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Alright, Parenting SE's two year anniversary is coming up next Friday. I would love to get us out of beta before our three year anniversary. I don't know how and when they decide to do it, but I've already had a stack exchange site pulled out from under me once, and I have no intention of letting it happen again.

According to Area 51, we are rated excellent in all areas except questions per day. We have 322 "avid users." If each of us asked a question every 3 weeks, that would put us in the healthy 15 questions per day range.

So I am committing to do two things: put aside my pride to ask at least one question per week, and share the question with my facebook friends. Who's with me? What else can we do to garner more questions?

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    I salute you for committing to this goal! Keep in mind that we have already covered this question a few months ago where I explain why it would be an impossibly monumental task to have existing users think up new questions, and keep that commitment going on an artificial basis. Indeed, the better solution is also proposed: bring in new users: more parents with new questions to ask. Mar 20, 2013 at 19:40
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    Note that the "avid users" statistic on Area 51 is inherently flawed: it goes strictly by reputation, and does not distinguish between those with high reputation who are actively participating, and those who haven't been on the site in over a year. But yes, please bring on the questions! But better yet, bring on more users to ask their own questions!!!
    – user420
    Mar 21, 2013 at 18:05
  • Do you know how the visits per day is calculated? 3600 visits per day seems large to only result in 1 question. Mar 21, 2013 at 18:50
  • @KarlBielefeldt I don't know specifically, but presumably it is derived from basic web stats like Google Analytics. I believe 3600 is a pretty accurate average. Keep in mind that many of those hits are unregistered users, and, given the number of search engine referrals we receive, I suspect many of those are looking for a question that was already well-answered. Converting those people who come across us from Google searches into registered, participating users, seems to be our biggest challenge.
    – user420
    Mar 22, 2013 at 12:15
  • Yeah, this is close-as-duplicate for me. Same issues as last time. We'd artificially boost the questions, but then we'd leave beta and immediately tank again.
    – deworde
    Mar 22, 2013 at 16:41

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As mentioned, this has come up before, and the answer is that just asking a bunch of questions until we graduate isn't going to work, although I very much appreciate you caring enough to make this commitment!

For starters, graduating doesn't magically change anything as far as how the site progresses. If we push to ask questions until we graduate, then once we graduate, we will be a graduated site that probably isn't getting enough questions.

But realistically, boosting our questions/day alone isn't going to even likely to result in us graduating.

There are other considerations that will factor in to our graduation.

As I mentioned above, the "Avid Users" stat is of questionable value by itself, since quite a few of our top users by reputation simply are not active on this site anymore. In fact, 2 of our top 5 haven't been to the site in over a year. This is not going to escape the notice of the SE team, nor should it.

Another factor is how the loss of privileges will impact our site. Remember: the reputation requirement to unlock privileges is drastically reduced for beta sites. If we were to graduate now, we'd have a total of 14 users with sufficient reputation to case close votes.

Only 9 users have enough reputation to edit tag wikis

Only 2 users (both of us currently moderators) have enough reputation to access the moderator tools.

IMO, that's not really sufficient to have the community police itself.

Which brings us to one of the unsung weaknesses we're experiencing:

Votes.

We get high reputation users by voting on quality content. The more votes people receive, the more they can help out, and the more they are encouraged to participate.

Now go through our highest reputation users, and check how many votes they've cast. We have top users who have voted less than 50 times. We only have 12 people on the site who have voted 300 times or more.

Compare that to travel.se, which recently graduated from beta: they have 32 users who have voted 300 times or more. They also have 10 users with 10k rep, and 22 with over 5k.

I'm not saying this to criticize anyone. People should only vote for content that they consider quality. But in the context of "what do we need to do to graduate?", this is a big area where we fall short, but which isn't directly reflected in the Area 51 results.

To borrow from another beta site that has had similar discussions, we can't underestimate the importance of voting.

So, yes, ask more questions, but more importantly, vote and promote: upvote content that you think is useful (even if you personally disagree!), and promote the site by sharing our quality content with people who don't participate.

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  • Guilt trip received. We now have 13 people who have voted 300 times or more, as of a minute ago. Now I've done my bit and never have to vote again (just kidding). Mar 22, 2013 at 20:46
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    Especially for parents: sharing on Facebook is totally key! I know more parents using Facebook like power users these days than teens or college-age people!
    – Aarthi
    Mar 25, 2013 at 21:43

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