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The Community Team has kept a close eye on Data Science SE during private beta. Today I have some great news -- the site will be entering public beta! This is slated to begin early next week.

While we're at it, I'll share some feedback from the team's review of the site:

You’re off to a good start. Data Science is a relatively new field. Despite that, Data Science SE has created some rigorous, detailed questions and answers which may help data practitioners do their jobs better. Well done! Material which is not merely exploratory, but tangible and applicable is one of the most important ingredients in creating a site of domain experts. Keep it up.

It’s important to rally when we open the floodgates. The amount of activity and engagement we’ve seen in the first few weeks has been somewhat low. Increasing content while keeping quality high will be key. I urge you to think about how to really evangelize the site when you move to public beta. Discussing the 7 Essential Meta Questions and voting early and often will be important too.

As I mentioned, the change will take place next week, so you have a little time to think and prepare.

And again, congrats!

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    $\begingroup$ The 7 essential questions blog post is obsolete. The Real Essential Questions of Every Beta is a newer and arguably accurate resource. $\endgroup$
    – asheeshr
    Jun 10, 2014 at 5:00
  • $\begingroup$ Also, while not relevant anymore, why was there an extended beta? The usual has been 1-2 weeks for the past year. $\endgroup$
    – asheeshr
    Jun 10, 2014 at 13:26
  • $\begingroup$ @AsheeshR We moved data centers last week and that held up all site state changes. $\endgroup$
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 10, 2014 at 19:48
  • $\begingroup$ @AsheeshR Looks like the blog post got updated. It looks more or less identical to that meta post now. $\endgroup$
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 10, 2014 at 20:04
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    $\begingroup$ @AnnaLear The blog post is the same as what it was in 2012, except for some reordering. The problems mentioned here are still there. $\endgroup$
    – asheeshr
    Jun 11, 2014 at 2:16

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The quality is pretty poor at the moment. Lots of opinions, questions that ought to be on SO or CV, rubbish Q's like "Is the R language suitable for Big Data" or "Do I have to learn Hadoop to be a data scientist?" getting bounced around and voted up. Why? They're just discussion-fodder in the main.

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    $\begingroup$ This is a good discussion to have on meta but it merits a post of its own -- I recommend turning this into a separate question. $\endgroup$
    – Ana
    Jun 11, 2014 at 20:21
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    $\begingroup$ I have been saying the same thing. If you see such questions, do VTC or comment on them so that users may understand the problems in such questions. $\endgroup$
    – asheeshr
    Jun 13, 2014 at 5:45

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