ghost town

[Cognoscente]

There's a single Q/A on the front page of the Board right now.

What's the hold up? Is there suddenly no questions coming in or what?

[Emiliana]

Maybe people didn't ask questions over Thanksgiving break?

[yayfulness]

This is a kind of extreme case, but I'm pretty sure the question-asking (or at least answered-question-publishing) rate has gone down significantly over the past year or so. I have no idea why.

It looks like questions up to 90715 have been asked (90715 gives me "you can't see this" and 90716 gives me "this doesn't exist"). Question 90691, the highest-numbered published question, was published on 11/27, meaning that it was submitted no later than 11/23. That means there have been, at most, 24 questions submitted in the past week, an average of ~3 questions per day.

That's... not very many.

[Cognoscente]

Wow, coming in with the math. Nicely done.

[TheBlackSheep]

Also I think they have a LOT of overdue questions. I’m waiting on two myself, one for over a month.

[yayfulness]

I imagine the two issues are at least partly related. Absence of timely answers to questions + not many questions on the front page = a lot less likely to visit the site and ask more questions.

This is an extreme manifestation of an ongoing trend, though. I started tracking the rate of question submission about a year ago on a similar suspicion. (I am a ridiculous nerd. Don't judge.) Up until the end of 2016, the Board took around 15 to 20 days to publish 200 questions. Since the beginning of 2017, the rate has dropped significantly; not counting alumni week, it's typically taken around 30 to 40 days to get through 200 questions since then.

[TheBlackSheep]

I completely agree with your conclusion, and I think it's marvelous that you are nerdy enough to track all of that. Hats off.