Our answered rate is plummeting more and more obviously. I had trouble coming up with explanation, until I discovered in [extended stats](http://stackexchange.com/sites?expand=true) one metric that seems to correlate with it - how many new active users had appeared on site in last two weeks.

![](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chd=t:100,79,45,45,41,34,29,29,27,23,22,20,18,17,15,14|100,22,33,34,11,22,31,32,89,20,10,17,10,5,22,6|51,49,49,100,35,68,48,22,70,24,32,52,49,31,28,29&chds=0,100&cht=s&chs=630x476&chco=DD4814|000000|BEC0CB|1B3E6C|A4C639|E1CDAE|F1E7CC|939185|0F3559|0F3559|C0D0DC|293A5D|F4F28D|CF4D3F|2EDAF0|F2F2F2&chtt=Expert+inflow+(new+over+200+rep+users+/+2+weeks)&chdl=ubuntu%20(37)|gaming%20(35)|apple%20(35)|programmers%20(144)|android%20(18)|english%20(67)|tex%20(33)|wordpress%20(7)|mathematics%20(71)|sharepoint%20(8)|webapps%20(15)|unix%20(39)|gamedev%20(34)|cooking%20(14)|drupal%20(11)|photography%20(12)&chxt=x,y,x,y&chxl=2:|thousand%20visits/day|3:|questions/day&chxp=2,50|3,50&chxr=0,0,29|1,0,116&chm=o,676767,0,4,50)

We seem to be terrible at this. Closest site in stats (Tex) has acquired over **four times** more new active users in same period. Many sites with much lower activity acquired more (in some cases a lot more) active users.

Drupal and Sharepoint seem to hint at similar dynamic, but they are newer sites and probably hadn't reached a tipping points when user base starts to grow rapidly (as it seems to for us).

I blame general situation in larger WP ecosystem. As we all know demand is insane (and rising) and I don't think I've ever heard about remotely competent WP developer lacking things to work on (heck, if **I** pass for remotely competent WP developer nowadays :) So proportion of demand to expertise is far from favorable for satisfying demand.

Question is - can we deal with this in context of WPSE and if so then how?