user307: I asked this question more than two years ago: 

What are the chances that we make it out of Beta?

One of my favorite "quotes" from that question:

It is mid-September and things don't seem to have improved much. Perhaps it is time to take some action. –  Daniel Standage Sep 19 '12 at 17:34

I'm asking this question because of my fear (or paranoia) of this community eventually becoming stagnant or deleted. I love Biology.SE, and want to see this site graduate very badly, because I feel as though as a whole it deserves to graduate.
Thus, I was hoping that we as a community could critically evaluate our site, identify our strengths are weakness, and give every member of Biology.SE some goals and a direction.
What do you think are some of the problems with Bio.SE? What are we doing well? What area should be actively focusing on? What would make this community better for you AND for Stack Exchange?

user1590: Things that need to improve according to the Bio SE stats in order of urgency (in my opinion)...
Multiple answers is a good thing, not a bad one
Often I find questions with an accepted and up-voted answer, I used to not bother adding another answer unless I felt I could add a lot more to the matter, partly because I didn't think it would be too well received by the first answerer. Now though if I've got something small that I can add to an answer, or I feel I can offer a different interpretation or perspective on the problem, I will add an additional answer.
We currently have 1.5 answers per question and it needs to go to 2.5
We need more questions
More questions = more potential for answers = more information on the site = more users = more potential for more questions and new answers!
The statistic only needs to improve a little so it won't take much. I occasionally chip in a question I know the answer too (or know how to get to the answer) just to get more questions on to the site. If just all of the top 40 users (those with rep >~2500) contributed an additional question per month (on top of what they already do) we'd have enough questions being asked. Furthermore, once there is more questions on the site it is more likely people will find the site, and then be more likely to use it in the future with their own questions.
It's ok to not know
Often questions go unanswered because they are too specific or niche so there is very little research out there. We need to try and make "best effort" type answers, these would be more speculative and attempt to join the dots more than most "good quality" answers would. I think answers should generally good quality, but if the answer to the question is "we just don't know yet" then we can't change that. In that case we should be more tolerant of speculative answers which attempt to elucidate a likely result from other similar problems.

user338: My three cents: I agree with fileunderwater's answer. I am active on Gardening & Landscaping beta, which is actually 189 days older than Biology. It is a much slower site question-wise, with all-around lower stats (See the GL's Area51 stats, compared with Bio's), but what I've found is that when you want something to happen, you have to take initiative and do it yourself.
Lead by Example
What I recommend doing in this case, is: if you have complaints with the question quality (I do), ask your own, as examples. Even if you know the answers, this really helps set the theme for what good questions look like. If you let new users ask all the questions, then you will be able to predict exactly what you have now: Lots of easy, low research/effort questions flooding the site, and acting as examples for more new users to see.
On GL, I'm not sure there's anything I can ask that I couldn't answer, but that didn't stop me from asking nearly twice as many questions as the next highest asker. Do what you want others to do, to the best of your ability. I was kinda active on GL when it started, and went until the end of June '12. I came back on May 16, '14, and have been on since. I just got a graph of GL site activity, and you will be amazed at how much of a jump 1 user can make, if he/she tries it. Look at the jump in may '14, when I rejoined, highlighted in the second pic:


I think that on a bigger site, such as biology, it may take more than one person (aka teamwork), but you can get a much higher quality activity if you just put it in yourself. Good luck, folks!

user6: I'll address the Area 51 metrics first, the thresholds published on Area 51 are rather misleading.
We currently are at 14 questions per day, with the official threshold for excellent being 15 questions per day. This is one statistic whith a huge variation between sites, some sites like Skeptics have graduated with a question volume far below the threshold. Other sites can easily hit the threshold at the start of the public beta. Our current volume is easily enough to sustain a healthy site, this is nothing to worry about. More good questions is always nice, but simply more questions wouldn't help us graduate any sooner.
Our answer rate is at 87%, the official threshold for excellent is 90%. This is again a statistic that depends heavily on the site subject. I don't think this is a problem currently, but this is an aspect we can certainly improve on. Biology is a rather broad field, the more difficult or specialized questions can often only be answered by users in the same specialized field. Getting this rate way up is unrealistic.
We have 35 users with 3k+ reputation and 45 users with 2k+ reputation. Those are important threshold because these users will be able to close and edit after graduation. This is a sufficient number to have effective community moderation even at the higher privilege thresholds of a graduated site.
I'm not sure what to make of the answer ratio, I don't see a problem for this site here. I can see how extreme values would be problematic, but I think we're at a reasonable point.
I've put some images of our traffic in comparison to Chemistry, which is a site of a similar age and topic that is about to graduate:

They have a bit more traffic than us recently, but overall we're pretty similar in traffic growth. I think traffic looks pretty healthy and shouldn't be a barrier to graduation.
Herre is also a comparison with Physics, an example for a graduates site with a similar topic:

From the number alone, I'd say that we're ready to graduate. But the numbers alone don't decide this.
A severe quality problem would also prevent graduation, but I don't think we have that here. We could certainly do better, but I think overall quality is good on the site. I'm not entirely happy with the ratio of popular biology questions to more advanced questions, but that is not a barrier to graduation.
One aspect that I think could improve is the community engagement on meta. Our meta was pretty silent most of the time, this has improved significantly recently.
My guess would be that we're ready for graduation, but that either our evalution wasn't scheduled yet or the design bottleneck is the limiting factor. But this is entirely my own speculation, I have no inside information here. It is almost impossible to get a straight answer out of an SE employee on when a site graduates, so I don't actually know what SE thinks in this case.

user3624: I don't know if this is an issue for the graduation process but, to me, the main issue for BioSE is the problem to attract questions from active researchers, and difficult well-researched questions from professionals. The balance between general curiosity questions and research questions is still very skewed towards the former. This is not to say that more general biology questions from people with a relatively weaker background in biology are uninteresting. However, when I look at StackOverflow (the obvious model) a good chunk of the questions come from working professionals, and are non-trivial for somebody working in a particular field (in their case, language). My perception is that we get far fewer of these, and this might lead to a negative feedback loop where we will have problems to attract more specialists (this has been covered in several BioSE Meta questions, e.g. here and here). The main issue is that first impressions by new users will be molded by the active/newest questions queue. If this is filled with basic questions users will get the impression that this is the wrong place for harder questions, which then leads to even fewer of these, etc. And to attract research questions is not only valuable in itself - just as important is that this will lead to a more knowledgeable user base, which would inspire better answers to all the other questions.
I'm guilty of not asking many questions myself, and so far I've only asked one single question. This is not only due to the issue I describe above, but since the ecology/conservation biology user base here is weak I would not be very hopeful to get answers to questions I encounter in my work. As much as I hate to say so, these would be more likely to get answers at ResearchGate, which has lots of active researchers answering questions (but on a vastly inferior platform).
So, what is the solution? I really do not know. Promotion and more contributions from already active users will certainly help. I do not think this will be enought though. What we lack is a critical mass of a certain type of users, even if this has improved during the last year.
As for the positives, I do think that we are getting better and better at answering a wider variety of questions, and this is mosty due to the growth of the user base. I also feel that we have gotten better at closing problematic/unproductive questions (my perception at least), but this is also by necessity since the influx of questions has increased.

307: <p>I asked this question more than two years ago: </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/312/what-are-the-chances-that-we-make-it-out-of-beta">What are the chances that we make it out of Beta?</a></p>
</blockquote>

<p>One of my favorite "quotes" from that question:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>It is mid-September and things don't seem to have improved much. Perhaps it is time to take some action. –  Daniel Standage Sep 19 '12 at 17:34</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I'm asking this question because of my fear (or paranoia) of this community eventually becoming stagnant or deleted. I love Biology.SE, and want to see this site graduate very badly, because I feel as though as a whole it <em>deserves</em> to graduate.</p>

<p>Thus, I was hoping that we as a community could critically evaluate our site, identify our strengths are weakness, and give every member of Biology.SE some goals and a direction.</p>

<p><strong>What do you think are some of the problems with Bio.SE? What are we doing well? What area should be <em>actively</em> focusing on? What would make this community better for you AND for Stack Exchange?</strong></p>
 1590: <p>Things that need to improve according to the Bio SE stats in order of urgency (in my opinion)...</p>

<p><strong>Multiple answers is a good thing, not a bad one</strong></p>

<p>Often I find questions with an accepted and up-voted answer, I used to not bother adding another answer unless I felt I could add a lot more to the matter, partly because I didn't think it would be too well received by the first answerer. Now though if I've got something small that I can add to an answer, or I feel I can offer a different interpretation or perspective on the problem, I will add an additional answer.</p>

<p>We currently have 1.5 answers per question and it needs to go to 2.5</p>

<p><strong>We need more questions</strong></p>

<p>More questions = more potential for answers = more information on the site = more users = more potential for more questions and new answers!</p>

<p>The statistic only needs to improve a little so it won't take much. I occasionally chip in a question I know the answer too (or know how to get to the answer) just to get more questions on to the site. If just all of the top 40 users (those with rep >~2500) contributed an additional question per month (on top of what they already do) we'd have enough questions being asked. Furthermore, once there is more questions on the site it is more likely people will find the site, and then be more likely to use it in the future with their own questions.</p>

<p><strong>It's ok to not know</strong></p>

<p>Often questions go unanswered because they are too specific or niche so there is very little research out there. We need to try and make "best effort" type answers, these would be more speculative and attempt to join the dots more than most "good quality" answers would. I think answers should generally good quality, but if the answer to the question is "we just don't know yet" then we can't change that. In that case we should be more tolerant of speculative answers which attempt to elucidate a likely result from other similar problems.</p>
 338: <p>My three cents: I agree with <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3624/fileunderwater">fileunderwater</a>'s <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/696/why-are-we-still-in-beta-how-can-we-fix-this/697#697">answer</a>. I am active on <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1369/gardening-and-landscaping"><strong>Gardening &amp; Landscaping</strong> beta</a>, which is actually 189 days older than Biology. It is a much slower site question-wise, with all-around lower stats (See the <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1369/gardening-and-landscaping">GL's Area51 stats</a>, compared with <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12502/biology">Bio's</a>), but what I've found is that when you want something to happen, you have to <strong>take initiative and do it yourself.</strong></p>
<h1>Lead by Example</h1>
<p>What I recommend doing in this case, is: if you have complaints with the question quality (I do), ask your own, as examples. Even if you know the answers, this really helps set the theme for what good questions look like. If you let new users ask all the questions, then you will be able to predict exactly what you have now: Lots of easy, low research/effort questions flooding the site, and acting as examples for more new users to see.</p>
<p>On GL, I'm not sure there's anything I can ask that I couldn't answer, but that didn't stop me from asking <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12502/biology">nearly twice</a> as many questions as the next highest asker. Do what you want others to do, to the best of your ability. I was kinda active on GL when it started, and went until the end of June '12. I came back on May 16, '14, and have been on since. I just got a graph of GL site activity, and you will be amazed at how much of a jump 1 user can make, if he/she tries it. Look at the jump in may '14, when I rejoined, highlighted in the second pic:</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/LhGWW.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/LhGWW.png" height="210" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/tMQOQ.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/tMQOQ.png" height="210" /></a></p>
<p>I think that on a bigger site, such as biology, it may take more than one person (aka teamwork), but you can get a much higher quality activity if you just put it in yourself. Good luck, folks!</p>
 6: <p>I'll address the Area 51 metrics first, the thresholds published on Area 51 are rather misleading.</p>

<p>We currently are at 14 questions per day, with the official threshold for excellent being 15 questions per day. This is one statistic whith a huge variation between sites, some sites like Skeptics have graduated with a question volume far below the threshold. Other sites can easily hit the threshold at the start of the public beta. Our current volume is easily enough to sustain a healthy site, this is nothing to worry about. More good questions is always nice, but simply more questions wouldn't help us graduate any sooner.</p>

<p>Our answer rate is at 87%, the official threshold for excellent is 90%. This is again a statistic that depends heavily on the site subject. I don't think this is a problem currently, but this is an aspect we can certainly improve on. Biology is a rather broad field, the more difficult or specialized questions can often only be answered by users in the same specialized field. Getting this rate way up is unrealistic.</p>

<p>We have 35 users with 3k+ reputation and 45 users with 2k+ reputation. Those are important threshold because these users will be able to close and edit after graduation. This is a sufficient number to have effective community moderation even at the higher privilege thresholds of a graduated site.</p>

<p>I'm not sure what to make of the answer ratio, I don't see a problem for this site here. I can see how extreme values would be problematic, but I think we're at a reasonable point.</p>

<p>I've put some images of our traffic in comparison to Chemistry, which is a site of a similar age and topic that is about to graduate:</p>

<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/2YZ3F.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>

<p>They have a bit more traffic than us recently, but overall we're pretty similar in traffic growth. I think traffic looks pretty healthy and shouldn't be a barrier to graduation.</p>

<p>Herre is also a comparison with Physics, an example for a graduates site with a similar topic:</p>

<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/rgTen.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>

<p>From the number alone, I'd say that we're ready to graduate. But the numbers alone don't decide this.</p>

<p>A severe quality problem would also prevent graduation, but I don't think we have that here. We could certainly do better, but I think overall quality is good on the site. I'm not entirely happy with the ratio of popular biology questions to more advanced questions, but that is not a barrier to graduation.</p>

<p>One aspect that I think could improve is the community engagement on meta. Our meta was pretty silent most of the time, this has improved significantly recently.</p>

<p>My guess would be that we're ready for graduation, but that either our evalution wasn't scheduled yet or the design bottleneck is the limiting factor. But this is entirely my own speculation, I have no inside information here. It is almost impossible to get a straight answer out of an SE employee on when a site graduates, so I don't actually know what SE thinks in this case.</p>
 3624: <p>I don't know if this is an issue for the graduation process but, to me, the main issue for BioSE is the problem to attract questions from active researchers, and difficult well-researched questions from professionals. The balance between general curiosity questions and research questions is still very skewed towards the former. This is not to say that more general biology questions from people with a relatively weaker background in biology are uninteresting. However, when I look at StackOverflow (the obvious model) a good chunk of the questions come from working professionals, and are non-trivial for somebody working in a particular field (in their case, language). My perception is that we get far fewer of these, and this might lead to a negative feedback loop where we will have problems to attract more specialists (this has been covered in several BioSE Meta questions, e.g. <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/287/cutting-edge-research">here</a> and <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/496/do-we-need-to-change-voting-patterns">here</a>). The main issue is that first impressions by new users will be molded by the active/newest questions queue. If this is filled with basic questions users will get the impression that this is the wrong place for harder questions, which then leads to even fewer of these, etc. And to attract research questions is not only valuable in itself - just as important is that this will lead to a more knowledgeable user base, which would inspire better answers to all the other questions.</p>

<p>I'm guilty of not asking many questions myself, and so far I've only asked one single question. This is not only due to the issue I describe above, but since the ecology/conservation biology user base here is weak I would not be very hopeful to get answers to questions I encounter in my work. As much as I hate to say so, these would be more likely to get answers at ResearchGate, which has lots of active researchers answering questions (but on a vastly inferior platform).</p>

<p>So, what is the solution? I really do not know. Promotion and more contributions from already active users will certainly help. I do not think this will be enought though. What we lack is a critical mass of a certain type of users, even if this has improved during the last year.</p>

<p>As for the positives, I do think that we are getting better and better at answering a wider variety of questions, and this is mosty due to the growth of the user base. I also feel that we have gotten better at closing problematic/unproductive questions (my perception at least), but this is also by necessity since the influx of questions has increased.</p>
