Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not?
I think those that can vote on closing bad questions do so without issue, so the site is kept fairly clean of those questions which are off-topic.
Questions or answers that could use an edit?
One of the issues I see with questions is people do not provide enough information. Most questions are specific to a vehicle (make/model/engine/etc), but this information is not included in the question. This makes us need to go back and ask these questions in the comments over and over again. We could be providing not only quicker answer, but better information when an answer is given. While I see this as an issue, I don't see as how to get questioneers to include this information in the question in the first place.
Anything that's going really well?
I think we are building a pretty good lot of people with knowledge. Yes, I answer a lot of questions, but I don't know everything. Recently the user Dukati Killer has been showing up regularly and answering motorcycle questions, which I'm eternally grateful for as I do not have a lot of specific motorcycle knowledge. We could still use more people of varying abilities and knowledge to provide the best answers possible to those who seek knowledge.
Other Thoughts:
I think one of the biggest issues we face on the site is voting. Not that I'm pining for more votes, mind you, I'm just thinking when we get new people here asking questions, we should vote up good questions. I see a lot of good questions which go without votes. I try my best, but I can only vote once per question (like anyone else). This also leads to a lack of answer votes as well, which does not encourage new answer posters to come back and try for some more. We have more than enough site visits every day (over 23k just looking at it on Area 51) which is way more traffic than what is considered for a healthy beta site. People come and don't find the answers they are looking for I guess, because we don't see a lot of answers or questions from them. The site has been in beta now for just over 4 years. At some point it would be great to graduate to a full-fledged site.
Speaking of moving to a full fledged site, one of the statistics which is used in the mix is by having multiple answers to any given question. The site is listed as having an average of 1.9 answers per question, with 2.5 being the "Okay" goal. One of the issues with the metric for this site is, there usually is only one good answer. Usually an answer either nails it or it doesn't ... there isn't a lot of room for conjecture. While I provide a lot of answers for the site, I find if someone else answers a question, they are usually pretty close to right most of the time. If I find their answer lacking I'll post a comment on it to add to their answer rather than providing a separate answer which would probably be a duplicate of theirs with the added information. To me that doesn't makes sense, as it will just take away from their answer (in both sense and votes, more than likely). By doing this I'm hoping to provide an answer rich environment where all can feel welcome in providing answers and for it to appear that I'm not trying to hog all the glory for myself.
Along this same line, I will often give others a chance to answer a question before I will answer it, just for the same reason of not hogging the lime-light. Give everyone a chance and the site will advance. Conversely, I truly believe all questions deserve an answer. Most of the time I can provide that, but sometimes I cannot. Hopefully this encourages others to ask questions as well as answer them.
