To add to @Dan Velleman's comments, I think that we would have far more traffic if we welcomed and addressed the sorts of 'urgent practical questions' that I come across every day on other linguistics forums, mailing lists, or amongst colleagues (and, therefore, the sorts of questions that people are frequently googling!)
These don't tend to be'theoretical' questions - if a theoretical question arises, a linguist usually either knows the answer already, or someone in their immediate vicinity does, or they know exactly where they might find the answer in a scholarly publication.
The 'urgent, practical questions' that I hear most often do tend to be related to the tools and methodological approaches that linguists use to do their daily work.
Some examples that I hear frequently in various online/on-campus haunts:
- What sampling rate should I record at if I want to do phonetic analysis?
- Which glossing conventions should I be following?
- What software is available to make an online dictionary from the lexicon in my database?
- What's the best way of entering IPA characters? what's the best font for IPA characters?
- What's the best technique for eliciting X type of data? Or, how can I test to see if language X has feature Y?
- Is FLEx better than Toolbox?
- What do I need to put in the metadata for my corpus?
- How do I do statistical analysis on X type of language data?
Obviously these sorts of questions come from people with certain types of interests, but my point is that I very rarely hear anyone ask questions like 'Is there much evidence for the poverty-of-the-stimulus hypothesis?'.
A further point, also mentioned by others, is that the 'experts' lurking on the site may have questions that are either too specific/advanced to have any chance of being answered on a site like this. I have not yet thought of any questions that I legitimately have no answer of my own for, or that I couldn't find an answer for in a few minutes under my own steam. If this site is intended for people who are professionals but also those who may be in the earlier stages of their careers (i.e. undergrads) or hobbyists (with certain standards), then it is probably worthwhile asking some questions that we already know the answers to, to be able to add to the quality content. If we ask questions that are considered to be common (and valid) questions in linguistics, and provide well-formed answers to these, people will come across them in their searches.
Taking an approach that a) incorporates more practical questions and b) addresses common linguistics questions will help to make this a go-to site for useful answers.
One question is, would people still be keen to work on quality answers if they suspected the person asking the question already had a pretty good idea?