How has the existence of this site influenced Vi(m) questions on other Stack Exchange sites? Here's a count of questions about Vi posted each month on Stack Exchange sites:
month Vi SO SU Unix Ubuntu Apple TeX
2014-09 _ 273 42 26 7 1 1
2014-10 _ 300 34 16 11 0 3
2014-11 _ 261 25 16 5 2 6
2014-12 _ 244 27 20 7 1 2
2015-01 _ 298 29 23 8 1
2015-02 377 300 30 26 20 2 2
2015-03 178 272 23 30 8 5 3
2015-04 120 226 19 29 10 1 4
2015-05 121 252 33 25 9 1 1
2015-06 109 205 25 13 8 4 4
2015-07 125 252 31 20 13 0 2
2015-08 159 245 25 31 9 8 4
2015-09 146 240 19 17 14 2 3
2015-10 155 251 25 18 7 4 1
2015-11 138 230 22 17 4 3 1
2015-12 148 222 23 19 8 1 1
2016-01 119 242 27 25 14 1
Conclusion: Vi.SE is stagnating and has only had a small influence on the rest of the network if any. I hate to bring this up, but the numbers for Emacs are noticeably different.
I'm not saying that this site is doomed. But so far it hasn't shown quantitative success.
It would be interesting and useful to see whether Vi.SE has been qualitatively successful. Are answers here better than on SO? And more generally, are answers here better than elsewhere on the Internet? I propose to do something similar to the old community self-evaluations:
- Take a sampling (pure random or biased?) of answered, positive-scoring, open questions.
- Compare their answers with what can be found elsewhere, with particular attention to what can be found on SO.
How many questions would we need? (Enough to have meaningful results but not so many that it's tedious.) Should we make a pure random selection or should we try to categorize (e.g. programming vs not, troubleshooting vs looking for a plugin, …)?
A plot of the three-month average figures from the above query:

original-vi
and similar), a community dedicated to a single piece of software...which has excellent built-in help. – Wildcard Feb 15 '16 at 8:28