[farmerbuzz]

They're at least trying to address this issue by requiring substantial commitment up front before building out a site: http://area51.stackexchange.com/ . Whether the thresholds they've chosen will work remains to be seen but they at least know about the issue.

[petercooper]

You're right. I just don't think that's a healthy way to build a community. It reminds me of those high end "planned communities" in places like Florida, Dubai, and around the Med. You get interest and deposits, build a "perfect" environment, and people come in and enjoy their holiday homes without really forming a "community."

Most good communities, online or off, build organically and over time. See HN, Reddit, MetaFilter, Digg, or even Stack Overflow itself (in its original form). Getting hundreds of users to "commit" to forming a community on day one is a recipe for disaster and will end up in a place people dip in and out of rather than truly care for.

[rquirk]

Substantial commitment is not necessary in practice. Joining the private beta of gaming.stackexchange.com required me to commit, but the site turned out to have a high XBox 360 and (surprisingly) Dwarf Fortress to everything else ratio and I have not returned with any enthusiasm.

I've outgrown games perhaps, but committing didn't require anything. Maybe if it had cost me 1000 Stack Overflow reputation points I would have thought twice about signing up? If it did cost that much, it would be a high barrier to entry for non-programmer-non-stackoverflowers and the site would get less people committing (resulting in the "ghost town" effect).