So this is Christmas, and what have we done?

Question

As 2013 comes to an end, I thought it was time that someone other than retailcoder reflected about what has happened around here.

Looking back on a regular week in January, 2013, the top user earned 217 rep. Looking back at a not so randomly selected week in February, the top user earned 535 reputation. Well, that's a big improvement, isn't it? Sure it is. But the problem is that this trend did not continue there. On some weeks during the past year, the top user earned only 170 reputation. In fact, that week in February was the only week between January - October where a user earned more than 500 reputation.

But that was then. Suddenly, somehow, it all changed in November. Exactly why everything that happened then happened is hard to tell, but I believe it was a combination of several things:

• Code Review got two new reputation-loving users.
• Our chat room which has been very quiet almost the entire year has been quite occupied ever since the beginning/middle of November.
• There was a wake-up call review that caused...
• The mission. Enough said.

And so, users started to gain more reputation with the incredible record at 1,173 for one week.

This of course led to badges, badges, and more badges being awarded.

So, where are we now?

• We still have many new users coming, and some of them seems to get reputation in a very impressive speed.
• Some old users have returned and have started to quickly gain reputation again
• Our Area51 stats are mostly excellent, and the one that isn't excellent already is not that important as Code Review tend to have long answers that covers plenty of things (even though there's nothing wrong with writing a short answer that doesn't cover everything)

However, it's not over. We haven't graduated yet. And once we do, it's still not over - then we have to continue what we have done.

So this is Christmas...

So this is Christmas, and what have we done?
Another year over, and a new one will begin soon

And so this is Winter Bash, I hope you get hats
And while you participate, please answer kill some questions Zombies too

A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year
Let's hope it will be a graduation one, with many more votes

And so this is Code Review, for weak and for strong
For those who write code crap, six nested loops is so wrong

And so happy Hanukkah, for students and teachers
For tumbleweed and promoters, let's all become supporters

A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear

Answer 1

It is now Christmas
We've indeed come a long way
Oh look, a squirrel!

I just need to let out another lame holiday haiku. :-) Onto the serious stuffs...

This marks my first Christmas on this site, though not yet my first full year spent here. For the past 10 months I've been here, I have indeed seen CR grow tremendously, just as I have been growing in rep, badges, programming experience, communication, and more. I've even been appointed moderator, something I would have never expected from my earliest moments here. Winston Ewert was a great mod, and I'm happy to see his outside work promoting him to an industry position. It's not something each person can achieve easily, but I do believe CR does play a decent role in helping others improve. I have gone from crappy code to not-so-crappy code, and that's just the start.

As CR has helped me get a bit better at coding, I want to help it out as much as possible. But I'm just one person, even though I have power. The site cannot succeed without the help of the community, and that has been my primary objective. If I'm doing something wrong and the community calls me out, I'll change my ways. If I see someone else doing something as well, I will point them in the right direction. As long as we're in this together, we cannot fail, even if it means staying in beta a little longer. How ever long it takes, we must learn from our site review, from the powers that be, and especially from the community.

tl;dr: don't stop being awesome!!!

Answer 2

It's been a good year, and I learned some cools things here, which I did not in 2012.

I am still waiting for someone (else) to post their ABAP code here ;)