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It's a big day. You've been cleared for graduation by the Stack Exchange Community Team! Worldbuilding met our threshold for graduation-worthy sites and after a review, the Community Team determined that you're good to go. Reaching 'mature community' status is a big milestone, and you should be very proud.

Your site actually passed this threshold a few weeks ago, but we experienced a number of issues with the first wave of design independent graduations. We've since resolved these, so I'm happy to announce that we're ready to flip the switch for you.

What does this mean exactly? Graduation works in two phases. Starting today, you'll receive the following benefits:

  • You will soon have an election for community-voted moderators - there is some backlog here as the elections for some of the first-wave sites have also had to be delayed. Elections for you and the other sites in this wave will start being scheduled in December.
  • You will no longer see the "beta" label attached to your site's name
  • You will become eligible for question migration paths with the rest of the network
  • You will soon be able to select your own community ads. We're very close to the new year and the new ad cycle, and we have some exciting changes planned for these as well. These, too, will begin in December or early January so that you may enjoy the new changes.

The site will still receive a full design from one of our designers, which will be packaged with an increase in the amount of reputation needed to access each privilege. It's no secret that our backlog for site designs is long, so instead of making you wait to receive all the parts of graduation at once, we wanted to give you the things we could give you now. We think we've hammered out most of the bugs in the process, but there are still likely to be some left - so if you come across anything out of place, please report it on Meta Stack Exchange using the [graduating-sites] tag.

This site has reached this point because of your generous contributions. Together, you've created a valuable resource that helps people. Congratulations on all you've accomplished.

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    $\begingroup$ Very great news! Thanks for bringing it and for your trust in our community! $\endgroup$
    – clem steredenn
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:26
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    $\begingroup$ Whoa, awesome! Thank you! $\endgroup$
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:26
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    $\begingroup$ Fantastic. Anyone know what the record for least amount of time in beta is? $\endgroup$
    – James
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:36
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    $\begingroup$ @James According to this on the Meta, 223 days for Sustainable Living. $\endgroup$
    – Frostfyre
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:56
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    $\begingroup$ Did anyone read the first comment under the Christianity answer? $\endgroup$
    – James
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 22:00
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    $\begingroup$ @Frostfyre that was for a game (StackEgg), not an actual beta. $\endgroup$
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 22:19
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    $\begingroup$ @MonicaCellio Didn't know what that was, so I made a guess. Best thing I could find, though... $\endgroup$
    – Frostfyre
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 22:23
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    $\begingroup$ @James So good. $\endgroup$
    – Samuel
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 22:29
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    $\begingroup$ Huzzah! Thank you Stack Exchange gods! Or was it mods? $\endgroup$
    – user3652621
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 22:31
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    $\begingroup$ @JDługosz: it refers to the fact that the backgrounds, fonts, color schemes etc. on beta sites are all the same. Previously, part of graduating a site from Beta was changing it to have a unique, site-specific graphic design. But now there's a process for graduating a site before the new design is created. $\endgroup$
    – zeta
    Commented Nov 17, 2015 at 5:03
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    $\begingroup$ @James The original Stack Exchange 2.0 launch, betas only lasted 90 days, so most of the early sites (Web Apps, Arqade, Webmasters, Mathematics...) all only had 90 days of beta before graduating. $\endgroup$
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Nov 17, 2015 at 6:02
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    $\begingroup$ Wahoo! Starts inventing fictional drinks to celebrate $\endgroup$
    – user7076
    Commented Nov 17, 2015 at 10:23
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    $\begingroup$ @Daaaah When our designers start working on a site design, they'll be coming to the Meta site here and pitching it to you folks to work on details and get feedback on their proposal. $\endgroup$
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Nov 17, 2015 at 14:31
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    $\begingroup$ @MonicaCellio I'm not saying it won't look good, I'm just saying I don't want dragon-fighting cyborgs or space angels. Mostly because I browse this site at work and like to look like I'm staying on task, but also because I want this site to feel more serious than most people think we are. $\endgroup$
    – DaaaahWhoosh
    Commented Nov 17, 2015 at 16:46
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    $\begingroup$ Awesome! This is fantastic news; thank you for the support you've given us since day one. $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868 Mod
    Commented Nov 17, 2015 at 16:55

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Congratulations Everyone

I've been on and off this site since private beta, and it's a really cool site. Great job on achieving graduation and creating such good content. Worldbuilding is still my favourite StackExchange site and has some of the most interesting questions on the network! (In my humble opinion).

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes from here!

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    $\begingroup$ Here's to hoping that everyone keeps up the good work they (you all) have been doing so far! $\endgroup$
    – user
    Commented Nov 29, 2015 at 20:59

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