Would a proposed site stucked in Beta get closed?

Question

I was wondering if a proposed site has a maximum limit in the Beta for too long? Would stack exchange closed site if it was on beta for too long? I think the longest beta site is 560 days already.

I am just wondering because some criteria on going out of beta like the questions per day or visit per days cannot be reach for a topic because a topic can only have so much people to join it. Does the stack exchange have fixed metric rules for all sites. Cause I think some topic really have limited community but is interesting regardless.

Note this question is just to ask the admin about plans on proposed sites that are stuck at beta phase for a long time. Do they have danger of getting closed?

Answer 1

A "proposed site" and a "beta site" are two different things, so I'll address both of them separately.

A Proposal (i.e. a proposed site in Area 51)

There is currently no time limit for proposal to find enough supporters to launch — although we are currently considering a time limit on the Commit phase (this has not been decided).

Proposals that take painfully long to find people to sign up inevitably run into problems in beta. Half the users don't show up and the enthusiasm has long since waned. We've tried to "age" commitments to account for the older supporters that have moved on, but what Area 51 needs to do is capture the momentum going into launch.

If the folks who defined the proposal (the Definition phase) aren't ready to sign up in those first few weeks (or at least the first few months), the site will not work. Anecdotally, we "rebooted" our Mathematica proposal and, after 17 months of lingering, it raced back to launch in a record-breaking 32 days the second time around, and created a fantastically-successful site.

Beta Sites

There is no explicit time limit for a site to get through beta. As long as the site is plotting a steady course, it is allowed to stay in beta as long as it takes.

When Will My Site Graduate?

Does this site have a chance of succeeding?

Two issues that can lead to a site's closure: If the quality is not sufficient to make the subject better on the internet, or a continuing decline in traffic that renders the site itself inviable.

Answer 2

As far as I know, there is no fixed rule about that: the admins decide case by case what to do. For instance, a site might close after less than 60 days if it's clear it's going nowhere, while another one might last years in beta without fear of being closed.