24
Freelancing is being self-employed working for different companies and not being committed to a specific employer except under temporary contract. That is a very different from the problems of starting a business with employees, corporate tax policy, finances, shared ownership, operational challenges, etc. A small part of being a freelancer may include ...
23
The "rarely-visited meta" — as you called it — was a big part of the problem. Meta hosts the core governance of the site. I wish I could point you to the myriad of efforts that went into getting this site going again. The Community Managers, Moderators, and top avid users tried valiantly through a multi-year effort to try to energize this ...
17
Being frustrated with how the Answers.Onstartups knowledge was closed, we re-created the community over the last month: Bright Journey
More details on this answer here:
Site "On Startups" is closed - what to do now?
It took us a month working on this 'round the clock, but it was well worth it. There was tremendous knowledge on the site and ...
13
I visited answers.onstartups.com nearly every day for almost two years. I even checked the meta site most days. My complaint with what happened is that we were never told, "If you don't fix this, we'll have to shut it down." It was, "This site is shutting down November 12th." At that point, there were actually quite a few people there trying to find a way to ...
12
No, vote honestly. Determining the scope is the most crucial part of creating a healthy SE community. (And the part where the old site failed, I think.)
10
After two iterations in this subject space, we ultimately had to close TWO sites on this topic. We worked hard to keep the second site open with many initiatives to keep it going. During the second iteration, the bar for keeping the site open was extremely low: all they needed was a user or two to step up to check on flags and keep spam off the site (...
8
The real issue is the apparent schizophrenic nature of Stack Exchange. On the one hand, it wants to be a "go to" source of knowledge, which requires high quality questions and answers, so needs strict moderation to keep quality high. On the other hand, it wants to build communities, which can only happen if the site isn't hostile to new users. Being shot ...
7
Like many others, I too spent numerous hours on the answers.onstartups.com site over a couple of years. I answered a lot of questions and did my best to help people, as well as report spam, up-vote questions and comments, edit typos, etc. In short, I spent a lot of time being "a good citizen" and this seems to have been reflected in the reputation points I ...
6
Please ask your questions wisely
Most people are aware that they have a limited number of votes and therefore they have to choose. The problem is, if you have a few good questions, and a lot of crap, or in best case, mediocre questions. Most people don't like voting mediocre questions, and many folks here really dislike if someone upvotes crap only to put ...
5
I agree that the Excel questions are maybe not a main subject of SuperUser, and only the programming (VBA) questions are on topic on StackOverflow. However wouldn't it be better to generalize this proposal to be a Q+A site for all Office productions? Which is an already existing proposal:
Microsoft Office (and Office-suite products)
Although it is true ...
4
Actually its not. That's why I said it already exists. The stats on it are excellent, the only reason it was closed was because the average daily question was 4.8 instead of 5 which I think is a bad reason to close something with otherwise excellent stats. I think they should allow it some time and give the opportunity to promote the site instead to get ...
4
Creating a site like this that actually works would require that SE recode how the voting system works entirely... polls should not let you up and down vote a poll item and (arguably) you should only be able to vote for one answer (or possibly a limited number of answers)... and if SE were to recode the voting system for polls, I don't understand the ...
4
Each tab only shows the proposals that belong under that sort (hot proposals, beta sites, launched sites, etc). If you take a look at the Professional category (for example), you'll noticed that every proposal does not show up under every tab.
Professional
8 proposals
hot tab, 6
progress tab, 1
beta tab, 5
launched tab, 2
newest tab, 6
...
4
After many years of struggling with this subject, we recently closed our site for small business startups (which included the challenges for bar and restaurant entrepreneurship) due to long-declining interest and ultimately lack of support. There's always a possibility that a more niche, focused audience can rally more sustainable interest, but that ...
3
+1 Good idea. But I think it was how the OnStartups(+) site was practically used.
It's similar to the Freelancers, which are also for small enterpreneurs, those who are not hiring people and are selling their own services. Small Business would concentrate on small enterpreneurs, who do sell some goodies (like small puzzle shop in oldtown) or/and are hiring ...
3
No; there is no reason to narrow the scope of this proposal to US only. The tag line could/should be expanded or edited to be less US centric.
3
I think there is a flaw in trying to form a cohesive community around a group of failed proposals simply by piling them together. When you start trying to connect disparage groups under on umbrella, I think you'll find there's little passion for the umbrella as a subject. For example, when someone lives and breathes "Marketing", they're not really looking ...
3
I think that this question is very related to the currently pending public beta and the definition of a startup.
I think focusing on startups only (and even only technical startups as suggested in another question) is too narrow. StackOverflow didn't start with only Perl as a programming language to pose questions for. If you are a C++ or Java programmer, ...
3
Just to be completely clear - this is a StackExchange proposal for a site, its not the site itself yet.
That said, its the purpose of these Area51 proposals to define the scope of the site that might be created. I don't see any reason why a YouTube channel would be treated as any different from any other startup business, so would be on-topic on the site.
3
Unfortunately, after almost four years of hosting this subject, we recently closed our Startups site due to long-declining interest and ultimately lack of support.
Sorry I do not have better news for you, but without a clear indication of an avid community ready to move in, we are not interested in restarting this proposal at this time.
3
I wasn't here for the first iteration of Startup Business, but for Startups, it failed to attract a sustainable community. Instead, people would show up, ask a question, and leave once they got their answer. Meanwhile, the original group of users slowly left, and eventually it reached a point where there weren't enough people to keep the site cleaned up ...
2
I would say that any 'maker' question that focuses on sales, expenses, legal questions (ie copyright, DMCA, fair use) is a good question.
Any that focus on the actual creation/technical details of the product would probably be better elsewhere (ie "how do I do X in Photoshop?" does not belong here).
2
I think this site needs to be more on Models, Marketing, Sales, Financial Models etc. It is about growing your startup and not asking questions that should be answered by a lawyer or accountant. Hence things that are common in all startups.
I know there will most likely be some localized questions but I would actually push for it to not be localized at all.
...
2
It's just like a StackOveflow, where only a very limited amount of 'generic' questions need not be tagged with language/technology, I expect some number of 'open-ended' and 'general' questions about business that will not be localized.
However, the majority of the questions will be localized, and therefore the tag system must be organized to fit legal ...
2
Welcome to Stack Exchange! SE sites offer a variety of moderation controls, but at this point in your proposal's life cycle, pretty much all moderation is going to go through the company's Community Team; in other words, me and my co-workers.
While I can understand your frustration, we don't have any system in place for preemptively excluding users from our ...
2
Have to agree with Clay here to broaden only slightly. A startup business by definition is certainly a more attractive place to be on.
I do think that marketing, sales, accounting and HR will come into play regardless but more from a perspective of what model's to use, such as product price / scalability, financial models, team structures, etc.
Trying to ...
2
Broaden it but only slightly: Businesses searching for a scalable repeatable business model.
That gets at the core of what I think a lot of people mean by "startup", which has less to do with general operation and more to do with handling lots of uknowns (what do the customers want? Will they buy it? Can we deliver it?)
It broadens the scope a bit while ...
2
If you have a community organized and ready to build this site, then go for it.
How can I propose a new site?
But please do not skip the requirement to find and organize a community to build your proposal first. It takes a lot of people all pushing in the same direction to get a proposal launched. Area 51 cannot find that audience for you.
Minimum number ...
1
Without having seen the proposal, it would almost certainly be closed as not viable. Sites are typically scoped around a specific community with an expertise in a specific area of study or interest. A site set up for unspecified questions about all brands everywhere would not be sufficiently focused for a healthy Stack Exchange Q&A site.
1
Unfortunately, we are not currently accepting proposals for non-English sites — See Internationalization 'State of the Stack'
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible