Why can't SE fix a date? Say, within six months the site will be promoted or before the end of 2019. Or by the year 2022 something like that...

@Mari-LouA I suspect it's because the answer would be "whenever the other, more high priority stuff is taken care of" and that may not be possible to estimate completly

@Magisch I suspect the real reason is exactly that. Lack of staff, lack of decent designers. There's a shortage of personnel, a number of employees have recently left, which means the number of black diamonds is shrinking. Designing a site from scratch is time-consuming and costs a fair bit, and they need every hand on deck to finish the newish left-nav responsive thingy.

All of SE's energy and money is in developing that platform, making custom questions feature foolproof (can't be easy) making all that work, and making it look attractive for investors. Yep.... my money is on that. SE Writing will have to wait some more.