My suggestion would be to invest effort to tune the A51.

Why would we want the rate of new sites to be increasing or even staying constant? That'd be a bad thing. It just means there's a good collection of effective sites now. This is the pattern I'd expect to see. Also, Area51 is plenty active, and by its nature as essentially a site proposal form, it can't really be "dying". It has to exist and always will. It's the only way to accomplish a specific goal.

I don't think a single year where there was a drop to 12 is much evidence of a failing system. You're also not accounting for the fact that a lot of the generalized topics are already covered and we're shifting into the more niche, detailed topics that have a harder time taking off because they are smaller communities.

Negation in disguise may be useful in a debate, but it is not if you are a CEO of a company and you have to make business decisions.

@animuson The A51 stat shows a continuous decrease since 2014. It is not a single-year indivudual case, it is a continuous decrease in a 3 year long aggrevated data. Yes, I admit it is not my business, but I think these graphs show that playing with and revitalizing the A51 codebase may be a good idea.

Which part(s) of the codebase need to be "revitalised"?

@peterh That's looking at things too literally. You're talking about a four-year period (2012-2015) where it averaged 16-18 sites per year. I would not consider 2015 to be a decrease year based on those stats, but rather an average year. 2016 is the only year that had a large fall in number of sites created, and we're still only talking about four fewer sites. You can't just look at lines on a graph and say "this ship is going down" - stats is more complicated than that.

By the way, misleading axis alert.

@Clive Uhh, I think I can't say it nearly so clearly, as clear these stats are, in my opinion. I think efforts should be focused to the better going activities. Also I don't think, that I would know better, what to do, as the SE decision makers. I only think efforts should be invested into the better going business processes, and the SE is more fruitful on the long-term, because it is far from being to reach its top.

@JasonC You are right, there is a misleading axis alert, I know the phenomena, I posted the graph knowing that it exists, and I didn't have any intent to mislead anybody. But I think, opening roughly 10 new sites in 2017, which is a roughly linear decrease since the 18 opened site in 2014, is staistically significant.

@peterh Right, but whether it's statistically significant or not is fairly moot. Let's say that it's completely significant: It's still not a problem that the sites created are decreasing. You identified a trend in the graph, but you need to state a case for why that trend is problematic. Even if the number of new sites continues to decrease, heck, say it decreases to zero, forever, why is that a problem? That'd be a pretty awesome sign of success, if you ask me.

@animuson I don't think the ship would go down. I think the ship is going up (I think the interest of the SE is the total page hits on SE + SO, and it correlates with the total content on them. And it is growing). The essence of the post is that although the ship is going up, its main driving force, the A51, may not get enough focus.

Exactly, what @Jason said. You're saying things like "tune up a51" and "revitalizing the A51 codebase may be a good idea"...but why do those things? What real world problem will it solve?

@JasonC Good point. I didn't address it in my post. The point of the post is that investing effort into the A51 is reasonable on these stats. While as we can see, the A51 seems to be an abandoned, not likely modified thing inside the SE. My argument is for that the stats are again this.

@Clive Is it a problem, if the blue line on the second picture could grow faster, but it doesn't do? I think it is.

I don't know, you tell me. Why's it a problem that the blue line has taken its current path? What does it signify that "revitalising the codebase" of Area 51 is going to fix? Include these things in the question, no point confusing things further by stashing this stuff in he comments

@Clive I tell that (1) focusing more to the A51 is reasonable on these stats. In my opinion, it obviously includes (2) the revitalization of its code base, but the stats are saying only (1) and not (2). Of course I have ideas what exactly could be done on A51, but it is offtopic in this post (recently I collected many rep here, so I think it may be useful to sacrifice same of them by publicizing them - in other posts).

That didn't appear any sort of attempt to answer my question; can I assume the answer is in fact "i don't know"?

@Clive I think this is a level 7 answer on Graham's scale.

@animuson Btw, the total content on the SE network would be a roughly quadratically growing curve. The driving force behind that is the A51, without it the growth would be only linear.

Alright, but what about a real answer that actually addresses the question directly? Too much to hope for I presume? Or can I just expect more obtuse non-sequiturs to come my way?

@peterh I don't think it's a problem that the line is not growing. Care to convince me otherwise?

@JasonC No. I think it is, that's all.

Why not have a place for questions that don't fit anywhere else, so that they can perhaps still be answered. Then at least if you find a collection under one tag, you can start an Area 51 proposal for it to find the questions a home, and use good questions of those as examples of good questions for the site. Thus a new proposal is not alone.

@peterh Well, you can't just say "I think it is" and expect to make a convincing meta post. If you don't want to include your argument, that's totally your call, nobody will hold it against you, but if you want to make a solid point, you have to do the legwork to make a case behind it and state it. That's what this boils down to.

@wizzwizz2 Yeah! Exactly this is what also I am thinking! I think arena51 would be a quite good name for the initiative. I would be happy to sacrifice around 50-70 rep for that.

@wizzwizz2 Heh, ever heard of "the rest of the internet"? It's all at your fingertips, in the very same window that you're currently viewing this page in. You may also be interested in meta.stackexchange.com/q/57383.

@peterh It's called "Yahoo! Answers". People would probably use it like that, and it would be really hard to enforce (stupid stuff couldn't be called off-topic...). Otherwise I agree with your agreement and name suggestion, but it has been suggested loads and probably wouldn't work. :-(

@wizzwizz4 But couldn't nice clear tags be created and only good users on other sites post to keep it high-quality

@JasonC No-no, the "if it is not okay here, go elsewhere" argument is obviously strong but I think it is not useful (becase we are obviously here). The post is much more a suggestion as a critic, but I think it wouldn't be a problem even if it would be a critic.

@wizzwizz2 Perhaps. But it really wouldn't fit with the format. You're selling me on the idea though - I think you should post a question. Ensure you elaborate on the idea to show how it's different from all of the other proposals (make sure you read some of those).

@Clive That the current concept of the abandoned A51 is not reasonable for the interests of the Company, the suggestion is to reverse it.

@peterh ^^^ Exactly, and area51 is all about creating good sites, so that we don't have to go elsewhere, unless there is already a good q/a community elsewhere

This comment thread is getting long... How do I get it moved to chat?

@wizzwizz2 Exactly. If other sites would be better, we would be elsewhere and not here. But it doesn't mean that we can't have ideas what should be done better here.

@wizzwizz2 I think a mod will do it soon.

@PeterMortensen TYVM.

@peterh Here's a question on the idea.

In any case this should probably be on Area51's meta.

@JasonC The key point of the suggestion is about the SE resources and business decisions, which is not only an internal a51 matter.

@Shog9 I've faced many times a view, that the SE is small, it takes many resources away and that maybe there wasn't even a need for that. I tried to argument for the opposite view.

@Shog9 My ongoing a51 cage is irrelevant in this.