Beer SOS - The state of the site

Question

Ahhh...Beer, a lot of people love to enjoy it but as far as participating on the site, we're struggling. Beer.SE is averaging a bleak 0.1 questions a day. While we have a great percentage of questions being answered, at 97%, the lack of activity is concerning.

There are a few active users but the overall userbase seems to be lacking enthusiasm to keep things running. I'd like to direct you to this recent post about when we graduate sites, and when we shut them down. Specifically:

What does this mean? 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.

Very recently, Xander agreed to step up and help out with the moderation duties, but we need other active users if we want to keep this site running. The site has been free of spam, flags are slowly being cleared, but there are items sitting the review queues waiting for users to help out.

What can we do to engage the users of the community and rally Beer lovers to participate?

Answer 1

It feels like our scope is too narrow. Questions about brewing are more likely to be asked on Homebrewing, though they're also on-topic here. Questions about beer drinking just don't seem to be all that plentiful.

A couple days ago I noticed a new Area 51 proposal for Wine and asked there if Beer and Wine should join forces. The topic has come up here before, and we've had questions about whether mead and cider are on-topic here.

Is it time for Beer to either merge into Homebrewing or broaden to cover alcoholic drinks in general? For the former, of course, Homebrewing would need to consent to take non-brewing beer questions, so someone would need to open a discussion with them.

Answer 2

The community is willing to help, but there are not enough questions asked. Unless we get many more people to join and actively participate in this SE, the numbers won’t change significantly.

How can we increase the number of users? Word of mouth and posts on other platforms probably won’t cut it. A better option would be a stock of great answers to the most common questions (like an FAQ) so the googling masses will end up here, and start to see the Beer SE as the platform of choice. It has been addressed in this question.

Another problem is a partial overlap with the more active Homebrewing beta SE. Compare the statistics of Beer and Homebrewing. While not exactly on the verge of graduating yet, Homebrewing SE had 53 questions asked specifically tagged beer in 2015. The whole Beer SE itself had 153 active questions this year.

As far as I can see, the only other SEs related to food are Homebrewing, Seasoned Advice, and Coffee. If we cannot keep the Beer SE alive, I suggest to ask the maintainers of Homebrewing whether they’d be interested in merging. Together we are strong, since many people on the Beer SE are also interested in brewing. Maybe they even agree to a more generic name that encompasses the tasting of the product as well as its creation, like Beer, Wine and Brewing.

Answer 3

I would suggest if a site is put together that will handle all kinds of Beer discussion then it should be named: Beer and Brewing. However if a broader range of subjects are to be included, such as Beer, Wine and Spirits (and the making of each); then it should be named Intoxicating Drinks, this way all kinds questions and answers regarding alcohol can be discussed such as:

• Drinking
• Creating (Distilling, Brewing, Fermenting)
• Tasting
• Serving
• Pairing
• Obtaining
• Storing
• Understanding
• Classifying
• Preserving
• Etc

All which can be dealt with in one website. Much like how Stack Overflow deals with all kinds of programming related questions. That would generate much more traffic, many more Q/A, as well as keep all the alcohol enthusiasts enjoying feedback from each other.

If an overlap between types of alcohol is something not desired, then putting the same types of alcohol on their own is fine. As long as the making of and the drinking of said alcohol exist on the same site. The overlap would be more constructive due to the same subject and it would keep the same category of interested people together.