Are we doing well enough?

Question

I love the great outdoors and I would love to see a lot more questions on this site. However, I'm worried, and less optimistic than this question. Soon we'll be having our first anniversary. Is this site doing well enough? Are we growing? In the past, Stack Exchange has closed down beta sites that weren't growing enough. Does TGO risk going the same path? Should we be nervous?

Has anyone kept historical statistics on how we are growing or not, such as here on Meta Academia?

For a path to finding statistics of closed betas, see this question.

Answer 1

I wouldn't obsess too much over the numbers. Generally, when a site is doing poorly and falls into steady decline, you can feel it. This blog post deals with the issue of how and when a failing site has to be closed:

Does this site have a chance of succeeding?

The first takeaway is that sites don't get shut down for "not growing enough." It's only when a site struggles to maintain any semblance of steady progress that it's time to worry. You're not even close to being in that position.

The second takeaway is not to obsess too much over your numbers. The first blog post linked above describes how the Area 51 stats are not a report card. It just tells you where more focus is needed to build a sustainable site.

So keep using the site; keep asking interesting questions and providing great answers; vet those answers, improve them, and up-vote them; get involved in meta activities to keep this site on track; tell your friends and colleagues — then this site should do fine.

Answer 2

I keep an eye on the daily number of visitors and it’s steadily climbing from around 500 a day to the current 800+ a day. I think that’s a pretty important metric, if not the most important. Given enough people, we should see increase even in the number of questions asked per day, which is currently our biggest pain point. The blog proposed in a another thread here on meta would be a great way to attract attention, if we are able to come up with high-quality content.

What I’d like to know if there’s somebody from the Stack Exchange HQs that we could ask if we’re in trouble.