We [= the AI.SE mods] are happy to share that we have been informed that our Artificial Intelligence site will be graduating, which means that it will lose its status as a "Beta" site and instead be recognised as a full site on the StackExchange network. It is currently expected that this will happen on December 16. At that time, the Community Management team of StackExchange will post more detailed information about exactly what this means, which sites are graduating, and why. We think it's very nice to see the value that the site adds be recognised and appreciated!
Most users' regular usage of the site will likely remain largely unaffected; all the existing questions, answers, and comments stay, all your reputation stays, there are no plans to change what is considered on- or off-topic, and so on.
Additionally, this change will involve a new Election for moderators on the site, which community members (assuming they meet certain requirements), including the current moderators, may nominate themselves for. There is no precise timeline for when this will be scheduled, but it may be a while still (since many different beta sites across the network are going to be graduating). More info on that will of course be on this Meta site when it happens!
Until we get more official info (expected on December 16 as mentioned above), you may already get an idea of more details around this from this post from 2019 about a previous time when a larger batch of beta sites was selected for graduation. Note that, as in 2019, the plan is that the reputation thresholds required for various privileges will NOT (yet) change, even though usually (but not in this case) full sites have different reputation thresholds for certain privileges.
In general, one of the criteria for graduation is that at least 70% of the open questions should have at least one open answer. This is the only criterion that we do not yet satisfy. Due to the following reason, SE believes that an exception is warranted and we are ready to graduate anyway:
However, when we were looking at AI specifically we realized that your site has had the most Sponsorships of any MSE site and we felt that that deserved special recognition and consideration because the dedication to contributing quality content by your community has contributed so much to the success of MSE. If you would like to loose your Beta label we think you are ready for that.
