https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com//help/privileges/modera...
Area51 doesn't appear to allow users to access the mod tools; might be wrong, but the URL pattern to view the rep required to access. If tools works on most SE sites, but it doesn't work on Area51.
I'd totally forgotten about that.
> Area51 doesn't appear to allow users to access the mod tools
From what I've read in meta.SE and discussion.area51, the current running codebase is kind of a fork of the original SO code (call it v1) so is quite old and isn't getting features backported to it (such as the mod tools):
http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/263486/remove-gravat...
There's this Q&A on meta.SE from 2015 about the future of Area51:
http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/263494/whats-going-o...
I haven't been able to find any recent mentions of what the future holds for Area51. I guess a follow up question to "What's going on with Area 51" might now hurt and could elicit new information.
Area 52 has been on hold for years: http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/5089/next-...
Robert knows Area 51 isn't working, but given there's no other way to launch an SE users use it and SE as a result doesn't replace it because they're not interested in the long tail of active Q&A communities; last I checked, it takes them months, if not years to move a site from beta to live even after the community mets SE's requirements.
Basically, SE changed their past policies to avoid building Area 52 and SE has no idea what a working Area 52 would be.
If you want an SE, you've got to understand how Area 51 works, get all of your ducks in a row, then roll through it and the beta; otherwise your just asking for problems and leaving it up to SE to help, which is problematic.
To me, the more interesting question would be what are the numbers since launch for Area 51's launch funnel; that is from submitting a proposal, de-duplicating it, (etc), site leaves beta.
My suggestion/request would be to just have SE post a request request for proposal to replace A51 on the main SE blog, since SE has had years to do so, has not, and positive the community would find a better solution.
As such, the core philosophy (and bulk of the code) behind it is still more or less the same, but how proposals actually behave has changed dramatically.
We've also made significant changes to the lifecycle of sites after they're created, which you can find discussed on Meta Stack Exchange:
- https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/260754/feedback-req...
- http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/283663/its-been-a-ye...
All and all, this was one of many reasons I left, the largest being that communities in my opinion should be based around tags, not verticals; tags are in fact in my opinion how SO is run.
Again, thanks, and good luck!