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I'd like to know what the health of physics.stackexchange is in comparison to the other stackexchange sites. And other relevant details like is it continuing to grow? Etc..

(The reason I'm asking this question is because I have to study a pretty tough physics curriculum to take an exam and I've been using this site to have my questions answered. It's been fantastic so far, and I'd like to know if I can count on it to stay around.)

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The site has existed since November 2010 and we graduated from beta in February 2011.

We were strong on all the Area51 metrics when we graduated, which is a good place to start.

July 2012 approximate1 change with respect to January 2012 for a few tracked quantities

  • Questions: even
  • Answers: even
  • Total views: +33%
  • Number of visits: +25%

We're getting more hits from Google than from all other tracked source2 which is important as Stack Exchange site don't take off unless they have a good search profile.

We got more than 40 new registered users last month.

Taken on the whole the site appears to be growing slowly but steadily. A lot of our metrics show a spiky aspect with a underling modest, linear growth.

1 Very approximate. I eyeballed them off the analytics data available to moderator.

2 This includes "direct traffic" which is presumably our regular users who come in on bookmarks and the like.

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    $\begingroup$ How well do you think it's done at retaining the experts? $\endgroup$
    – Alan Rominger
    Aug 2, 2012 at 19:31
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    $\begingroup$ @AlanSE We collected relatively few of the Astro.SE and TheoreticalPhysics.SE experts but seem to have retained most of those who came from Physics in the first place. There are a couple of moderately high profile experts who have given up on us citing too much low level stuff. So I'd call it a mixed bag there. Suggestions are, of course, always welcome. $\endgroup$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Aug 3, 2012 at 1:40
  • $\begingroup$ @dmckee, We got about 700 new registered users last 45 days $\endgroup$
    – voix
    Aug 5, 2012 at 8:02
  • $\begingroup$ @dmckee I cannot find theoreticalphysics.SE anymore, where did it go? $\endgroup$
    – Revo
    Aug 9, 2012 at 21:47
  • $\begingroup$ @Revo It was ruled to be dying and closed. The content was moved here, but not all of the participants were happy with the situation. Astronomy, too. $\endgroup$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Aug 10, 2012 at 0:46
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    $\begingroup$ I can't speak for anyone else from the astronomy site; but the relative volumes of questions has meant that just finding the questions I'm interested in has become significantly more difficult. Also, the much larger userbase here means that if I only go hunting once or twice a day most of the questions I'm qualified to answer already have been. $\endgroup$
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Aug 10, 2012 at 15:23
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    $\begingroup$ @Dan I can sympathize as my Stack Overflow participation is mostly in medium and low activity tags. There are several features that can help. Set your favorite tags and use the front page (physics.stackexchange.com) not the questions page (physics.stackexchange.com/questions) so that you get preferentially shown questions in tags that you like. Also consider getting the RSS feeds from your best tags if you want notification offsite. I think there is a network-wide feed consolidator as well, but have never tried to use it. $\endgroup$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Aug 10, 2012 at 17:30
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    $\begingroup$ @dmckee: how do u explain the fact that physics SE has been less successful than Maths SE (a larger number of experts and higher quality questions) in spite of the similar nature of the two? $\endgroup$
    – user7757
    Oct 8, 2012 at 15:30
  • $\begingroup$ @ramanujan_dirac I don't explain it at all. If you are looking for candidates, they got about a four month lead on us (out of near two years at this point), and I see math (broadly defined) as more accessible then physics (broadly defined). $\endgroup$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Oct 8, 2012 at 18:04
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In addition to @dmckee answer:

There was 2 175 members of Physics.SE after beta, and now - about 8 000 users.

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