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(Apparently, the question I'm asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed!)

Just a heads-up on the fact that, according to our page on Area51, this site will go into Public Beta in 6 hours' time (at time of writing).

So ... I'm guessing we should try to promote this site in all the places we "hang out" on the internet. In addition to the usual blog posts that hopefully everyone will do (who has a blog), I suggest the following:

  1. People active on SO keep an eye out for questions that would work here and politely (!) suggest that they ask them here.
  2. Ditto on MO and math.SE.

It might be a good idea to spread the word around a bit in the TeX community, though we should be careful not to tread on toes there. My personal opinion is that initially, any announcement should come from people already active in those communities.

Thoughts? Ideas?

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    Does anyone know when the public beta will begin (other than "soon" like its says on area51).
    – Caramdir
    Aug 2, 2010 at 19:29
  • @Rob - Assuming we make it, the public launch is in 60-90 days. The beta begins NOW! Aug 2, 2010 at 23:31
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    slight delay on this. Sorry. Will happen in ~8 hours from the time I am entering this comment. Aug 3, 2010 at 7:36
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    @Jeff: No problem! Sorry if this is a daft question, but will we (ie the private beta testers) get any notice of its going in to public beta? It would be nice if we all got an email. Aug 3, 2010 at 8:08
  • @Andrew: I imagine that all the people that followed this proposal in Area51 will get an email. I've received mails from other proposals that I was following when they entered the public beta. Aug 3, 2010 at 10:19
  • @Julian Lamas-Rodriguez: Great! I think that'll be quite useful - it'll remind those that haven't had the time to join in so far that the site is here. Aug 3, 2010 at 11:30
  • I haven't gotten any e-mail from Area51 yet, but when I came to check the main site today, it didn't redirect me to the OpenID login page as it had done before. Maybe a switch on the Master Control Panel got flipped to the "public" setting. Aug 3, 2010 at 14:59
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    I just checked. We are now listed as public beta on area51.
    – Caramdir
    Aug 3, 2010 at 15:07
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    Just got the email! We're public. Aug 3, 2010 at 15:32

5 Answers 5

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It's great to read that the site is public now. I've announced the launch of the new site on my TeX blog. As its news posts usually appear also on other sites I expect the information to appear also on LaTeX-Community.org News, goLaTeX.de (already there), komascript.de (visible if logged in) and some feed aggregators like on texample.net.

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When I proposed the site at Area51, I made an announcement at comp.text.tex (appart from my Twitter and Facebook accounts, but that's another story). For someone like me, who doesn't participate in that list, the announcement got a pretty good number of answers. Some people appreciated the idea and started to follow the proposal.

Later, when the commitment phase began, I made a second announcement. An interesting debate began among some members of the mailing list, and a few more users committed to the site, which made me quite happy :)

And now, here we are, only 5 hours to go! My idea was to promote the site again at the comp.text.tex newsgroup, but if someone more active and famous than me in that list wants to take my job of promoter, I'll very much appreciate.

I will also announce the open beta using my Twitter and Facebook, and even my blog (although my audience is very very small). Hey! I was thinking of sending a mail to my coworkers. If anyone wants to join the fun and promote this site using any media at his disposal (mailing lists, websites, podcasts, you name it) that would be great! :)

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    I've been posting on c.t.t. for a number of years, albeit at a rather low level. I can mention the public beta there. Aug 2, 2010 at 20:50
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    Sending email to coworkers seems a good idea! I'll try to promote the site with some internal mailing lists, as well as the twitter/facebook thing. Aug 2, 2010 at 22:05
  • @Norman Gray: Public beta is open now! :) As an experienced user of c.t.t, if you want to make the announcement, it's your time. Thank you. Aug 3, 2010 at 15:43
  • Great! I've seen it here: groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex/browse_thread/thread/…
    – Stefan Kottwitz Mod
    Aug 22, 2010 at 17:43
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I'm going to mention this in my blog (texdev.net), which seems to get at least some readers interested in things. I've been holding off unit the beta becomes public, as I think it might be frustrating for other people otherwise.

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Go back to your constituencies...: you mean we have to wait another thirty years to get into a coalition with someone?! There's a cheerful thought.

What does this mean for things like the site's domain name, and design, and FAQ, and so on? Does it mean that the site will definitely come out of beta and become a first-class Stackexchange site?

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    Someone got the reference! That's made my day. More seriously, we're not out of beta yet. We'll go (whenever it is) into public beta meaning that anyone can come and ask/answer. Reading the stuff on area51, we have 80 days to prove ourselves. Aug 2, 2010 at 21:08
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    I know we're only going into public beta now^Wsoon, but what I meant was: what has to happen before we eventually leave public beta and are launched? The Area51 page doesn't mention criteria. Aug 3, 2010 at 8:26
  • Can somebody explain the reference, please? :) Aug 3, 2010 at 10:20
  • @Julian: I'm not from the UK myself, by I guess it is a reference to this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… (end of first paragraph) and that the Liberal Democrats only achieved this goal in the last election.
    – Caramdir
    Aug 3, 2010 at 11:25
  • Caramdir's spot on. Aug 3, 2010 at 20:32
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The beta begins at 0:00 UTC, August 9, 2010, which is in half an hour. The SE day begins at 0:00 UTC. For me (Eastern US time zone), this is at 8:00PM. Click the envelope left of your name in the top bar, and look for the text,

all times are in UTC; the current time is 2010-08-02 23:27:48Z to see what time it is.

This is also when the reputation cap resets, if you're affected by that.

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    Unless you're in really quite an exotic time zone (and this is area 51, of course), 9 August is a week away... Aug 3, 2010 at 8:29

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