We shouldn't obsess over our Area 51 stats, but our questions per day are a concern. For a healthy beta, we need a minimum of 5 questions a day, which equates to 1 question every 140 days from our whole user population (circa 700).
One question every 5 months per person doesn't sound like a lot, but we're a long way off achieving that, and the more good questions (well-answered) that we have, the more we'll attract search engine traffic and users who see our value and want to stay around. Which is the best way of ensuring the survival of (what I believe is) an excellent resource for family historians and genealogists at all levels of experience.
Our stats were around 0.8 questions per day, 2.6 answers per question and 99% answered when this Q&A was first posted in April 2013.
Our current (28 Sep 2014) stats (here) are around 0.6 questions per day, 2.4 answers per question and 98% answered.
I'd like to propose an ongoing goal that we aim to get and keep our site statistics at:
at least 3 questions per day, which is a decent step towards 5 (the "Okay range")
To get to 3 questions per day, just keep an eye on that statistic, and if it's below three, ask a question yourself. Even consider self-answering a question, if you think it is interesting and worthwhile.
If you need a prompt to help you come up with a question, you could look at the "Topic Areas" at the bottom of this post: http://meta.genealogy.stackexchange.com/q/1332/104Analysis of questions to date
For discussion:
- Is it useful to set such short term goals?
- Is this a reasonable short term goal?
- Would you define it differently?
- What else can we do to increase our question rate?
Edited to add some stats:
Nearly 80% of our traffic currently comes from search engines.
3 questions per day is an initial target -- as Area 51 says, 15 questions per day is a health beta.
