Year in Review 2017

Question

Last year, we had a year in review. How did we do in 2017?

Answer 1

Trends

Overall site activity increased slightly in 2017. We can see this through a few different metrics: traffic, new users, new content, and vote count.

Traffic

Compared to 2016, last year saw a small uptick in visits, according to Quantcast:

           US      Rest of the world       Total
2015      5.6M          2.8M                8.4M
2016      4.8M          2.5M                7.4M
2017      4.9M          2.6M                7.6M
%chg      +2%           +4%                 +3%

New users

Similarly, the number of new users by quarter (min. 2 rep) increased. Note that for 2016 I'm using values from 12/31/2016, as this best accounts for users who create an account one year and then gain rep the following year.

             Q1     Q2     Q3     Q4
2016        341    288    273    231 (as of 12/31/2016)
2017        340    317    282    242 (as of 1/10/2018)
%chg         0%    +10%   +3%    +5%

New content

A slight uptick is visible to in the number of questions asked and answers given:

            Questions     Answers     Total
2016           1181         2211       3392 (12/31/2016)
2017           1231         2336       3567 (1/10/2018)
%chg            +4%          +6%        +5%

Again, the 2016 values are as of 12/31/2016 – since then, some of the 2016 posts have been deleted, so comparing activity between 2016 and 2017 makes the most sense when comparing in this way, rather than using current state for both years.

Votes

The number of upvotes and downvotes increased slightly:

          Upvotes      Downvotes      Total
2016       17479          7012        24491 (12/31/2016)
2017       17812          7105        24917 (1/10/2018)
%chg        +2%            +1%         +2%

Content and users

2017 also saw many examples of generous users and highly voted content.

Generosity

• Thunderforge gave away the most reputation in bounties in 2017, closely followed by Peter Turner (source)
• I'm not sure if I can calculate one of my favorite metrics, the Votes to Reputation ratio, since my source for annual vote counts is the Users page (which now shows 2018 totals). So we may have to forego this one, this year.

Top New Questions and Answers

Top 5 questions of 2017 by score:

• Can a Catholic priest adopt a child?
• According to those holding that Jesus was literally born of a virgin, why did Paul not mention it?
• Do LDS believe other churches to be the church of Satan?
• What's up with churches and guitars in this joke from The Big Bang Theory?
• Why do Catholics believe transubstantiated host may still affect the gluten sensitive?

Several of the top answers of 2017 appear as answers to one of the above questions. Here are the top 5 that didn't:

• Do Mormons secretly pray about you and then consider you included in their church?
• What are the main differences between Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses?
• Why aren't some words like “Maranatha” or “Talitha Cumi” translated in English Bibles?
• Does the Catholic Church teach there is only one person?
• Has a pope ever been corrected publicly by a non-cleric in the presence of cardinals because of the unclear wording of a papal document?

And finally, here are the top 4 unanswered questions of 2017, by score:

• How prominent was “prosperity theology” in the early church?
• What denominations, besides JWs, hold that the Star of Bethlehem was sent by Satan?
• Origin of La Madonna Del Gatto
• How do proponents of the Prosperity Gospel interpret Matthew 19:24?

Summary

After a superficially disappointing 2016, which saw modest declines that seem to have largely been due to a change in how Google ranks our content, 2017 saw some small increases. But perhaps even more exciting is the continued generosity and involvement of our users, not to mention the great content they produce. Now, on to 2018!