user-1: I wonder about the beta in the main Buddhism SE Beta header.
In particular what is the goal of the beta and what kind of feedback they are looking for.

user254: In the old days, a new SE site would be in "beta" when it first started.
Ideally a new site would start, become more popular and stable, and then "graduate".
"Popular" means having enough questions per day, and enough of the questions answered.
"Stable" means having enough users -- especially sufficiently "high-reputation" or regular/active users who can vote to close questions and so on, which moderators don't necessarily have time for on a busy site -- and some kind of community, i.e. regular users who will answer questions, and some established policies about what's on topic.
You can see the stats for this site here -- https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45110/buddhism
All our numeric stats look excellent, except "questions per day" -- we have never had enough "questions per day" to graduate -- so here we are, 5 years later, still in "beta".
Our being still in beta doesn't matter much. SE have said they won't close an otherwise healthy site for not being popular enough -- I think that "healthy" might mean essentially that it's still being moderated effectively -- so this site might be able to carry on like this indefinitely.
The benefits of graduating would be:

Remove the "beta" label
Possibly design a custom skin (colors and artwork) for the site, though I think that the development team hasn't had time to do that recently -- see also Allowing CSS customization of beta sites
Having moderator elections instead of appointed "pro tem" moderators, though I think the CMs haven't had time to do those either, recently

A while ago they graduated a bunch of beta sites, as an experiment, because those sites were more than 7 years old. This site now is 5.9 years old -- perhaps in June 2021 we could ask SE whether it would be convenient for them to let the site graduate, if the community wants it to.

-1: <p>I wonder about the beta in the main Buddhism SE Beta header.</p>

<p>In particular what is the goal of the beta and what kind of feedback they are looking for.</p>
 254: <p>In the old days, a new SE site would be in "beta" when it first started.</p>

<p>Ideally a new site would start, become more popular and stable, and then "graduate".</p>

<p>"Popular" means having enough questions per day, and enough of the questions answered.</p>

<p>"Stable" means having enough users -- especially sufficiently "high-reputation" or regular/active users who can vote to close questions and so on, which moderators don't necessarily have time for on a busy site -- and some kind of community, i.e. regular users who will answer questions, and some established policies about what's on topic.</p>

<p>You can see the stats for this site here -- <a href="https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45110/buddhism">https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45110/buddhism</a></p>

<p>All our numeric stats look excellent, except "questions per day" -- we have never had enough "questions per day" to graduate -- so here we are, 5 years later, still in "beta".</p>

<p>Our being still in beta doesn't matter much. SE have said they won't close an otherwise healthy site for not being popular enough -- I think that "healthy" might mean essentially that it's still being moderated effectively -- so this site might be able to carry on like this indefinitely.</p>

<p>The benefits of graduating would be:</p>

<ul>
<li>Remove the "beta" label</li>
<li>Possibly design a custom skin (colors and artwork) for the site, though I think that the development team hasn't had time to do that recently -- see also <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/254375/139866">Allowing CSS customization of beta sites</a></li>
<li>Having moderator elections instead of appointed "pro tem" moderators, though I think the CMs haven't had time to do those either, recently</li>
</ul>

<p>A while ago they graduated a bunch of beta sites, as an experiment, because those sites were more than 7 years old. This site now is 5.9 years old -- perhaps in June 2021 we could ask SE whether it would be convenient for them to let the site graduate, if the community wants it to.</p>
