user40636: I'm new to this SE site and as a geneticist i liked the idea to be able to help newbies and explain simple genetic facts to the community. But after one week following this site activities, I found activity quite low: e.g. 30-40 views max for a question asked 3 days ago. It seems there are not enough reviewers or high rep users here. Most of the time questions are asked by low rep users (which is not bad in itself in my opinion) but the community should help newbies to rephrase questions and add what they have searched before...
Apart from @Remi.b, there seems to be no more high rep users answering or editing questions. I also have the feelings that questions are getting downvoted with no comments on how they could be improved.
I would like to have your feelings about the situation on this site.
EDIT: This General quality of BioSE questions vs other SEs was very interesting, I wasn't aware of all that. I understand now the feeling that whatever you do, OPs won't improve their questions so you are wasting your time.

user25568: This site should be revamped; and the questions and answers already stored in this site, are treasures to humankind, with great deal of research effort. So all these treasures should be maintained and should be kept available to the public, with due respect to all the content. 
Edit: I've changed my opinion about ProfBio, and the site-branching (ProfBio) idea could be a practically useful tool to save the site. So I'm agree with most other users. 

user19277: An occasional problem is active users voting to close perfectly good questions because it's not in their field, and they don't understand the point of the question. Most recent example: Is there a statistical analysis test I can perform that will give me a estimate of total population from my own smaller data sets?, which has been put on hold as "Too broad".  
It is not too broad; it is a very specific question focusing on a well-studied problem. It can be answered with pointers to the relevant literature; there is an R package specifically designed for this. 
The question is phrased a little awkwardly, but anyone who has even distantly touched on the field should immediately understand the point of the question. It's exactly the sort of thing that SE Biology is designed to answer.  
If you're wondering why Biology is fading away, this is one reason: A small handful of users are actively driving away questions from fields they don't understand.

user22628: A short answer to go with @AliceD's long comment:
This doesn't necessarily address the low-traffic problem directly, but as discussed here we've basically ended up with a SE where a large number of relative newcomers ask the questions and a small number of professional biologists answer them.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you can see why it tends to lead to a very bimodal distribution of user reps, and (I would suspect) a lot of users who are relatively inexperienced at how to use StackExchange, and so don't ask 'good' questions, don't take the tour, and sometimes abandon the site when they have an answer without accepting it.
So basically, the current model is one way to run an SE site, but it appeals mainly to new, occasional users rather than professionals. We have a small proportion of regular users, who often don't bother asking technical questions because they're the only experts in their area. We thus have relatively low traffic, a high proportion of low quality questions and a small proportion of users who view and answering questions (and a large proportion of casual users who visit once or twice to ask and not to answer).
I don't want to lose the engagement aspects of the site, but I would like a Biology professionals site in parallel. Until we get that, I think we'll keep seeing proposals for relatively small-community specialist sites; they pop up constantly. There was an ecological statistics proposal a while back that was backed by a medium-sized group of young researchers who weren't willing to use Biology.SE due to the high volume of low-quality posts, but it was killed off as having too much overlap with Biology.SE. Bioinformatics.SE joined the family recently (I don't really understand how that proposal didn't fall foul of the same rule, but for what it's worth I think the ecological statistics one should have survived so I'm happy the bioinformatics one made it).

user9943: A long comment here really -
First off, you're most active at puzzling. As a scientific stack, answers need to be backed up by references. For sites like puzzling, folks can just take a bash - their bash. On a site like Bio, we also take a bash, but have to find, and cite, the proper sources to back our claims up. Answering here takes effort and time and I dare say it takes more time and more effort than a lot of other stacks around. I have been active at sites like Acedemia.SE and also WorldBuilding. Those sites also expect answers to be good, but still it appears to me to be a lot easier, as one doesn't have to visit Google Scholar, the uni library and PubMed to back up their claims on sites like that.   
Having said that - This site is not dead. It may be going through a silent period :)
I can't really speak for all the hi-rep users, but I have the feeling quite a few among us have taken a step back in answering. For one thing, among the four highest rep users, three are mods. Modding takes time and our moderating stats are actually pretty good (flag handling time and so forth). We mods all are active researchers and quite busy with our jobs (traveling the world and stuff). In my case, I would like to answer more, but I really cannot find the time of late. Plus, in my case, I'm also a mod over at CogSci too. The top rep user is Remi and indeed they are really active in answering. Then among a score of 10k+ rep users there are quite a few who are pretty active, but approximately half of them is not active anymore.
This is also apparent in the review queue - in my review pane 64 reviews are open. So yes, apparently hi-rep users are not really active anymore, at least not in reviewing and indeed not so much in answering either. 
This was very different at the time we were graduating - many of us were answering and voting like crazy. After our graduation everything has been slacking off a bit I guess.
However, that may change and while a handful of hi-rep users has left the scene entirely, the others are still around and perhaps we just need a bit of time for other users to gain more rep.
In all, this site is anything but dead, but indeed, among a large group of 10k+ users, I guess half of them is not active, or only behind the scenes reviewing and modding. 

40636: <p>I'm new to this SE site and as a geneticist i liked the idea to be able to help newbies and explain simple genetic facts to the community. But after one week following this site activities, I found activity quite low: e.g. 30-40 views max for a question asked 3 days ago. It seems there are not enough reviewers or high rep users here. Most of the time questions are asked by low rep users (which is not bad in itself in my opinion) but the community should help newbies to rephrase questions and add what they have searched before...</p>
<p>Apart from @Remi.b, there seems to be no more high rep <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/users">users</a> answering or editing questions. I also have the feelings that questions are getting downvoted with no comments on how they could be improved.</p>
<p>I would like to have your feelings about the situation on this site.</p>
<p>EDIT: This <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3738/general-quality-of-biose-questions-vs-other-ses">General quality of BioSE questions vs other SEs</a> was very interesting, I wasn't aware of all that. I understand now the feeling that whatever you do, OPs won't improve their questions so you are wasting your time.</p>
 25568: <p>This site should be revamped; and the questions and answers already stored in this site, are treasures to humankind, with great deal of research effort. So all these treasures should be maintained and should be kept available to the public, with due respect to all the content. </p>

<p>Edit: I've changed my opinion about ProfBio, and the site-branching (ProfBio) <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3439/biology-se-and-professional-biologists">idea</a> could be a practically useful tool to save the site. So I'm agree with most other users. </p>
 19277: <p>An occasional problem is active users voting to close perfectly good questions because it's not in their field, and they don't understand the point of the question. Most recent example: <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/71279/is-there-a-statistical-analysis-test-i-can-perform-that-will-give-me-a-estimate/71281#71281">Is there a statistical analysis test I can perform that will give me a estimate of total population from my own smaller data sets?</a>, which has been put on hold as "Too broad".  </p>

<p>It is not too broad; it is a very specific question focusing on a well-studied problem. It can be answered with pointers to the relevant literature; there is an R package specifically designed for this. </p>

<p>The question is phrased a little awkwardly, but anyone who has even distantly touched on the field should immediately understand the point of the question. It's exactly the sort of thing that SE Biology is designed to answer.  </p>

<p>If you're wondering why Biology is fading away, this is one reason: A small handful of users are actively driving away questions from fields they don't understand.</p>
 22628: <p>A short answer to go with @AliceD's <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3801/22628">long comment</a>:</p>

<p>This doesn't necessarily address the low-traffic problem directly, but as discussed <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3439/biology-se-and-professional-biologists">here</a> we've basically ended up with a SE where a large number of relative newcomers ask the questions and a small number of professional biologists answer them.</p>

<p>This isn't <em>necessarily</em> a bad thing, but you can see why it tends to lead to a very bimodal distribution of user reps, and (I would suspect) a lot of users who are relatively inexperienced at how to use StackExchange, and so don't ask 'good' questions, don't take the tour, and sometimes abandon the site when they have an answer without accepting it.</p>

<p>So basically, the current model is one way to run an SE site, but it appeals mainly to new, occasional users rather than professionals. We have a small proportion of regular users, who often don't bother asking technical questions because they're the only experts in their area. We thus have relatively low traffic, a high proportion of low quality questions and a small proportion of users who view and answering questions (and a large proportion of casual users who visit once or twice to ask and not to answer).</p>

<p>I don't want to lose the engagement aspects of the site, but I would like a Biology professionals site in parallel. Until we get that, I think we'll keep seeing proposals for relatively small-community specialist sites; they pop up constantly. There was an ecological statistics proposal a while back that was backed by a medium-sized group of young researchers who weren't willing to use Biology.SE due to the high volume of low-quality posts, but it was killed off as having too much overlap with Biology.SE. Bioinformatics.SE joined the family recently (I don't really understand how that proposal didn't fall foul of the same rule, but for what it's worth I think the ecological statistics one should have survived so I'm happy the bioinformatics one made it).</p>
 9943: <p>A long comment here really -</p>

<p>First off, you're most active at puzzling. As a scientific stack, answers need to be backed up by references. For sites like puzzling, folks can just take a bash - <em>their</em> bash. On a site like Bio, we also take a bash, but have to find, and cite, the proper sources to back our claims up. Answering here takes effort and time and I dare say it takes more time and more effort than a lot of other stacks around. I have been active at sites like Acedemia.SE and also WorldBuilding. Those sites also expect answers to be good, but still it appears to me to be a lot easier, as one doesn't have to visit Google Scholar, the uni library and PubMed to back up their claims on sites like that.   </p>

<p>Having said that - This site is not dead. It may be going through a silent period :)</p>

<p>I can't really speak for all the hi-rep users, but I have the feeling quite a few among us have taken a step back in answering. For one thing, among the four highest rep users, three are mods. Modding takes time and our moderating stats are actually pretty good (flag handling time and so forth). We mods all are active researchers and quite busy with our jobs (traveling the world and stuff). In my case, I would like to answer more, but I really cannot find the time of late. Plus, in my case, I'm also a mod over at CogSci too. The top rep user is Remi and indeed they are really active in answering. Then among a score of 10k+ rep users there are quite a few who are pretty active, but approximately half of them is not active anymore.</p>

<p>This is also apparent in the review queue - in my review pane 64 reviews are open. So yes, apparently hi-rep users are not really active anymore, at least not in reviewing and indeed not so much in answering either. </p>

<p>This was very different at the time we were graduating - many of us were answering and voting like crazy. After our graduation everything has been slacking off a bit I guess.</p>

<p>However, that may change and while a handful of hi-rep users has left the scene entirely, the others are still around and perhaps we just need a bit of time for other users to gain more rep.</p>

<p>In all, this site is anything but dead, but indeed, among a large group of 10k+ users, I guess half of them is not active, or only behind the scenes reviewing and modding. </p>
