@ArtOfCode It's kinda subtle but yes, I like preferred the old one too.
@ArtOfCode There seems to be no average time. A site will graduate when the Stack exchange team have the time to work on it. We are on the right track but there are other beta sites that are doing well. Some of the graduated sites had worst stats than us but I guess seniority is also important.
Back when the idea of beta sites was young, the expectation was that beta was a fairly quick process. Even now, Area 51 sets the expectation that 90 days is a good "start thinking about graduation" checkpoint, and today I got this in email for a new private beta:
Q: How long is the beta?
A...
It would be nice to know, more or less, what is the expertise base that we have on Engineering SE.
Instead of each person giving a separate answer akin to "Hi, I'm an X engineer", where X is their expertise, perhaps we can set it up like a poll: one separate answer per expertise and people upvo...
On an unrelated note, thank goodness the evaluation is almost over. If I have to see that annoying orange box in the corner for much longer . . .
I also just realized that my idea of a wild Friday evening is to screw around with some fluid mechanics equations. Well, and actually do social stuff. But still. Bernoulli wasn't much of a party-goer, was he?