How close are we to coming out of beta?

Question

Daily visits seem to be up. The community is growing and involved. The stats from Area 51 seem to be positive, by and large.

Any sense on how we are doing to transition out of beta?

Answer 1

I really believe we're doing great! I see graduation as imminent, assuming we continue doing what we're doing, increase the reputation levels of the core groups of users, and increase the level of meta-participation. However, I'm personally not sure we're at the point where graduation would benefit us just yet. Here's why...

One of those questions, when determining if a site is ready to graduate, is whether or not there are enough core users to help moderate the site, and whether or not there is enough new material to sustain the core group, should a few users need a break.

Are there enough users to moderate the site?

Keep in mind that all of the privilege thresholds increase dramatically on a graduated site. The threshold is much lower on beta sites, which makes it easier to get more people involved in community moderation.

Currently, we have 63 regular users who have the 500 rep needed to vote to close/reopen. If we graduated today, we'd have only 6. To reach graduation, we need to get more people to VOTE on questions and answers and earn those voting badges! Each person gets 40 votes per day, and there are over a thousand questions with answers to vote on.

Take Action:

If you haven't been involved in PMSE since the very beginning, take some time to go through older posts. Vote up the good stuff, vote down the bad. While you're there, flag anything needing moderator attention, and edit anything that needs clarification or clean-up.

The more voting happens, the more people who will reach the 3000 rep levels, and the closer we'll be to graduation! Make it a goal to use up all of your votes!

Beta is an okay place to be

For us, Beta is a loyal ally! For now, Beta means that users with only 500 reputation can step up to the plate and help moderate the site. We've benefit greatly from reduced privilege thresholds, and we have some awesome <2000 rep users who have taken advantage of this empowerment, who regularly perform actions on the site that help keep it clean.

With that said, we hit excellent in the Avid Users category, but losing a few key people is always a concern, one that we must examine carefully. Considering we are low in the questions per day category, it could take awhile to replace any higher rep users who, for whatever reason, need a break.

So perhaps the biggest, most important thing that we can do right now is to encourage more voting on questions and answers and build up our core group of users!