site can get more enthusiastic support because it's more likely to reward a visit with something relevant to your interests.

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    Are you similarly not interested in using Stack Overflow, because it's full of PHP or some other technology you don't use?
    – dwjohnston
    Jul 10, 2014 at 21:55
  • That's a poor example as it relates to me, since my programming skill starts and ends with basic website html and programming text games on my TI calculator in high school. Nonetheless, I take your point, but there's an opposite as well. A broader subject is good because it brings in more people and more ideas; a narrower subject is good because it brings more focus and passion. The idea is to find a balance, and in my opinion adding stuff about beer, wine, scotch, tea, juices, sodas, or beverages (or any mixture of those) will tend to dilute the utility of the site for me.
    – NL7
    Jul 11, 2014 at 13:49
  • >SFF is full of Harry Potter I frequent SFF, and I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but it doesn't bother me at all. You can use tags to ignore, or look for specific topics.
    – dwjohnston
    Jul 22, 2014 at 22:24
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    I understand. I'm not saying a site needs to be exclusively stuff you want to see or else you'll quit. But there's a reason there isn't a single site that encompasses technology, arts, language learning, leisure, and work. There's an appropriate balance somewhere, so that users who show up at the site are rewarded more often with stuff that interests them than not. The broader the focus, the less reason somebody has to visit. In my opinion, coffee itself is broad enough to sustain interest without diluting the subject too far.
    – NL7
    Jul 24, 2014 at 14:55

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