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What kinds of questions will keep Beer.SE active? (Relax the culture against brands and regional questions.)
"15 questions per day on average is a healthy beta." We're at 16.1 and, in my guess, falling.
One important factor to Stack Exchanges staying alive, IMO, is the evolution of its underlying topic, bringing in fresh questions each day.
Either the subject evolves...
It's easy to see in, for example, Stack Overflow: the continuous evolution of technology (programming languages, paradigms, platforms, applications) gives it a never-ending supply of new questions without having to microscope into the fractal details of the subject to find new things to ask about. This of course applies to Super User as well. And Stack Overflow itself continuously evolves! Hence a never-ending stream of questions at Meta. Office culture—no, more broadly, working culture evolves, from 9-5ers to freelancers, from startups to corporations, giving Workplace its lifeblood, and laws too—changing laws are also a big component to the evolution which supports Personal Finance and Money. One last interesting example is English Language & Usage, where both language and its more rapidly changing context give rise to new questions like "Is there a non-sexual phrase for sleeping with someone?".
...or the subject is huge (whether in breadth or depth)
On the other hand, there are sites whose underlying subjects don't necessarily evolve (or at least not very fast), e.g. History. But the sheer size and/or intricacy of the subject lends it sustained opportunities for exploration—delving in to find genuinely new and interesting questions. Though sites like Mathematica are bound to a (mostly) set language, from the (at least, seemingly) unlimited power of the language arises a huge domain of applications that users are continuously exploring, still surprised by the discovery of new challenges, new workarounds, and new techniques.
So I ask,
What kinds of questions will keep Beer.SE alive?
I have a preliminary opinion in mind, but one I don't feel qualified to develop into a full-fledged answer.
It just doesn't feel to me that Beer has as rich a history as, well, History itself, nor does it appear to lend itself to "new applications" and "ways." Once we exhaust general questions about classifications of beer, bottling and distribution, temperature and skunking, and such, it seems fathomable we might even get through the histories of most classes of beers, techniques for tasting and pairing beers... and then what? All these subjects are ones which neither evolve nor introduce any great breadth or depth to be explored. So what part of Beer does have these qualities, for generating new questions?
To me (and others too, maybe), it seems one of the only evolving aspects of beer we can latch onto, is specific beers and breweries. And putting such in the context of regions, too, would greatly expand what can be asked, and the specificity (and usefulness) of answers.
I think the usual culture against brand-specific questions and answers on SE, is understandable regarding, say, technology, where products and websites are often ephemeral, and more general answers would help direct future visitors toward the specific answers they need. And I think the usual culture against regional questions is understandable too, in that most communities don't want to end up with a hundred questions about the same thing, only differing in a seemingly arbitrary detail (location).
But, I don't know if those cultures have to carry over to Beer.SE for Beer.SE to be an equally interesting and useful community. Our very subject is embedded in its products, whereas for technology, the subject is often an abstraction away from the products. And, our "problems" regarding beer are sometimes going to be regional—finding beers to taste and exploring breweries seem like important activities for beer enthusiasts—activities necessarily tied to location.
What are your thoughts?

That's certainly falling. But most sites that have graduated recently have done so with q/day around 5. 15 isn't realistic for most sites, 5 is.

Hear hear! Agreed!

Solid argument.

@waxeagle, setting aside graduation specifically, I think 5 questions a day makes long term growth hard.  Not impossible, and some topics may only have that many, but questions drive pretty much all other possible actions, and at 5 day, most people won't find much to do on a site if they come daily.  There's no right answer, but I think below 10 makes it a lot harder to get new people involved and to keep existing folks engaged.

Relax the rules and see what happens.
I vote that we just declare "regional and brewery/brand-specific questions are fair game, but no opinion-based ones" and see what people come up with.  If it works, good.  If not, we try something else.
Some ideas of what might be asked:

Brewery drama like "Why isn't X shipping to the east coast anymore?" "What caused the shortage of Y", etc.
Ingredient questions like "What ingredient produces X flavor in Brand Style Y"
Availability questions like "Where can I get X near Y"

I'm not sure which of these we want to allow, but I vote we see what people actually ask.

I'm thinking "where do I find X" should have a reasonable limit on level of distribution. For instance, "where can I find Blue Moon in Tennessee" is a bad question (every grocery store in the state), but "where can I find Pliny the Elder in Place X" is a good question as it's sufficiently rare/limited distribution etc

+1, the very first question I asked here, (now deleted) was a question about distribution radius for a very small brewery. It got downvoted pretty quickly - (though not closed, which is odd, IMO).

@LessPop_MoreFizz - Sounds like something I'd have voted up. I guess in the beginning of betas, meta votes are gonna be rather volatile in nature as there are few established ideas about what the community should be and most people will jump to conclusions about "the disastrous consequences of foo" based on preconceived notions of what's good and what's bad (especially based on other sites). And who can blame them—it's hard to see what a site needs or the way a site tends without just... trying it and watching it. IOW, your question might have gotten +10 if you asked now.

@Fishtoaster - I like your answer (well, obviously), and I myself would like to find out where I can find Pliny the Elder in NYC (in San Diego, I know a place that gets a shipment every Wednesday morning and sells out by mid-afternoon), but—What if stores goes out of business? What if stores stop supplying that beer? How do we keep that information up to date? (Feel free to discuss in chat; I'll find it and get back to you there later.)

Well, I suppose that's the same problem Stack Overflow has: a question about RSpec or Struts or Visual Studio goes out of date in a year or two.  That's just why we need a community to keep asking.  :)

I agree with relaxing for some of the examples.  Yes for the "brewery drama" and "ingredient" examples.  I'm not sure about the availability question.  For common beer, I agree with wax eagle, but for uncommon or rare beers, the answer will be exceedingly temporal and of insufficient lasting value.  At worst, you may find Beer.SE take on a beer trading aspect.

information that goes out of date should be maintained via editing

Stack Overflow was the start of this entire exchange. The reason that multiple exchanges even arose is because Stack Overflow was lenient in some ways which were eventually deemed to be problematic. Hence the split into the main three sites.
The main thing to keep in mind when moderating such a small exchange in my opinion is to think back to what made Stack Overflow popular to begin with. It was very open, and questions such as what is your favorite book excelled.
Will there be 50 questions for each state and 2000 questions for each country? If that begins to occur, then I think the questions could be closed under one canonical answer as a community wiki (as happens on Stack Overflow now).
But until then, I think it should be a little lenient with regards to closing or discouraging questions, especially so that new users do not feel alienated from the community.
If an answer is incorrect by all means point it out, but questions are going to be what builds the community here. Plenty of new exchanges have come and gone, and I think one of the keys is to strike a tolerant balance.
Plenty of old questions were eventually closed or are no longer appropriate, but not until they reached tens if not hundreds of thousands of views.
Such as (all of these are from 2008)
SQLite vs MySQL [closed]
SQL Client for Mac OS X that works with MS SQL Server [closed]
What is a better file copy alternative than the Windows default? [closed]
Make XAMPP/Apache serve file outside of htdocs [closed]
How do you debug PHP scripts? [closed]
The definitive guide to form based website authentication (canonical)
Some took 5 years to be closed. My point is to just let the content build and worry about prevention once too much content actually becomes a problem. Go with the flow :)

I disagree here. This post isn't about loosening the rules in the way you're discussing, that's not really up for debate. Intriguingly this question is arguing for permitting very specific questions where you're examples are all highly general.

@waxeagle - This post is about not allowing brand or regional questions and it is dressed up in a bunch of fluff. The OP states they are unsure if the culture of avoiding these types of questions should be here. And I am saying no, it should not, at this point. I think Jaydles made a great point on your related post that you should also keep in mind. Don't get into prevention when there is nothing to point to as an example. Both general and specific questions should be allowed here, even if they are regional or brand related, because this exchange is new and needs the content.


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The specialty-beers tag needs some love
We have a tag, specialty-beers, which seems to be quite the hodge-podge:

Questions about "themes": Band Beers? In your counrty, Which beer or beers are associated with Lent?, What other beer brands began as fictional but eventually became real?
Questions about special ingredients or processes: Do kosher beers exist?, What are some of the most common ingredients used in gluten-free beers?, Other Jalapeño beers?, Beer with honey, beer with cinnamon
Questions that don't seem to be specific to specialty beers: Beer Clubs Online, Eat bread before drink beer make you drunk less?, How to chill a 30cl bottle to "cellar" temperature?, Who made commercialization of beer possible, Beer-A-Day (Free Online) Calendars

There are more; I'm not trying to catalogue the entire tag here.
We probably need to retag some of these, and maybe we should be creating other tags.  We already have trappist and hefeweisen, for example; I'm surprised we don't yet have "belgian".  I think there is a place for a "specialty-beers" tag, but the current state of the tag seems wrong.
What should this tag be about?  (It has no wiki now.)  Do we need additional tags in this space?  Which ones?

My 2 cents...This tag should go away.  It's too open to interpretation, and more specific tags will serve the site better.

@Xander I agree.  Sometimes it means micro-brews, sometimes it means Belgians, sometimes it means others... but what should we do with the oddball questions like kosher, gluten-free, chipotle?  An "ingredients" tag, maybe?

We should eliminate this tag.  Some of these questions are about specific types of beers and should be so tagged.  Some are about unusual ingredients and maybe we should create an ingredients tag.  I don't see a unifying theme for the questions in the last bullet, but they're sure not about specialty beers.

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Should we broaden our scope?
Beer just doesn't get that many questions, as oft-noted on meta.  On Beer SOS - The state of the site I suggested that our scope is too narrow.  That answer has 7 upvotes (and no downvotes), which is pretty good for our low-participation meta.
There is some support already for cider, mead, and rice wine being on-topic here, though it's not reflected in the site name or official scope.  What about wine?  Should Beer expand to be a general alcohol site?  It's come up before, but never resolved.
There have been at least two Wine proposals on Area 51.  The first was closed for inactivity; the second is new.  I asked there if Beer and Wine should combine forces; obviously that would only work if we think so too.
Should Beer's scope broaden to cover all alcoholic drinks?

Follow up post to broaden things here - http://meta.beer.stackexchange.com/questions/123/shaken-not-stirred-lets-expand-the-site

Update: 04-05-2016:
The community team discussed it and we're going to expand the scope of the site. See the proposal here.

First, let me say I'm not against the idea of expanding scope.  But I wonder if doing so would drive more traffic to it and more community participation.
As I mentioned in my Beer SOS, participation on the site is lacking and is a bit stagnant, while the community does a good job keeping the site clean, we're averaging 0.1 questions per day...Eek. Expanding the scope to include Wine and Cider might drive an increase in traffic but will the community be able to sustain it?
It's been discussed up before, but maybe it's time to revisit combining Beer and Homebrewing. I'm open to thoughts, or other ideas.

(Oh, I did not know about the Cider proposal.)  I agree; we should also discuss combining with Homebrewing (obviously with them too, not just here).  My gut feeling is that we could either expand scope to other types of alcohol or merge with Homebrewing but not both, so we'll need to do some analysis of our existing and anticipated questions.

I certainly think that combining Beer and Homebrewing is a natural fit, (I've advocated for it before) if it's something they're interested in taking on.

As bluefeet said, there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of expanding a site's scope. I doubt that expanding the scope of this particular site to other alcohols or alcohol in general is the right path, though.
In my experience, there's little correlation between knowledge about beer and knowledge about wines, spirits or other alcoholic drinks. And often, people who are really into beer may know nothing at all about, say, wine or vodka. Serious interest in beer does seem to lead to dabbling in homebrewing, though.
Now, granted, my experience may not be representative of the world at large, and I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I haven't seen much evidence yet.
The point of all this is that expanding into new territory doesn't really help overall site health if the site's existing users wouldn't participate in there and any new users wouldn't contribute to the "old territory." It'd basically be like operating two small, independent sites that just happen to share a URL for some reason that nobody understands.
So I suppose you could take everything I've said so far as a very long concurrence/upvote for bluefeet's answer. In my opinion, the long-term path forward for this site has to involve (as usual) more good questions being asked. In the SE network, we typically look for "practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that [users actually] face"; we probably need a slightly different guideline here. I don't have an idea for that different guideline off the top of my head, and it's probably better off discussed in a separate post anyways; but as one of the world's oldest and most popular drinks, beer certainly ought to be able to sustain a decent Q&A site.

Thanks Pops.  As I commented to bluefeet, this makes a lot of sense.  If there is more overlap between Beer and Homebrewing than there is between beer people and wine/cider/mead/vodka/whiskey people, then merging makes more sense than broadening scope.  Maybe I assume too much 'alcohol breadth", as somebody who likes several types; to me the broader scope seemed more akin to asking about bread, chili, and matar paneer all on the same site (Cooking).  But I have no data and I'm not at all sure that analogy holds, err, water.

Eww, too much alcohol breath. Oh wait, that's not that you said. So cooking is an interesting example. Some principles apply broadly. Whether you're making marinara sauce, chicken stock or pho, if you keep an uncovered pan on heat for too long, all the water will evaporate, leaving you with a burnt mess. So it's okay to put Italian, American and Vietnamese cooks on the same site. Whereas with the alcohols, I see more of a pastry-chef-and-grillmaster situation; skill sets that are both technically cooking but don't have much overlap.

(Hey, I didn't mean I like those all at once.  Sheesh. :-) )  So, pastry chefs and grillmasters are an interesting example. Both belong on Cooking; they don't have much in common. Is that a problem there?  Or is it not, because the vast majority of cooking questions are of broad interest?  (And that wouldn't be as true here, I presume.)  Also, I totally get that it's Cooking not Cooking and Eating, while Beer is kind of the "drinking" analogue to Homebrewing.

Sorry, I was attempting a bad homonym joke there (you said "alcohol breadth" earlier). As I see it, the reason Cooking SE can be home to both pastry chefs and grillmasters (and other superspecialists) is the big middle of cooking generalists. Both in the sense that there are a variety of types of cooking and the sense that there are principles and techniques that apply across cooking domains. I can't imagine who an analogous unifying "alcohol generalist" would be.

(I saw your homonym joke, but I guess I didn't make it clear enough that I was playing along.)  What you said about Cooking sounds right to me, and you're probably right about that kind of generalization not being as applicable here.

I don't know what the official SE policy is on changing site scope after launch...I'll dig around on MSE and see if I can find any discussions on the topic.
That said, I'd be in favor.  As you know, there is currently a proposal for a Wine site on Area 51, but other alcoholic site proposals, including one for whisk(e)y and one for alcoholic beverages in general have already languished and died there.
Since, as you mentioned, we've already agreed on cider, mead and rice wine being on-topic, and since we have very little traffic with the topics we have, and alcohol-based proposals seem to struggle on Area51, I think it would be beneficial all the way around.

Broadening scope while in beta happens, though rarely and only with significant discussion and review.  For example, Moderators.SE broadened to CommunityBuilding.SE, complete with rename and URL change, after months of discussion between the site and the CM team.  It's the sort of thing the CMs will support at most once -- so we shouldn't, say, ask to be Beer & Wine and then later ask to be Alcohol.

Quite aside from all that, though, would you consider editing the on-topic help page and the tour to mention cider and mead?  It appears that both pages are the defaults that all sites get to start with.

@MonicaCellio Yes!  This has been on the to-do list fo awhile now.  Thank you for the reminder.

@MonicaCellio I've updated the on-topics page.  Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like us to consider adding.

Much better, thanks!  Is brewing specifically off-topic here, or just preferred there?  (I thought it was the latter, but I haven't been tracking it closely since I haven't brewed my own in ages and don't have questions to ask right now.)

@MonicaCellio Specifically off-topic.  Brewing questions get migrated there as a matter of course, primarily because they weren't getting answers here.

Ok, good to know -- thanks.

When it comes to Beer SE to merge with other alcohol sites, it seems to me that we should be more willing to broaden our horizon, than simply just merging with Homebrewing SE. It would seem the natural step to include the Wine Proposal into this equation since wine homebrewing is already on-topic ot Homebrewing SE. The way I feel is that we should include all aspects of alcohol related topics into any expansion if we were to consider doing  so. Not only should we consider merging with Homebrewing SE and the new Wine Proposal, but we could also include distilled products such as liquors and liqueurs, as well the subject of distillation in any future ideas we need to bring to the table if in fact we truly want to expand our horizons here.
This how I see things now and cannot speak for others.

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How much do we want to get into biology?
I've seen several questions so far that deal with human biology as it relates directly to alcohol.
It seems like these questions are off topic and generally outside of the expertise of this site.
Examples:

Will certain types of beer get me more drunk more quickly?
Why do I seem to pee out more beer than I drink?

How much of this topic can we feasibly cover, and how much of it should we cover?

I'd suggest you allow them for now.  The key question should NOT be:

Couldn't this more accurately be defined as Biology than Beer?

The key question is:

Is this question specifically relevant and of interest to the beer aficionado community?

And these examples seem to pass that test pretty easily.  In my opinion, they are more likely to captivate the attention of the average beer lover than the average biologist.
Which is why I'd put these squarely in the category of:

Don't worry about fixing a problem until you actually see clear problems.

And in this case, for now, I think you're ok.

Jaydles' answer provides some reasonable guidelines for most questions that would reasonably be considered "biology" questions. However, I recommend treating one specific subcategory a bit differently: questions seeking medical advice.
I hesitate to even bring this up because we haven't actually seen any of these yet, but if past sites on related topics are any indication, a few of them will crop up eventually... And when they do,
Please resist the urge to answer them. Topics such as the treatment of chemical dependency, withdrawal, poisoning, allergies and so on have very serious potential consequences, and those dealing with them should be strongly encouraged to seek out a medical professional. Remember, answers here will be found and read by many, many people beyond just the asker - putting potentially life-threatening advice out on the 'Net is not something we should encourage.

+1 for foresight.


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Should Food/Beer pairings be on topic?
This question is gathering close votes. However, these kinds of questions seem like they will be common as beer/food pairings are common in recommendation type things.
Are these questions actually based on opinion or are there well established/researched pairings that would make these questions reasonably on topic?

possible duplicate of Proposal: [pairing] is a bad tag and should be removed

Not a duplicate, although the outcome of that discussion should hinge on this one.

FWIW, pairing questions are allowed to some extent on [cooking.se]; in practice, food/drink pairing hasn't been a particularly popular topic there however. On the bright side, they haven't taken over the site or caused the sorts of problems that broader "recommendation" questions often do.

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that there is some science involved here. IPAs go with hot-pepper-laden foods because the hop bitterness and spiciness interact well together, for example. With that in mind, I think a limited amount of pairing questions should be welcome.

@Pops more specifically, hop bitterness numbs the palate, which allows you to tolerate ever higher amounts of spiciness.

Absolutely. As with wine pairings, there are strong cultural norms and rules of thumb that can be followed here - pairing beer with foods represents a definite area of real expertise that deserves to be kept here.
Sure, at the end of the day, what you like is going to be subjective - but there is an art, if not a science to pairing that makes it a legitimate subject area.
If it's important enough for a Ciccerone to be tested on it, I see no reason that we shouldn't want it here.

Would it make sense to restrict these to beer varieties or style requests? The current spate of "what's a good beer" seems to invite near infinite responses not easily rankable within the most compatible styles which will quickly get you deep into highly subjective territory.

I will admit the "what is a good beer to go with X" is kind of getting out of hand...

@Jaydles I think thats entirely legitimate. Questions on the principles of pairing are interesting. People asking. "What beer goes with what I have planned for dinner tonight?" Not so much. Nobody else cares.

I think they should be on-topic. Because

It is a part of beer consumption so what pairs with X beer type questions are also about beer consumption
If we think about basic food categirizing and pairing, It can be accepted not much opinion based. Like, red wine pairs with red meat, beers can be paired with mor egeneralized food categories
Also, there will be local flavors, and soon there will be qustions like I will visit Germany and I heard their x beer and I want to tast it on my lunch. What kind of food is paried with that beer type of questions and that will be important. Local flavors in beer and food pairings is important and people will have limited time in tasting them.

So here can became a guide of this too.

I think they can be on topic, but the questions I've seen seem to be kind of trivial and superficial. Example question "What goes good with British style dinners" titled "What's a good beer to have with steak and potatoes?"
I think for it to be a good fit on the site, it should be a little more specific with menu and goals. Take steak... Filet? Porterhouse? NY strip? Ribeye? Sirloin? Seasoning?
Along with that, the "what and the why" of it. I found this example answer on beeradvocate:

I recently paired homemade chili with Stone's Chipotle Smoked Porter.
I'm sure the regular and the vanilla versions would work as well, as the mix of smoke and malt (in taste and texture) were the key components in complementing the spicy food. However, I found the chipotle added a nice roasty heat, so while it quenched your thirst after a spicy bite like a glass of milk might, it imparted just a smidge of heat in the aftertaste to segue into your next chili spoonful... I was surprised a chili and a porter could provide a real pairing experience, akin to a wine pairing.


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Are location-based tags a good idea?
An edit to this question suggests that we have a tag for Poland.  Is it a good idea to have location-specific tags?  I'm guessing that most of the content on here is based in the US, should we have a "United States" tag, which would then (potentially) run rampant?  UK is also very popular, I surmise.  Poland kind of makes sense, but only in that it's a "destination" for most of the user-based; would Polish users asking questions about an American beer then tag "United States"?
(I could ask about the granularity as well -- country vs. state / province, etc, but I suspect that's a good enough sub-question once this is resolved.)

I don't think they are necessarily a bad idea.  What if the question were "What bar in Poland has the most distinct beers on tap?"
A Poland tag there would make sense and it is a valid question (though I imagine the authoritative answer would change over time so it's tricky).

I think regional granularity makes sense in cases where there may be a regional beer style.  Specificity would really depend on a case-by-case basis.  Some countries may have common beer styles while other countries vary more internally and have states or subregions.  I could see asian, irish, and bavarian all making sense.
With regards to united-states, that may make sense when talking about law, drinking culture, more universal preferences.  Whereas we may see boston or midwest-united-states talking about styles or preferences.

It just feels like having tags such as [tag:irish] and [tag:bavarian], while adding to specificity, creates an implicit centralism.  If we are talking about IPAs, they are different between the US and England, but if we start tagging [tag:england] and not [tag:us], that creates an artificial delineation or "us vs them" feel.  I could get more behind it if location tags were encouraged across the board.  Or maybe it's just not a big thing; I'd like to hear more opinions...

They would only create centrism if used as such.  If someone talks about IPAs without mentioning England, I'm not sure why they would use the [tag:england] tag.  If they are talking about english-style IPAs (is that a thing?) or IPA producers in England it makes sense.  We'd have to see if it gets abused.  We may also be putting to much weight on the significance of tags.  They help categorize and search. I've never read it as "England only, fools!"

Plus, if tags aren't used appropriately on a large exchange, they are often edited in or out with comments like "Adding [tag:england] because this is england-specific" or "Removing [tag:england] as it doesn't apply."

Marking this as the accepted answer; it is the most upvoted, and I see where its coming from.  I think that we should be judicious about the application of regional tags, still, but I understand the usefulness.

Unless the question is specifically about Poland (which doesn't seem likely), I would suggest this is not a good use for tags. If the location is relevant, that information should be include in the body of the question. But if I like to drink beer on my back porch on a hot day, I wouldn't need a tag for [summer] and [outdoors]. A bit of an exaggeration, but you don't really need a tag every keyword you just happened to mention in your post. That doesn't make tags more useful. Location-based tags are typically just a crutch for asking a complete and well-qualified question.

If the location is relevant, that information should be include in the body of the question Eeeeh... I don't know how true this is in this particular case; certainly for the vast majority of questions, it's probably true, but there's a lot of regionalism involved in this particular subject, thanks to jurisdictional issues regarding import and export and availability, to say nothing of varying cultural customs and norms that will mean we should have a fair number of questions where the location is integral to the question and answer, and represents a real area of expertise.

For example, with respect to the cited suggested edit: The question is specifically asking how the local nomenclature in poland correlates to standardized style guides; I think the regional tag is appropriate there - one would need to be knowledgable about polish beer and customs to properly answer the question.


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2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
To that end, here is how the moderation done here on Beer, Wine & Spirits breaks down by activity over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  0          6
Users destroyed                                   4          0
Tasks reviewed³: Suggested Edit queue            24         11
Tasks reviewed³: Low Quality Posts queue          4          6
Tasks reviewed³: Late Answer queue               36         27
Tasks reviewed³: First Post queue               100         43
Tasks reviewed³: Close Votes queue               19         11
Questions reopened                                1          0
Questions protected                               0          2
Questions migrated                                4          0
Questions flagged⁴                                0         21
Questions closed                                 24          1
Question flags handled⁴                          14          7
Posts undeleted                                   3          3
Posts locked                                      0          9
Posts deleted⁵                                   47         35
Posts bumped                                      0         22
Comments flagged                                  1         39
Comments deleted⁶                                30         58
Comment flags handled                            20         20
Answers flagged                                   2         96
Answer flags handled                             71         27

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Beer, Wine & Spirits without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 3 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 3, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁴ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁵ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁶ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Wishing you all a happy new year...

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Moderators Pro Tempore, fusion-style
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: Moderators Pro Tempore.
I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that this community’s issues are properly addressed:

We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.
Andrew Cheong has stepped down as moderator, and we'd also like to thank him for his service to the site.
Did I overlook anyone?
Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in no way a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why you'll have your elections several weeks after graduation.
Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone.

Thank you for stepping up to the plate or should I say bar as Moderators Pro Tempore. Congratulations and a warm welcome from everyone here! Looking forward to hearing from you in the future. I would like to extend a special thanks also to Andrew Cheong for all his hard work in the past.

Thank you Andrew for all you've done for this site!  Enjoy your retirement -- cheers!


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What should we do when a question already has an answer on the Homebrewing site?
For example, this question is one that I would consider on topic for this site. However, it's already been answered on the homebrewing site.
Normally I would say let the both questions exist and have them get answers from the perspective of the site they're on, meaning that on here the answer would be only about the specifics of the beer(s) themselves and on the Homebrewing site it'd be from the perspective of making the beer. In this specific case, it's a little bit weirder since the accepted homebrewing answer isn't even relevant to homebrewing (but I may be wrong about that).
What should we do in these situations?

What should we do in these situations?

Nothing. They're two different sites with different (but overlapping) audiences. In this specific situation, the exact same question (and its answers!) would be appropriate on both sites, but there'll be plenty of cases where that won't be true, where the needs of a brewer and an enthusiast overlap but don't align perfectly.
Generally-speaking, Stack Exchange sites are expected to stand on their own, catering to their own communities and being a bit jealous of their questions - there's no such thing as a cross-site duplicate.
That said, there are two things worth keeping in mind, particularly early on:

If you're pulling relevant information from a different site, don't forget to attribute it properly. Ideally, there'll be cross-links between sites with related topics, with overlapping expertise aiding readers on both.
Don't post identical questions on both sites, and be very careful about re-posting questions that've already been asked elsewhere. It's important that we establish a clear role for this site during the private and early public betas; if the questions here are too close to what's available elsewhere, it'll make it harder for future members to recognize what is and isn't on-topic. Focus on identifying areas where the good folks here weren't being served, and make sure the answers they're receiving are fresh draughts.

Nothing.
While it's unfortunate to have duplicated information across sites, sites that have overlap in topic should not be afraid to have some overlap in questions. If it's clearly on topic in both places it's not an issue.
My guess is that homebrew has been housing a lot of questions that would be borderline off topic if they had a site to ship them to, if this site does well that will give them a good opportunity to focus on the brewing side rather than the tasting/history side.


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What tag should we use for "what's the difference between X and Y" questions?
Since there's so many varieties of beer, there's already a lot of questions on our site about the difference between them. What tag should we use? I considered creation a tag called characteristics on my question related to this but it seemed odd.
What tag should we use? Should we use a tag at all or will tagging them by the variants names be fine?

I like styles or beer-styles, but the nerd in me wants taxonomy.

I vote for just styles. This is a beer site, so the prefix shouldn't be necessary. Otherwise you end up with beer-flavour, beer-colour, beer-ingredients etc.

beer-styles might be a helpful tag to have. Or just style/s, along with the appropriate tags for any styles mentioned in the question. (i.e. stout)


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Let's get critical: Jul 2014 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Beer Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

What characteristics does Becks have, and what are similar beers?

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

How can I try a wide variety beers without buying them by the case/spending a lot of money?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)

In the United States, is a beer required to state ABV on the bottle/label?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)

How to store a bottle of beer once it has been opened?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

What transforms a beer into a Barley Wine?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

I'm aging a few bottles. They've been in the fridge for a while. Should I take them out now?

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 2)

How do restaurants/businesses get their beer?

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 1)

Removing the Crown / Neck paper

Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 1)

Are there microbreweries or craft breweries in Iceland?

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 2)

Are there any craft beer or microbrewery in Washington and Baltimore?

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 2)


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Let's get critical: Jan 2015 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Beer Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 7 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Uh oh.  Usually the self-evaluation contains 10 questions.  Whatever the criteria are, it looks like we didn't have 10 that met them.

Final Results

Why does Belgium have such a rich and profound brewing culture?

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 0)

What type of beer did the pilgrims have?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is there a site (or app) like Beer Advocate that lets me give just an overall rating?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Beer Kit - How long is it good for

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

How to measure the caffeine content of a coffee beer at home?

Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 2)

Why is beer in Czech Republic so cheap?

Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 2)

Beer-A-Day (Free Online) Calendars

Net Score: -3 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 3)


text:
Let's get critical: Jul 2015 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Beer Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

Why cork a beer?

Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 0)

How to chill a 30cl bottle to "cellar" temperature?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is there a wide variation amongst specific styles?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is there an example of the Trappist style that's considered the best of the style?

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

What is a good beer for starters, or people who don't typically enjoy the taste of beer?

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Does beer cause more fatigue than liquor?

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

Where can you buy US craft beer in Europe that will ship to other EU countries?

Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

What other beer brands began as fictional but eventually became real?

Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

Who made commercialization of beer possible

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 2)

Why does draught (draft) beer cause hangovers?

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 2)


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2019: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
  -- A Theory of Moderation

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
And what could be more festive than a big pile of numbers?
So here is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Beer, Wine & Spirits over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  0          4
Users destroyed³                                  1          0
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue            54         46
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue          3          5
Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue               21          5
Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue                78          8
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue               11          1
Questions protected                               0          3
Questions migrated                                2          0
Questions flagged⁵                                0         16
Questions closed                                 16          1
Question flags handled⁵                           8          8
Posts locked                                      0          2
Posts deleted⁶                                   48         19
Posts bumped                                      0          4
Comments flagged                                  0         15
Comments deleted⁷                                17         23
Comment flags handled                             9          6
Answers flagged                                   4         42
Answer flags handled                             46          0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Beer, Wine & Spirits without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? I posted a similar report here last year: 2018: a year in moderation...
You can also check out this report on other sites
Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing you all a happy new year...

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Should we consider closing this beta?
There isn't much activity on this beta at all.
It currently has 0.4 questions a day, and 179 visits a day.
Can we agree that this beta may have failed?

Not yet!
Yeah, those numbers look pretty abysmal, and from what I've seen of the front page, questions that have no business staying open have for quite some time, but that doesn't mean we're dead yet.
First and foremost, until SE tells us to shut the doors there are things we can and should be doing.
Forget about the traffic numbers, they aren't helpful. My experience with SE sites is that if you build them, people come. Ask, answer and watch the visits flow.
So what does that leave us to do?

Ask good questions. A lot of the questions here are kind of mediocre, let's see if we can get some really good focused narrow questions
Focus on asking about specific beer styles and brands instead of general "beer" questions.
As local questions. Promote at local pubs/breweries. Get local answers (A huge part of modern beer is local breweries, we can be an awesome resource for those).
Promote this site to your friends. This is the way to get experts and enthusiasts to show up. If you're hanging at the pub and someone has a question about a beer, have them ask it here!

So overall, while the numbers are kinda of lousy, SE hasn't said "hey, you're in danger of closing up shop" yet so there's still plenty of time to make this site a cool place. We don't need fancy SEO or even anything special beyond just a general influx of questions and answers.

I couldn't find any good discussions on Meta.SE or Area 51 about how and when a public beta gets closed. One question was potentially relevant: How to know which SE sites are going to be closed? So, I don't know how SE does things.
Not at all a good reason to keep a beta open, but hey, I make use of my 0.4 a day :-)
Personally, and of course I'm biased, I enjoy reading a new question every 2-3 days, even if that's all there is. Especially because I'm not an expert in beer (a title more befitting the other mods), I'm surprised by how frequently my friends and colleagues, at bars, breweries, and restaurants, wonder and ask questions about beer that I happen to be able to discuss or answer, solely from reading a new topic on here every few days. (Most of my friends and colleagues don't know I moderate a site about beer.) Again, I'm not saying this is a good reason to keep a beta open. Besides, I'm in a unique position, granted a responsibility that motivates me to review all the questions—a motivation others must find in pure interest (and perhaps reputation).
Does the site still have potential?
What I really want to know, if it were up to me to decide the fate of this site, is whether it still has the potential to become the place to go when someone has a question about beer. As I've argued before, I think the real problem is that there are only so many general questions one can ask about beer. When a question does arise however, where do people go to find out or ask? The goal is to make that place, here. The feeling of knowing exactly where to ask is the joy I've found in Stack Exchange. Can we make this, that place?
Googling beer questions, I see that not a single link in the first 100 results offers a place to ask a community of users about beer, except for one: us, on page 5. Next I search beer question answer, and again find nothing in the first 100 results, except for two: homebrew.se and us, side by side on page 2.
But okay, you've got me: actually my Google-fu is to blame. Search beer discussion and there are a plethora of active communities discussing beer—BeerAdvocate, Realbeer.com, Home Brew Talk, etc.—and it's us who can't be found in the first 100 results. Same goes for searching beer community and beer forum (not that we are a forum—but it's what people would search).
But the thing is, all of these other communities, being discussion forums, lack the unique model of Stack Exchange that promotes the best answers to the top and employs the community to organize knowledge in an accessible and duplicate-free way. We're far behind in terms of exposure, but we've still got something no one else seems to have. The question is—Does that something justify the existence of this site?
Is there more we can do to meet our potential?
I think so, and I feel guilty that I haven't taken the initiative to write this earlier, so thank you @dwjohnston for asking the question that needed to be asked.
First, we might petition the Stack Exchange team to help us improve our SEO, for example by making sure that words like discussion, community, and forum get picked up by crawlers. (No, I have no understanding of SEO; so please do enlighten me where I'm being naive.) Not all SE sites might like such exposure, since the SE platform isn't intended to be anything like a discussion forum especially. But, I think Beer.SE is a case where I think it would strengthen us to draw in those searching for "forums" to ask their questions.
Second, we might coordinate efforts to gain exposure in existing communities like BeerAdvocate, Realbeer.com, and Home Brew Talk. We'd want to do this ethically—spamming forums with links to our site would only gain us a bad reputation. Exactly how to achieve this, I'm not sure, but perhaps this should be made a separate question for discussion.

SEO would be the way to go to get us more exposure. I'm not sure exactly how much the SE team could help us with that, they already do as much as they can to optimize each site I'm sure. Linking to us in comment fields of sites probably won't work, as most sites won't pass their rep to sites linked in comments (to deter, or at least make futile, any spamming efforts). Google does a good job explaining SEO here: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

@krugmeister65 SE already does super well on SEO (because of the nature of the content, not anything special they do). Google favors sites that regularly receive new content. The main way to get more eyes is to have more Q&A.