Is Health.SE sick?

I think it's way too early to tell.

In keeping with your health metaphor: the site gestated in Area 51 and private beta. That's a relatively quiet time, the disagreements not visible to many. It's kind of "being born" now, and there are certainly associated birthing pains. I imagine many sites go through much the same thing.

A site has to have a vision for itself, or all it will ever do is flounder. We've all been attempting to do this, and will continue to do so for a while to come, with questions such as OMG… A site about Health?, How much overlap should there be with biology.SE?, Should we require references to back up all answers?, What are reliable sources?, Are personal medical advice questions on topic here? and many other up voted questions.

I'm a doctor, not an information analyst, so a medical metaphor is perfect for me, and I'm going to carry it through.

A patient comes to a physician with "complaints"; this is not jargon or judgmental, it's a historical label for the presentation of a patient. "I'm short of breath", "I have a rash", I've had a runny nose and a sore throat for a week" are typical chief complaints (CC). The next step is to gather information about the CC; that's called the history of the present illness (HPI). But those are only two categories of information. If we didn't look at the rest of the patient (everything that's working well - called a review of systems (ROS) - and do a physical exam, we wouldn't have a very informed opinion of that patient's actual state of health.

If you list only "complaints" to characterize the entire site, of course you'll come to a very different conclusion than if you actually examine the entire site. Looking at the bigger picture, things have slowed down since the initial rush, but that's part of defining site expectations. What I've seen here is pretty normal compared with sites I've participated on actively on SE.

Which is not to say that we don't need to consider the complaints carefully. And I think we have been doing that, and will continue to. Still, we're in our infancy here.

If you want a clearer answer, you will need to present a clearer question. A list of problems usually doesn't lead to a helpful discussion.

Is Health.SE sick?

I think it's way too early to tell.

In keeping with your health metaphor: the site gestated in Area 51 and private beta. That's a relatively quiet time, the disagreements not visible to many. It's kind of "being born" now, and there are certainly associated birthing pains. I imagine many sites go through much the same thing.

A site has to have a vision for itself, or all it will ever do is flounder. We've all been attempting to do this, and will continue to do so for a while to come, with questions such as OMG… A site about Health?, How much overlap should there be with biology.SE?, Should we require references to back up all answers?, What are reliable sources?, Are personal medical advice questions on topic here? and many other up voted questions.

I'm a doctor, not an information analyst, so a medical metaphor is perfect for me, and I'm going to carry it through.

A patient comes to a physician with "complaints"; this is not jargon or judgmental, it's a historical label for the presentation of a patient. "I'm short of breath", "I have a rash", I've had a runny nose and a sore throat for a week" are typical chief complaints (CC). The next step is to gather information about the CC; that's called the history of the present illness (HPI). But those are only two categories of information. If we didn't look at the rest of the patient (everything that's working well - called a review of systems (ROS) - and do a physical exam, we wouldn't have a very informed opinion of that patient's actual state of health.

If you list only "complaints" to characterize the entire site, of course you'll come to a very different conclusion than if you actually examine the entire site. Looking at the bigger picture, things have slowed down since the initial rush, but that's part of defining site expectations. What I've seen here is pretty normal compared with sites I've participated on actively on SE.

Which is not to say that we don't need to consider the complaints carefully. And I think we have been doing that, and will continue to. Still, we're in our infancy here.

If you want a clearer answer, you will need to present a clearer question. A list of problems usually doesn't lead to a helpful discussion.