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I know this has been asked previously, but not recently. So, why haven't we moved out of Beta? We are doing well on all fronts except for questions asked and at this point it would be really hard to fix given it is averaging over four years.

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  • Ah, I'm glad someone asked the question I was wondering about.
    – taninamdar
    Commented Jul 11, 2016 at 2:49

2 Answers 2

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Under current guidelines there are two reasons a "beta" stack might expect to see its status change:

  1. (Good) Its consistently getting more than 10 questions a day.
  2. (Bad) Its not producing consistently helpful content, and its community isn't strong enough to perform the self-moderation function a healthy stack requires.

In the first case, this is what will generally get a site considered for promotion out of beta. We simply aren't there. A quick check shows me we had 8 new questions posted in the last 24 hours, which is a fairly good day for us. Not a barn-burner, but probably better than average. Using my super mod powers, I'm not supposed to give detailed specifics, but I think I can fairly say we've been bumping around above and below the 5-per-day line for years.

In the second case, this is what will get a site closed. Again we have spurts, but I don't think we're anywhere near that level of problem. I'm not empowered with these decisions, but I think we have a very good community here. We mods may slack a bit on occasion on flag handling, but the community seems to be doing a great job of taking care of problematic questions and answers all on its own even when we don't.

So that leaves us in the middle. Despite what the name may lead you to believe, there's no reason why a stack couldn't stay "beta" forever, if that's where it belongs. Sure, that makes "beta" a bit of a misnomer. There's been some talk of changing the name, but that doesn't appear imminent.

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  • Is there a way in which users can see a one-year daily average? The only number we see is an average for the whole lifetime.
    – Benjamin
    Commented Jun 30, 2016 at 16:44
  • I don't believe so. The page I can go to look at it says in a big orange box at the top: "analytics data is intended for moderators only; please don't share the specifics of this data in public", so I have to think this same data isn't publicly available. You could of course try to figure it out yourself going forward by sampling this page like I just did, but over an extended period.
    – T.E.D. Mod
    Commented Jun 30, 2016 at 17:57
  • @Benjamin - Oh, but there is the high-level stats on our Area51 page
    – T.E.D. Mod
    Commented Jun 30, 2016 at 18:11
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    The majority of content-related data is publicly available at SEDE; it's mostly the visitor data which isn't. Here's a dataset for questions asked each day: data.stackexchange.com/history/query/509875/…, here's a yearly average breakdown: data.stackexchange.com/history/query/509888/…, and here's a monthly graph: data.stackexchange.com/history/query/509890/… (the numbers don't quite match Area51 so there must be some data missing, but it's close)
    – Dave
    Commented Jul 10, 2016 at 12:18
  • Area51's questions/day is a rolling average for the last 14 days.
    – Nathaniel is protesting
    Commented Jul 13, 2016 at 20:50
  • T.E.D. I came to this question wondering if the rampant indiscipline in use and abuse of comments was a factor in the site not getting upgraded, but that is apparently not the case. There is a variety of traffic in comments, to the point of grand arguments like on a discussion forum, that have the meat of a number of new questions and answers, but few users seem motivated to take "hey, that's a question in its own right" and post a question. Self Inflicted Wound, if one of the objectives is to get out of Beta.
    – KorvinStarmast
    Commented Oct 19, 2016 at 21:12
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A rough rule of thumb that I've seen on my sites is that sites with questions in the five figures (>10,000) are "graduated," and the ones still in beta have fewer questions. We're just a bit more than halfway there, and hopefully we'll graduate when we get to (or approach), 10,000.

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  • As I was saying on chat, given current stats the situation seems very hopeless, if we're to follow the known rules about graduation from beta.
    – taninamdar
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 19:47

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