This site has been in beta for years, will it ever make it out?

Question

Similar threads in the early days of this site exists: Site Not On Track to Survive Public Beta and Is the questions metric key if the PM site is to avoid being cancelled after beta?

but looking at the Area 51 stats the only issue holding this site back at this point is the 2.1 questions per day versus the 10 expected per day. Otherwise all the stats are fantastic there.

Since those threads are very outdated on their data, what happens to this site if thats the only metric that does not come up? Is there a current termination date?

You can see from the stats that there is considerable daily traffic, so to me organic is not the problem. It seems that perhaps people are finding the answers they need and so are not posting new questions. If that is the case then the content here has value that would be lost if the beta site is shutdown.

Answer 1

The latest rules for graduation are documented here.

As long as this community is actively being moderated, it won't be closed:

If there's enough moderation for a public beta site to consistently remain free of spam, for flags to be cleared, and for our Be Nice policy to be upheld, your site will remain open. However, if community leaders drop off, flags sit without being addressed, and we can’t find any suitable volunteers to step forward, the site gets closed.

Answer 2

It's interesting to observe how some sites are more active than others in terms of questions yet are still healthy communities. The revisited policy seems to recognize that certain domains and communities may lend themselves to different dynamics than others. It certainly seems that pm, while technically a beta site, is healthy and helpful.

Answer 3

Just to add up on what Thomas (+1!) accurately pointed out - PMSE is the kind of community that isn't likely to be closed anytime soon, and although it isn't likely to be out of beta anytime soon based in our metrics, it doesn't really matter a lot - and the reason is the answer for Aziz's comment question:

What is the extra advantage for the community if site graduates?

Excerpt from the guideline post Thomas shared (as I couldn't find any other list of differences from graduated sites):

• Site Design
• Moderator Elections
• Community Ads
• Reputation Levels
• Full migration target
• Being listed in the footer
• Mod Tools

So, my take out on this is that we have cosmetic / promoting changes + mod elections. We're already addressing (albeit manually) the latter, so the overall benefit for the community on graduating isn't that big (or is it?).

Besides, Robert Caitano advocates on removing the 'beta' label after x time, but as it seems it's still an open discussion.

Ah, but besides the QPD, our stats are quite good!

They are, indeed! However, as of today the minimum 10 QPD is still considered a minimum (although I believe we have had communities graduating by a bit lower than this bar). And why it's considered a minimum? Because

Questions per day

A steady influx of questions is a natural side effect of a growing, healthy site. But when the number of new questions becomes “worrying,” some folks might exhort to “seed” the site to push those numbers higher.

... so, it's not about questions only - it's about the influx of visitors. We're stable in the average of 2 questions per day since a while, which implies that we are NOT increasing the influx of new visitors. I just generated the below graph in the good Ol' Excel:

So - having that said... when is PMSE graduating?

When WE, as community, promote it enough to the point of having the minimum influx of visitors (and by subproduct, the minimum amount of QPD) on a stable basis.