Area 51 - Calling All Alteryx Users!

As I was strolling around on the web the other day, I ran across a very cool site called the Stack Exchange Area 51 Staging Zone. Similiar to StackOverflow.com, which is a collaboratively edited question and answer  site for programmers; Area 51 - where groups of subject matter experts can band together to create free Q&A sites of any topic of their choosing, appealed to me. And so the first thing I searched for was Alteryx - hmmm, no sites found. Intrigued by this, I dug deeper to figure out how to launch a new site. To begin a proposed Area 51 site, a site must initially go through a specific lifecycle containing these four stages:

1. Follow it - The site must first show that enough users are interested in the site topic to follow it. A total of 60 users must follow the site
2. Help Design the Community - The users must then submit good questions that can be rated on-topic or off-topic. Each site must have both types of questions, because the off-topic questions are just as important as the on-topic ones. Once a question recieves 20 votes, and has at least 4 votes for as to against it, then the question is designated "on-topic" or "off-topic".
3. Commit - Users are then asked to "sign-up" and commit to the site, being an active member of the community by asking and answering questions.
4. Beta - At this point the site is in the critial phase - it is judged on how much the site is utilized by the users. Over the next 90 days, the site is evaluated, thus if the site is not being used, it s deleted.

After learning how to create a site, I pondered the question (sorry for the Field of Dreams cliche'), "If it is built, will fellow Alteryx users actively participate?" Before you answer this for yourself, here are my two compelling reasons for creating an AlteryxUser Area 51 Q&A site:

1. It's not company moderated. The group of dedicated individuals at Alteryx do a great job running their Alteryx forum, yet I feel the users need a site where all types of questions can be presented and openly discussed.
2. Reputation - The more users participate and bring in additional users, they recieve points towards their reputation. Reputation is a sort of ranking that is displayed on the site, in which the users earn through site collaboration by asking and answering questions and referring others to the site. Most importantly, users earn the most reputation when they follow through on their commitments. According to the Area 51 website, "Reputation is never given, it is earned by convincing other users that you know what you're talking about."

So I'm interested to see if there are enough Alteryx users and guru's interested in running this site. One user cannot an Area 51 site make, others must be commited to make this work.

Now, you might be thinking "Why bother when Ned Harding and the bright folks in Client Services answer my questions in the Alteryx Forum?" Good question, and the only response that I can give is that this is an Alteryx user only Q&A site, maintained and supported by Alteryx users. Nuff said!

So if you are interested in helping build this community, please click on this Follow the AlteryxUser Area 51 site link to follow the site (click the Follow It! button) and participate.

A Special Note: I'd like to ask employees of Alteryx to refrain from following this site until it clears the Beta phase - if it is to be, it's up to Alteryx users. Thanks!

Till next time, enjoy!