We shouldn't obsess over our Area 51 stats, but our questions per day are a concern. For a healthy beta, we need 5 questions a day, which equates to 1 question every 147 days from our whole user population (735).

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 current stats (here) are around 0.8 questions per day, 2.6 answers per question and 99% answered.

I'd like to propose a short term goal between now and the end of June 2013, 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/1332/104

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?