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I'm Grace Note, a Community Manager at Stack Exchange.

We have a process for how sites go about graduating or sticking around in Beta, but as noted in the comments there, Code Golf is one of two sites that we do not have periodic "Site Evaluations" where we compare questions against the rest of the internet. Instead, we have silent internal reviews every now and then.

I've been asked by various folks, especially after recent attention given to the sister site Code Review (who equally has the same lack of periodic evaluations), how Code Golf is doing.

The internal review back in October I did, there were two points I brought up - the traffic had been pretty stagnant for three years, and the userbase was dedicated but rep distribution was a mess. In fact the site was... pretty mediocre in just about every department. The prospects were very much the opposite of positive.

Things have changed.

code-trolling seems to be something to point at - you guys received a ginormous traffic boost from the birth of this tag. Prior to Christmas, the site's average traffic levels were, like, 500-1000 for the whole thousand plus days of lifetime. Then on December 28th, you guys jumped by over a factor of 30, and since then throughout January and February you guys have been maintaining an average closer to 5000 visits per day. By comparison, Code Review is also at that level and they're pretty happily marching on from that as well. This is a nice thing to see and we'll probably want to watch this for some more time to see how well this is sticking, but so far it is really sticking.

It was previously a concern of mine that there's a certain difficulty in generating new questions for the site, because not only must one create some idea of a puzzle, but also must make one that didn't intersect with the three years of questions built up already. The invention of a new puzzle type, and perhaps continued innovation in that department, helps a lot. The traffic and answer activity levels are great - I think question income could do some notches higher but we're still on a great rise from before.

On the user side of things, I pointed out this answer as sharing my concerns - there was a major issue with voting. Code Review has also had this issue and they're really powering through it, though they still have some distance to go.

To my surprise, wow you guys made a huge shift here. In these four months, six people crowned over 10,000 reputation, and you've got a very nice collection of users in the higher reputation levels. The rep distribution is also nice, and you have 14% of users between 500 and 1000 reputation, and an additional 14% of users above 1000 reputation. These are mostly still-active users, too, so there's a lot of engaged activity. Your meta activity has also exploded into one of the more active metas in recent weeks.

This is a site that lives off of engagement - whereas other sites deal with producing solutions to problems, this site's competitive nature means that it thrives when it has people actively engaging against each other. And that seems to have started to really kick up. The userbase size is something that could be said to be low, but not in a number that is problematic or anything.

The overall scenario is extremely positive. What was once a site that may've languished and sat in Beta status indefinitely, has returned with extreme strength and dedication to their task. All in all, much like I am extremely pleased with how Code Review shaped up when spurred to action, I'm very delighted at what this community has brought on their own to improve and beyond improve their progress.

I'm Grace Note, a Community Manager at Stack Exchange.

We have a process for how sites go about graduating or sticking around in Beta, but as noted in the comments there, Code Golf is one of two sites that we do not have periodic "Site Evaluations" where we compare questions against the rest of the internet. Instead, we have silent internal reviews every now and then.

I've been asked by various folks, especially after recent attention given to the sister site Code Review (who equally has the same lack of periodic evaluations), how Code Golf is doing.

The internal review back in October I did, there were two points I brought up - the traffic had been pretty stagnant for three years, and the userbase was dedicated but rep distribution was a mess. In fact the site was... pretty mediocre in just about every department. The prospects were very much the opposite of positive.

Things have changed.

code-trolling seems to be something to point at - you guys received a ginormous traffic boost from the birth of this tag. Prior to Christmas, the site's average traffic levels were, like, 500-1000 for the whole thousand plus days of lifetime. Then on December 28th, you guys jumped by over a factor of 30, and since then throughout January and February you guys have been maintaining an average closer to 5000 visits per day. By comparison, Code Review is also at that level and they're pretty happily marching on from that as well. This is a nice thing to see and we'll probably want to watch this for some more time to see how well this is sticking, but so far it is really sticking.

It was previously a concern of mine that there's a certain difficulty in generating new questions for the site, because not only must one create some idea of a puzzle, but also must make one that didn't intersect with the three years of questions built up already. The invention of a new puzzle type, and perhaps continued innovation in that department, helps a lot. The traffic and answer activity levels are great - I think question income could do some notches higher but we're still on a great rise from before.

On the user side of things, I pointed out this answer as sharing my concerns - there was a major issue with voting. Code Review has also had this issue and they're really powering through it, though they still have some distance to go.

To my surprise, wow you guys made a huge shift here. In these four months, six people crowned over 10,000 reputation, and you've got a very nice collection of users in the higher reputation levels. The rep distribution is also nice, and you have 14% of users between 500 and 1000 reputation, and an additional 14% of users above 1000 reputation. These are mostly still-active users, too, so there's a lot of engaged activity. Your meta activity has also exploded into one of the more active metas in recent weeks.

This is a site that lives off of engagement - whereas other sites deal with producing solutions to problems, this site's competitive nature means that it thrives when it has people actively engaging against each other. And that seems to have started to really kick up. The userbase size is something that could be said to be low, but not in a number that is problematic or anything.

The overall scenario is extremely positive. What was once a site that may've languished and sat in Beta status indefinitely, has returned with extreme strength and dedication to their task. All in all, much like I am extremely pleased with how Code Review shaped up when spurred to action, I'm very delighted at what this community has brought on their own to improve and beyond improve their progress.

I'm Grace Note, a Community Manager at Stack Exchange.

We have a process for how sites go about graduating or sticking around in Beta, but as noted in the comments there, Code Golf is one of two sites that we do not have periodic "Site Evaluations" where we compare questions against the rest of the internet. Instead, we have silent internal reviews every now and then.

I've been asked by various folks, especially after recent attention given to the sister site Code Review (who equally has the same lack of periodic evaluations), how Code Golf is doing.

The internal review back in October I did, there were two points I brought up - the traffic had been pretty stagnant for three years, and the userbase was dedicated but rep distribution was a mess. In fact the site was... pretty mediocre in just about every department. The prospects were very much the opposite of positive.

Things have changed.

code-trolling seems to be something to point at - you guys received a ginormous traffic boost from the birth of this tag. Prior to Christmas, the site's average traffic levels were, like, 500-1000 for the whole thousand plus days of lifetime. Then on December 28th, you guys jumped by over a factor of 30, and since then throughout January and February you guys have been maintaining an average closer to 5000 visits per day. By comparison, Code Review is also at that level and they're pretty happily marching on from that as well. This is a nice thing to see and we'll probably want to watch this for some more time to see how well this is sticking, but so far it is really sticking.

It was previously a concern of mine that there's a certain difficulty in generating new questions for the site, because not only must one create some idea of a puzzle, but also must make one that didn't intersect with the three years of questions built up already. The invention of a new puzzle type, and perhaps continued innovation in that department, helps a lot. The traffic and answer activity levels are great - I think question income could do some notches higher but we're still on a great rise from before.

On the user side of things, I pointed out this answer as sharing my concerns - there was a major issue with voting. Code Review has also had this issue and they're really powering through it, though they still have some distance to go.

To my surprise, wow you guys made a huge shift here. In these four months, six people crowned over 10,000 reputation, and you've got a very nice collection of users in the higher reputation levels. The rep distribution is also nice, and you have 14% of users between 500 and 1000 reputation, and an additional 14% of users above 1000 reputation. These are mostly still-active users, too, so there's a lot of engaged activity. Your meta activity has also exploded into one of the more active metas in recent weeks.

This is a site that lives off of engagement - whereas other sites deal with producing solutions to problems, this site's competitive nature means that it thrives when it has people actively engaging against each other. And that seems to have started to really kick up. The userbase size is something that could be said to be low, but not in a number that is problematic or anything.

The overall scenario is extremely positive. What was once a site that may've languished and sat in Beta status indefinitely, has returned with extreme strength and dedication to their task. All in all, much like I am extremely pleased with how Code Review shaped up when spurred to action, I'm very delighted at what this community has brought on their own to improve and beyond improve their progress.

I'm Grace Note, a Community Manager at Stack Exchange.

We have a process for how sites go about graduating or sticking around in Beta, but as noted in the comments there, Code Golf is one of two sites that we do not have periodic "Site Evaluations" where we compare questions against the rest of the internet. Instead, we have silent internal reviews every now and then.

I've been asked by various folks, especially after recent attention given to the sister site Code Review (who equally has the same lack of periodic evaluations), how Code Golf is doing.

The internal review back in October I did, there were two points I brought up - the traffic had been pretty stagnant for three years, and the userbase was dedicated but rep distribution was a mess. In fact the site was... pretty mediocre in just about every department. The prospects were very much the opposite of positive.

Things have changed.

code-trolling seems to be something to point at - you guys received a ginormous traffic boost from the birth of this tag. Prior to Christmas, the site's average traffic levels were, like, 500-1000 for the whole thousand plus days of lifetime. Then on December 28th, you guys jumped by over a factor of 30, and since then throughout January and February you guys have been maintaining an average closer to 5000 visits per day. By comparison, Code Review is also at that level and they're pretty happily marching on from that as well. This is a nice thing to see and we'll probably want to watch this for some more time to see how well this is sticking, but so far it is really sticking.

It was previously a concern of mine that there's a certain difficulty in generating new questions for the site, because not only must one create some idea of a puzzle, but also must make one that didn't intersect with the three years of questions built up already. The invention of a new puzzle type, and perhaps continued innovation in that department, helps a lot. The traffic and answer activity levels are great - I think question income could do some notches higher but we're still on a great rise from before.

On the user side of things, I pointed out this answer as sharing my concerns - there was a major issue with voting. Code Review has also had this issue and they're really powering through it, though they still have some distance to go.

To my surprise, wow you guys made a huge shift here. In these four months, six people crowned over 10,000 reputation, and you've got a very nice collection of users in the higher reputation levels. The rep distribution is also nice, and you have 14% of users between 500 and 1000 reputation, and an additional 14% of users above 1000 reputation. These are mostly still-active users, too, so there's a lot of engaged activity. Your meta activity has also exploded into one of the more active metas in recent weeks.

This is a site that lives off of engagement - whereas other sites deal with producing solutions to problems, this site's competitive nature means that it thrives when it has people actively engaging against each other. And that seems to have started to really kick up. The userbase size is something that could be said to be low, but not in a number that is problematic or anything.

The overall scenario is extremely positive. What was once a site that may've languished and sat in Beta status indefinitely, has returned with extreme strength and dedication to their task. All in all, much like I am extremely pleased with how Code Review shaped up when spurred to action, I'm very delighted at what this community has brought on their own to improve and beyond improve their progress.