Will video.SE be stuck in Beta forever?

Question

The Video Production Stack Exchange site has been in Beta for many years now. Our beta stats have pretty much stagnated. And while we have an excellent visit rate, the biggest problem is that there are not enough questions overall. We also have a slight problem with the answer rate, but I think that is directly rooted in the low quantity of questions.

I was just wondering if video.SE will eventually get out of beta and become a full SE site or if it will at some point be shut down for lack of questions. Any leads on this? I just think it's weird that we are stuck in this perpetual beta (even though a couple of SE sites share the same fate ...)

Answer 1

I can't speak for what SE will do, but I know that they had re-evaluated how they looked at sites a while back. It's probably unlikely we'll eventually be shut down under the new criteria since we are a good resource, but it is also difficult for us to get out of beta due to the lower activity, which means it probably isn't worth it to put in the effort involved in setting up a non-beta site.

Being perpetually a Beta site isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it is an odd case of where the topic per site thing gets a bit weird. On the one hand, it focuses questions more for people to be able to answer them, but it also has limited interesting questions in some topics where the rate of new questions can be low simply because of becoming a good resource that is fairly exhaustive.

Answer 2

I'm sorry to hear that this is still a source of frustration among perfectly healthy sites. You have nothing to worry about. Here is a meta post about the continuation of sites and why not to worry about it:

Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites

Unfortunately, that does little for the average user here who doesn't hover over every meta post we write. That's why I've long been in favor of getting rid of that "perpetual beta" label where it simply does not make any sense… or doing away with the current graduation workflow entirely.

Answer 3

Video.SE is no longer in beta.

Answer 4

One factor is that "Video Production" is pretty broad, covering pre-prod, prod and post-prod. Also, folks who work and play in the industry often glom towards support forums specific to the tools they use - be that specific camera manufacturers, editing software or other such groups.