As we discussed pretty extensively in the comments of a recent question: all of our stats are lacking! Improving them can seem a bit overwhelming and sometimes a chicken-or-the-egg sort of chase. However, to me the main cause seems to be a lack of regulars -- users that take the time to read every (or almost every) question on the site, vote regularly, moderate, ask strong questions, and provide technical answers.
There was a recent question about over-moderation and building a userbase. With the moral of the question being that we might be scaring users away by being harsh on weaker questions. I don't think this is the issue; it might cause problems for drive-by questions or infrequent visitors, but I don't see how it would discourage potential regulars (who I would expect to be fluent enough in cognitive science to ask strong questions).
I find (at least for me) that my willingness to be a regular is proportional to my perception of the quality of the site, as well as my interest in the topic. Since I think many have interest in the cognitive sciences, I don't think interest is the issue.
Hence my questions:
1. How can we encourage more people to participate regularly on cogsci.SE?
2. Do you think that increasing the number of regular users will help resolve our other weak statistics, or should we be concentrating on something else?