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Due to the lowering answered percentage I got a bit worried about the sites future. So I ran a few queries on the database. Note im more of a graphics guy than a database guy so my data may be flawed. But seems to be sort of correct in my initial check. Here is my results:

  • Number of users seems to be raising somewhat constant across time:

    enter image description here

    Image 1: Number of new users by week, query here

  • Number of questions seem to also be somewhat constant, or perhaps rising, though the data is more noisy:

    enter image description here

    Image 2: Number of questions ans answers by week, query here

So all in all seems going OK, but not stellar. A few comments on this:

  • A question is not considered answered until a up vote happens on one of the answers.

  • We need to probably need to recruit some of the people who tend to answer our kind of questions to come and regularly peek at our site.

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  • $\begingroup$ The quality of the questions seems to be going down though. When I showed the site to experienced graphics programmers, their reaction seeing the front page was that it didn't seem like an interesting place to be. If the site doesn't look appealing to experienced programmers, it will risk losing traction. $\endgroup$
    – Julien Guertault
    Apr 7, 2016 at 2:27
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    $\begingroup$ @JulienGuertault well yes but then if no experienced graphics person asks anything... $\endgroup$
    – joojaa
    Apr 7, 2016 at 4:21
  • $\begingroup$ What do we do for questions like this one? The correct answer is in the first comment. Should we politely ask everytime to promote the comment to answer? computergraphics.stackexchange.com/questions/2011/… $\endgroup$
    – Julien Guertault
    Apr 8, 2016 at 12:57
  • $\begingroup$ @JulienGuertault If someone posts a comment that could be an answer, or (more likely) could be expanded to give an answer, I'm all in favour of anyone else going ahead and posting that answer. Anyone who wants to express an opinion can do so at the existing meta question Answering based on existing comments $\endgroup$
    – trichoplax is on Codidact now
    Apr 8, 2016 at 22:34
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    $\begingroup$ It's worth thinking about the data in context. Most public beta sites have activity graphs that look this shape early on: An unrealistic spike of early enthusiasm, followed by a drop to much lower levels which gradually grows over time. $\endgroup$
    – trichoplax is on Codidact now
    Apr 17, 2016 at 9:19
  • $\begingroup$ In case you guys decide at some point to close things down, please contact us over on Computer Science. I would think that we could and would take some of your more conceptual (not programming) questions. $\endgroup$
    – Raphael
    Oct 30, 2016 at 11:38

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According to the overview page on Area 51, we're not quite there yet.

At the moment of this writing, it reports:

  • 1.5 questions per day, when 10 questions per day are recommended.
  • 88% answered, when 90% is recommended.
  • 73 "active" users with 200 reputation or more, when 150 are recommended.
  • 4 "avid" users with 2000 reputation or more, when 10 are recommended.
  • 1.4 answers per question, when 2.5 are recommended.
  • 261 visits per day, when 1500 are recommended.

Update, two months later:

  • 2.6 questions per day, better but not quite there yet.
  • 86% answered, let's be careful, this metric is getting worse*.
  • 82 "active" users, slightly better.
  • 5 "avid" users, slightly better.
  • 1.4 answers per question, no change.
  • 315 visits per day, slightly better.

Graphics programming being a fairly specialized topic, some of these numbers probably can't be improved by much: there are only that many people doing graphics programming anyway.

But some could, and should, definitely be improved. After a long hiatus, I answered a few questions last week, and skyrocketed to 1st rank for this quarter. I think it should have taken me a lot more activity to reach that point.

In my opinion a simple effort at reviewing questions without an answer would already do a lot for the community; 90% questions answered doesn't seem far. We definitely more avid users, but I'm not sure how to address this: a decent answer can easily take a lot of time, and there are simply questions we don't have an answer to.

Update, over two years later:

  • 1.2 questions per day, this is slow.
  • 80% answered, this metric keeps going in the wrong direction.
  • 7581 "active" users and 180 "avid" users, this is excellent.
  • 1.4 answers per question, no change.
  • 1202 visits per day, is really close to the recommended 1500.
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    $\begingroup$ We have no activity to speak of maybe answer writers should start generating questions again $\endgroup$
    – joojaa
    Apr 14, 2016 at 9:07
  • $\begingroup$ The figures on the Area 51 page can be scary, but as 5chdn's answer explains, these figures are not going to be used to close a site down, and as noted in Nero's answer, our question rate compares favourably with many of the other SE sites. $\endgroup$
    – trichoplax is on Codidact now
    Apr 17, 2016 at 9:11
  • $\begingroup$ While our visits per day have increased to 418, our qpd are back down to 1.6. Percentage answered is still at 86 and of course the user stats have slightly increased. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Ender
    Oct 3, 2016 at 13:01
  • $\begingroup$ @MartinEnder: yep, the user base and daily visits seem to be increasing steadily, which is good. We need to work on the "quality", although I'm not sure how. $\endgroup$
    – Julien Guertault
    Oct 3, 2016 at 13:25
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    $\begingroup$ There seem to have been spikes in visits in early September and early October, perhaps corresponding to academic years starting at different institutions. The summer being quieter also seems natural. $\endgroup$
    – trichoplax is on Codidact now
    Oct 19, 2016 at 10:36
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While there are definitely things to improve here, I don't think we need to be worried (too much).

On Meta SE, there is a post by the Community Management about their view on Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites:

The TL;DR:

  1. When a site starts to consistently receive 10 questions/day, we’ll consider it for graduation.
  2. If a public beta site does not produce consistently helpful content, and lacks the caretakers needed for flags and spam to get handled and our Be Nice policy to be upheld, it will be closed.

We do get a steady amount of new users (about 40 - 50 per week) and also continuously get new posts. The average numbers of new questions and answers oscillate roughly between 1.5 and 3.0 new questions and answers (each) per day. I'm looking at the questions/answers per day numbers here, because other publicly shown metrics also show these numbers. For example, the list of all sites of the SE network or the Area51 page. This is not bad - there are a lot of sites in the same range of questions per day.

And you mentioned the quite low answered percentage. That's actually a metric I'm a bit concerned about and I'd like to get that back up above the 90%. We need to get more people to answer questions and I count myself to that group who should answer more. Also, our number of visits per day is very low, when compared to other sites.

One thing we could try, is to create some community ads to display on other sites. These could bring new users to our site and hopefully also new users who ask and answer questions. Quite recently, we had a few questions that lasted a bit longer in the Hot Network Questions list, which temporarily boosted visits and new user counts.

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  • $\begingroup$ Closure is not the only danger, I guess. $\endgroup$
    – Raphael
    Oct 30, 2016 at 11:36
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I agree the stats for this community do not look perfect on first glance, but: Should we be be worried about the future of this site? No!

The beta sites on the stack exchange network wont be closed, shut down or removed as long as there are community members taking care of the site. Let me quote the most important snippet from the meta post linked above:

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.

So, to answer your question more directly, no we don't have to worry about the future of this site. Small and less active communities are quite welcome on the network.

The most important stats are the answer ratio and answered rate, which look basicly okay. This means, if a user posts a question, it will probably answered with a 88% chance and will recieve 1.4 answers per questions.

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  • $\begingroup$ Closure is not the only danger, I guess. $\endgroup$
    – Raphael
    Oct 30, 2016 at 11:37

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