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I understand that the metric around questions asked per day is a good identifier of the engagement of the community (particularly new members) but 15 per day feels like an arbitrary number. Shouldn't the scope of the area of knowledge be factored in to the goal? A category such as 'the great outdoors' can include topics from outdoor recreation (a huge category in itself) to preservation to first aid, etc... However home brewing, while still a large category, isn't quite as vast as many other sites. Currently the question and answer quality is quite high. I come here frequently with questions only to find that most have been asked already and have detailed responses.

By pushing for quantity of questions aren't we at risk of sacrificing the other half of the age old quality/quantity trade off?

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    Agreed with the sentiment; the times I remember a spurt of activity, it seems like half the questions are of the sort that can be answered with "don't panic, wait longer, use your hydrometer."
    – fire.eagle
    Commented Jan 24, 2013 at 20:30
  • I wish I could upvote more than once!
    – Denny Conn Mod
    Commented Jan 25, 2013 at 16:53
  • 1
    It looks like you have some agreement in the form of votes, but it's not clear which way they are voting. I'll add some answers.
    – Mark McDonald
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 3:28

3 Answers 3

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No - 15 questions per day is NOT an appropriate metric for this site.

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15 question/day is not a metric that many SEI betas are capable of acheiving. Most of them are too niche to attract that kind of traffic and attention in a reasonable beta period.

However, if you look at recent sites that have graduated (I'll be looking at RPG, Travel, Judaism and Mathematica) you can see that the bar isn't nearly that high.

  • RPG - this is the site I'm looking at that I was most involved in when it graduated. When it graduated it had just 3.4 q/day. The big deal was the excellent quality (and quantity) of answers that were provided and the fact that the traffic was consistently rising (a healthy 1667/day when we graduated). This is a pretty excellent comp for your site as it's a niche (but growing) hobby and survived a very extended beta.

  • Judaism - This site graduated about the same time RPG did and had a much better number of questions (6.6/day) but more depressed traffic (758/day). Not a great comp as it doesn't occupy the same sector, but also had an extended beta.

  • Mathematica - This site sailed through it's beta and is one of the fastest launches of late. But you can see why from the stats 12 q/day and 1307 visits/day. This is a poor comparison to your site as it doesn't occupy a niche and is a professional tool rather than a hobby site. But gives you an idea that even the best sites don't have to live up to the 15/day metric.

  • Travel - Another poor comp but included to show that massive traffic means a lot more than questions/day.

I encourage everyone to check out the launched sites tab of A51 to get a realistic picture of what you're shooting for. Especially pay attention to recent launches of things that had extended beta periods (RPG, Judaism, Skeptics, Sci-Fi). But also be sensitive to the fact that SEI evaluates each site individually and looks more at trends than the numbers that they show to make their evaluations.

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Yes - 15 questions per day is an appropriate metric.

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