In most sites, it is requested to have 10 questions with score 10+ (apart from followers) to move to commit stage. Today I saw that 40 questions are required to cross. Whereas, available questions that can be asked are still five.
Is this a bug or a policy change? Isn't it more difficult now for communities to survive?
We increased the requirements to slow down the number of sites that were being created that don't have all that much support to begin with. These slow-grown communities spend a year-plus in development and then just barely limp across the finish line to have less than half the users show up for the beta launch.
This will not make it more difficult for communities to survive. It will make it easier. By increasing the bar on Definition, users have more time to build a support base. If we can't get that kind of support in the Definition phase, the site wont work.
This is only half of the equation, though. We are reviewing changes to the Commitment phase to capture the momentum sites will need after launch. With the changes in Definition, there will be more people to jump on the Commitment. If the signups aren't there when these proposals enter Commitment, the site will not work. We've shown that that decisively. These proposals that spend a year-plus just languishing in Commitment — slowly, slowly accumulating just enough users to eventually launch — do not build a healthy site.
These intermediate changes are just applying what we've already learned, something we can add quickly until we can design/build an Area 51 v2.0.
This will however increase the time from when the proposal starts, to when the proposal goes live. This increases the chance that the people who liked the proposal at the beginning will move on and forget by the time the proposal goes live.
