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This site started private beta before July 2012, so it is no longer "beta", it is a full site by our definition. We've removed the word "beta" from your site banner because we believe that you aren't really a beta site any more, even if you don't get ten questions per day.

Banner that reads "Congratulations" in three-dimensional white text with red, yellow and blue confetti.

What this means for you:

  • the "Beta" is removed from your banner
  • the site is moved to the "Launched" sites list on Area 51 - which will also remove the A51 info box from the right sidebar
  • retain beta reputation levels
  • full-site elections will be delayed but will be scheduled eventually

This is the start of a process that we are already discussing internally and will be bringing to the network for public discussion once the plan is finalized. My hope is that this will mean the end of the monolith we currently refer to as "Graduation" in favor of a well-defined set of small targets to achieve the various elements that made up "Graduation".

I'm sure you have many questions, please feel free to ask and I'll answer what I can. It helps me out a lot if you can limit answers to focus on a single question/subject rather than asking a dozen questions in one answer.

Please feel free to follow the MSE discussion for more background on this decision. You can ask questions either here or there; I'll try to keep up with all of them. Your mods also have some info, so they may be answering in my stead.

Thanks so much for your patience and stay tuned!

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    Thank you! I'd just like to quote John Mills, in Ice Cold in Alex, when he said "Worth waiting for!"
    – sempaiscuba
    Aug 1, 2019 at 21:20
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    Seconding the Congratulations, because it has been this site's user community that has made History well worth graduation for a while now. You all earned this, and its well-deserved.
    – T.E.D. Mod
    Aug 1, 2019 at 22:02
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    what does beta actually mean?
    – WendyG
    Aug 21, 2019 at 10:39
  • More so: what does 'no-longer beta' mean if the process is now different? What can we do now we couldn't before (now, under changed conditions)? Like expanded editing of help-pages perhaps?
    – LаngLаngС
    Sep 21, 2019 at 8:55

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Great to hear. Any ETA to give the site some designer love?

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    Determining this will be part of the process we're working on that I describe. It takes us a really long time to create site designs and we already have many sites in queue, so even if we did add you to the list of sites waiting, it probably won't be any time soon. I am hoping that we can find a mid-term solution to give y'all something different from the beta theme, even if it's just a single full-site theme for all sites that aren't beta but don't have a custom design.
    – Catija
    Aug 2, 2019 at 4:43
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    @Catija: For clarity, does that mean we'll get it on a month of Sundays? Asking, because designing a site and writing applicable CSS doesn't take that long, and what you wrote kind of reads like "we put new designs in a backlog and don't have anyone working on them". Out of curiosity, might you know why SO isn't inviting communities to create their own designs? It seems quite inefficient to have a small number of in-house designers work through a backlog of designs -- and only when they've nothing else to do at that -- when hundreds of potential users might be willing to give it a whirl.
    – Denis de Bernardy
    Aug 2, 2019 at 4:54
  • All of that is in a state that I don't have an answer to. I may in a couple of weeks but right now, I don't have any info.
    – Catija
    Aug 2, 2019 at 5:09
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    For StackExchange, yes it does take that long. Why I'm not sure (outside of the obvious "lack of resources on that team"), but its a fact that it takes a long time. That's why graduation has been independent from design for 4 years now. At best, we'd get chucked onto the back of a really long queue, along with 27 other (now former) beta sites. But not even that has happened yet.
    – T.E.D. Mod
    Aug 2, 2019 at 14:44
  • A bit of an update on this. I don't have any inside information, but I did notice today that one of the other sites in our graduating class (Writing) got their design within the last month. Just did a quick survey, and 10 of the 28 now have designs: Writing, Sound, German, Gardening, French, Bricks, Spanish, Chinese, Poker, and Chess. So if the rate doesn't change (and my math isn't off), it shouldn't happen for us any later than the end of 2029. :-)
    – T.E.D. Mod
    May 9 at 16:13

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