Can we get to 10 questions per day?

Question

This was inspired by Should we widen the scope of our site? And if yes, how? - where most popular answer to widenings was: No.

I think that getting to 10 new question per day in current scope of the site will be extremely hard, because questions about methods of learning a language are very different from questions while learning any particular language:

When learning a language, you have question/answer - it is like getting a fish. And sure, people need a new fish every day. So on healthy site, 10 fish a day is a reasonable metrics.

Answer on LL is more like getting a fishing boat - a method you can apply multiple times, day after day.

After doing my research on past questions on LL, I learned a lot, and it will take me a long time to digest it and put what I learned to use: I have a whole flotilla of fishing boats now, I am fishing (applying the answers while learning my current target language) and do not have urgent need to find more learning methods.

Another growth-limiting factor is inherent geekiness. Most people do not learn a second language, few will decide to learn one, and go to the site for that language. Only very few will be concerned about methods of learning a language.

I am fine if LL will stay in beta forever. I am concerned that it could be killed by higher powers if our "new questions per day" metrics does not fit some arbitrary criteria, which might be OK for more "down-to-earth" sites (like any language), but not a good fit for niche site concerned methods of solving problems, not just answers about how to solve a particular problem.

So my question is:

Do higher powers understand that LL is more "meta" (LL is about fishing boats, not about daily fish) than traditional site about learning any particular language, and will give us some slack, even if we do not get to 10 questions per day?

Or should we be worried that LL can be closed as under-performing? Because I do not expect we can ever get daily 10 new questions (not previously answered) about methods of learning languages.

And if we live under such danger of closing, we need to think about enhancing the scope, to get bigger community and more questions.

Answer 1

On the first of August, Stack Exchange launched the 29 oldest beta sites. These were sites that had been in beta for at least 7 years. Stack Exchange realised that 10 questions per day is not realistic for many sites. For example, German Language had 4.6 questions per day (QPD) when it launched, French Language had 4.4 questions per day, Chinese Language had 2.6 questions per day and Chess had 2.6 questions per day.

Of course, these QPD values are higher than ours. I have been tracking our data since October 2016 and have found that our QPD varies between 0.3 and 1.4. The last sites that got close that I am aware of are Arabic Language, with 1.4 QPD at the end of the beta, and Personal Productivity with 0.4 QPD at the end of the beta. (For Personal Productivity, the closure was announced a week or two in advance and I think the number of question dropped sharply as a result of that. When I was on the site, the QPD was definitely higher than 1.)

Korean Language is roughly as old as our site and has 0.6 questions per day. Esperanto is just a bit younger than Korean Language and has 0.2 questions and 107 visitors per day.

What the above analysis shows is that 10 questions per day is no longer the determining factor for graduation, but I don't know yet what will replace it.

I am sceptical about whether we can reach 10 questions per day. At some point, I tried to boost the number of questions by posting questions about graded-readers, but not every language has this type of resources available. However, we can influence some other factors, such as the number of visitors per day, by promoting our site. See:

• Site promotion ideas (lots of ideas, but needs volunteers to put them into action).
• How can we attract more experts to Language Learning Stack Exchange? (still needs good suggestions).
• Community ads (last updated in 2017; we will need something new for the next round, which will probably start in February 2017).

Answer 2

Keep in mind: "If there's enough moderation for a public beta site to consistently remain free of spam, for flags to be cleared, and for our Code of Conduct 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." Based on this, I think it is not possible for LLSE to be closed as under-performing at this point in time.