How many questions and answers do we need to have a succesful private beta?

Question

At this moment, we have 8 questions posted which doesn't seem like a sufficient rate to exit private beta status. Although, that may change over the next several days. I know we are only 8 hours into the private beta, but I was wondering what our goals for the week should be? How many questions should we be looking for? And, how many should be answered? Would a simple goal of having half the committed users submit one question be sufficient?

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Comments

Suggestion: Post an announcement to solicit at least one appropriate-level question from each committer.

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For reference, 8 questions in 8 hours is twice the rate we get on physics.SE, and the People In Charge seem to think that's perfectly viable, so I can't imagine why you'd be worried at this stage.

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I think that many committers like me will not ask borderline questions on a site that wants to be similar to mathoverflow.

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The private beta site is now up for 12 hours. I would say that it is quite nice to have already so many questions. Really, I think the feedback is astonishing.

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And to be entirely honest, if we don't make it out of Beta, we don't deserve it anyways.

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The purpose of this question was to get some idea of what is expected beyond the imprecise notion of pre-populating the site with good questions. Truthfully, I'm not worried, but being used to the frenzied pace of SO, I was curious if the rate of questions was sufficient. That said, I *do not* advocate posting a host of borderline questions. I was just wondering what a suitable goal would be.

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Answer 1

I think the basic answer to this is that we don't really need to worry about exiting private beta. I imagine something would have to go spectacularly wrong for us not to make it to full beta. Once we are in beta then there are some metrics to worry about, as Suresh points out, but I don't think flooding the site with questions will be the answer. For the moment, I think our best bet is to concentrate on quality rather than quantity.

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Answer 2

There are some basic benchmarks on the number (and, more importantly, the quality) of questions needed to exit private beta. I'm not going to quote specific numbers because we just use them as loose guidelines anyway.

The big picture is that a private beta has to generate enough interesting content to avoid the Empty Restaurant Syndrome.

As the community's "founders," you need to prove that you have something interesting to talk about. You need to establish that your subject has good on-topic questions which receive solid answers. Additionally, you're supposed to establish an strong, active meta community brimming with discussions about what does and doesn't belong here.

If it turns out that the subject is more niche than we all expected, we may choose to extend a private beta past the first week. And if a new site fails to reach these basic benchmarks, it is possible that the site will not find its way to public beta.

But right now, just focus on asking great beta questions!

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Comments

Could you warn us after a couple of days if things start looking shaky?

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@Joe Fitzsimons: That's generally the process. See: http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/42/private-beta-extended-still-going-strong

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Could you give us an idea how we're doing, since we are around the halfway mark for the private beta?

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Answer 3

If you look at the area51 landing page for theoreticalphysics, it mentions a ballpark of between 5-15 questions to be deemed not problematic, and >15 as good. Note that you don't need to do anything to exit private beta in a week. It's to exit beta status (in at least 90 days and usually more) that you need to hit the stated metrics.

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Comments

I hadn't noticed the totals on that page, so thank you. But, I thought I saw some implication that a site could fail to launch out of private beta, i.e. be dissolved. Although, I may be mistaken. I think I'll delete the question, if you don't mind.

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no problem. but no harm keeping the question: often, others make the same mistake.

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no problem, other than my ego. but, it to will survive.

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