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This meta post will track our stats on Area 51, fortnightly (14 days) or a bit longer if I forget and someone else updates it:

Here's the Quantcast estimate of site traffic, with the mean number of visitors per month, a sparkline of weekly visitors for the last six months, and highest and lowest weekly visitor count in the last six months: (the chart doesn't always show, so just click through on that link if not, to see the detailed stats)

You can help build the site, by being active on meta and in chat; by asking questions, answering questions, and by sharing links to particular questions and answers across social media: use the "share" link on posts to generate a URL that can earn you bronze, silver and gold badges.

 Date Days in Qs/ % 200+ 2k+ 3k+ Total Ans Visits Qntcst beta day answrd Usrs Usrs Usrs Users Ratio /day p/mth ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016-07-03 810 3.6 89% 230 28 20 3 899 1.6 1 629 42 630 2016-05-18 763 1.6 90% 226 28 19 3 679 1.6 1 813 46 012 2016-05-02 747 2.7 90% 226 28 19 3 614 1.6 1 930 44 210 2016-04-18 733 1.9 90% 225 28 19 3 533 1.6 1 793 38 729 2016-04-04 719 2.1 90% 222 28 18 3 452 1.6 1 404 37 517 2016-03-19 703 2.4 89% 218 28 17 3 387 1.6 1 688 42 487 2016-03-04 688 2.5 90% 213 28 17 3 317 1.6 1 834 45 275 2016-02-19 674 1.9 90% 211 28 17 3 246 1.6 1 662 49 579 2016-02-04 659 3.7 90% 208 28 17 3 163 1.6 1 928 52 334 2016-01-21 645 2.9 91% 203 28 17 3 014 1.6 1 696 39 346 2016-01-05 629 1.9 91% 196 27 16 2 884 1.5 982 31 980 2015-12-05 598 2.0 91% 195 26 16 2 746 1.6 1 383 43 738 2015-11-21 584 2.2 91% 192 26 16 2 670 1.6 1 866 49 956 2015-11-05 569 1.8 91% 189 25 16 2 579 1.5 1 929 47 510 2015-10-20 553 2.7 90% 189 25 16 2 497 1.5 1 815 42 379 2015-10-06 538 2.0 91% 186 25 16 2 424 1.5 1 617 40 791 2015-09-21 523 2.4 90% 185 25 16 2 370 1.5 1 654 39 243 2015-09-07 509 2.4 90% 184 24 16 2 308 1.5 1 446 35 847 2015-08-24 495 2.0 91% 183 24 16 2 238 1.5 1 418 34 100 2015-08-06 477 2.4 91% 178 24 16 2 168 1.5 1 370 39 705 2015-07-21 461 2.0 91% 173 24 13 2 091 1.5 1 501 47 040 2015-07-07 447 2.8 91% 162 23 13 2 019 1.5 1 516 42 934 2015-06-23 433 1.6 91% 160 23 13 1 947 1.5 1 403 38 155 2015-06-08 418 1.6 91% 159 23 12 1 897 1.5 1 622 38 439 2015-05-25 404 1.6 91% 158 23 12 1 840 1.5 1 422 38 126 2015-05-11 390 2.1 91% 155 23 12 1 806 1.5 1 420 36 803 2015-04-27 376 2.0 91% 153 22 12 1 761 1.5 1 256 31 936 2015-04-11 360 2.0 91% 151 21 11 1 703 1.5 1 054 27 445 2015-03-27 345 2.4 91% 150 22 10 1 658 1.5 1 083 26 421 2015-03-09 327 1.6 91% 145 22 9 1 582 1.5 1 058 26 495 2015-02-23 313 1.4 91% 141 21 8 1 539 1.5 1 030 27 690 2015-02-09 299 1.9 91% 138 21 8 1 488 1.5 1 023 27 035 2015-01-26 285 1.7 91% 137 21 8 1 438 1.5 898 21 421 2015-01-10 270 2.6 91% 133 20 6 1 367 1.5 674 20 031 2014-12-10 238 2.4 89% 117 16 5 1 242 1.5 758 24 845 2014-11-25 223 3.2 88% 112 12 4 1 178 1.5 833 20 390 2014-11-12 212 2.1 86% 102 8 2 1 055 1.5 496 11 737 2014-10-30 197 1.5 86% 97 7 1 1 020 1.5 479 14 166 2014-10-14 181 1.8 85% 92 7 1 986 1.5 527 13 002 ---- Panda 4.1 Google update boosts our rankings 2014-09-30 167 1.9 84% 92 5 1 917 1.5 342 9 856 2014-09-16 153 1.7 84% 90 5 1 875 1.5 367 9 412 2014-09-02 139 1.8 85% 87 4 1 837 1.5 355 8 284 2014-08-18 124 1.4 85% 86 4 1 778 1.5 175 4 503 2014-08-04 110 1.1 84% 83 4 1 730 1.5 162 3 533 2014-07-21 96 1.4 84% 82 4 1 691 1.5 148 3 240 2014-07-05 80 2.6 82% 78 4 1 645 1.5 137 3 061 2014-06-20 65 2.1 82% 77 4 0 602 1.5 107 2 421 ---- End of the "Honeymoon" surge of new-site traffic 2014-06-04 49 3.6 90% 67 3 0 549 1.4 110 7 267 2014-05-17 31 5.1 87% 62 2 0 485 1.5 423 14 292 2014-05-03 17 6.7 83% 48 0 0 366 1.6 375 8 472

Activity graphs

Note that a dip in Qs/day and Visits/day is normal for the first few weeks of a new beta - the initial surge in the first week or two is exceptional: after that, site-building is a steady, cumulative process after the dip.

Moderators have a view of the site's statistics, but they cannot share the specifics. So, I'm starting this post to keep track of the evolution of our publicly available statistics over time. Please feel free to update it every now and then.

I use the Area51 page as source for those stats, in addition to the Quantcast figure.

Questions per day is a rolling 2-week mean. Visits per day is a rolling two-week median.

Number of users who posted 2 or more upvoted answers per week, from this SEDE query:

enter image description here

also this answer on the mother meta which contains a list of links to similar stats-tracking posts on other beta sites

The thing is, these stats are only crudely indicative. They're crude, but they're all that can be shared publicly. They are not yes/no indicators for graduation. They're crudely indicative, that's all.

For graduation, we need to build a body of expert content, and a community to maintain and expand it. It's much harder to quantify that - there are some stats that can be manually generated by the SE developers, such as the number of high-rep users who visited in the last few weeks, and so on. And there are publicly-visible indicators such as the liveliness of this meta site, and our chat.

So, this post is just a broad-brush view of where we've come from, and is emphatically not a direct measure of how close we are to graduation. And whatever the indicators stand at, the message is still the same: if you want this site to thrive, keep attracting new expert users, keep adding expert content, and keep maintaining the existing content, through sharing, editing, voting, flagging, closing, reopening and deleting wherever appropriate.

Users with at least 5000 rep now have access to limited site analytics available at /site-analytics that let you explore statistics on posts, votes and visits for our site.

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  • $\begingroup$ +1 @EnergyNumbers: Awesome, thanks, really nice; though bit puzzled why you'd post stats after saying, "those numbers are a very small part of the story, and are a legacy of Stack Exchange 2010. It's about the community. Those stats were a first stab at measuring proxies of the community. They're not very good proxies." What's the dealio? $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 2:26
  • $\begingroup$ @blunders fair point: I've edited in an extra 3 paragraphs at the end to explain. $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 11:48
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, guess my take is that: (1) SE has internal stats for sites leaving beta that are neither shared with the mods or the community; (2) SE, not the community, has the final say in if a site leaves beta; (3) SE has not published a DIY guide to growing a SE beta site; (4) the stats are very important, but only if they correlate to a healthy site; (5) SE refuses to publicly define healthy, even though it's possible; (6) unlike the main SE sites, pulling data is hard to do; (7) Managing goals, actions, results, etc via meta is time consuming. $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 15:20
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    $\begingroup$ @blunders I suspect the graduation criteria are deliberately qualitative, even privately within SE. Yes, SE Inc is the only one that makes the graduation decision. "Healthy" is a qualitative thing, and it's still early days for this sort of site, so, like the famous quote about pornography: although it may be impossible to define, we know it when we see it. Setting up new standard stats is hard - it takes valuable dev time - and it's hard to see the business case for it at present. (NB though I say "we", I mean we generally - I am not part of StackExchange Inc) $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 15:33
  • $\begingroup$ Being "deliberately qualitative" does not mean that the sources and methods of those deliberations are unexpressible. Further, find it very hard to believe that there's much volatility internally within SE that they're unable define sources and methods for themselves. There's a reason why they don't publicly state the recipe for a Q&A, guessing is intellectual property related. $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 15:57
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    $\begingroup$ @blunders - here's an alternative explanation: it's constantly evolving, as they learn more. And publicising the previous site's target would mean it couldn't be used as the next site's target, because the users would end up chasing narrow proxies, thus distorting them too much to be useful. $\endgroup$ Commented May 4, 2014 at 16:01
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    $\begingroup$ Really, from experience, fortnightly updating is sufficient. Updating after 3 days adds noise, not signal. And the chart really is best with weekly averages: it smooths out the noise, to better show the signal. $\endgroup$ Commented May 7, 2014 at 14:11
  • $\begingroup$ I made the updates in part because a single row of data is not as useful as two. At any rate, appears we have very different opinion on how to get stuff done, so I'll leave the maintenance of this page to you. $\endgroup$ Commented May 7, 2014 at 14:32
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    $\begingroup$ I have been posting links to my Facebook and Twitter account, and even have links to here on my ResearchGate account. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 9:12
  • $\begingroup$ Peculiar that % Answered has gone up by 10%-points but Answers per question has remained constant. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 21:11
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    $\begingroup$ @gerrit it may be that "% answered" means "% of questions with at least one answer with a positive net score". In that case, this would increase, without a corresponding increase in answers per question, if there has been a decline in the proportion of questions that only have answers at net 0 score or below. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 4:07

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