I'm a big fan of this site, and have spent most of my SE time here. The technical level of the community is an incredible resource, and the moderation top-notch. I think this site is an excellent model for the value and potential of Stack Exchange.
I found a bit of discussion of beta-graduation and questions per day in
- Is passing Beta in the near future? (July 2016, dup)
- What is the status of Space SE's beta rating? (January 2016)
In the roughly 2 years since, the site has continued to grow rapidly in its collection of high quality, well-sourced answers. The question rate (a metric relevant to beta-graduation) has been fairly steady at roughly 2/3 of the rate for graduation.
My personal feeling is that there is nothing wrong with Stack Exchange beta status for some SE sites, including this one, and this question rate gives the time and space for the fairly small number of knowledgable answer-writers the time and space to write high quality answers. What I value here most myself is primarily the answer-base, and the introduction of new users to the answer-base via linking to it.
The recent SpaceX Roadster-related traffic transient might be characterized as "fun", and it was really well managed by the community and moderators. It also gives some insight into what a double or triple-the question rate experience might be like here. I saw a faint hint of angst, and hundreds of up votes (in toto) for answers that sometimes did not match the quality of answers that get a quarter of those votes during "normal" times. Up-vote skewing and dilution, if it became much more commonplace, might present several problems. Lower quality answers that simply "sound good" or sound authoritative may become a more popular style, making it a little less satisfying to the core of high quality answer-writers here.
I'm just one user here and so I'm curious if "growing the site" or beta-graduation is actually appealing to people in general, and in particular to the much smaller group who contribute a large fraction of the SE gold, high quality answers.
Is, or should beta-graduation be a goal for this site? Is that the idea here?