What are the top three user stats?
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In the last 90 days:
- Posts (comments vs discussions would be bonus)
- Time on site (alternatively, visits)
- Discussions viewed per day (average)
That's how I'd gauge how engaged a user is.
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Posts are a given, but those other two are an interesting take @Linc. Just to add to the conversation, I've noticed the three classic stats are:
- Registered. Either the date the user registered or how long the user has been a member. This lets you know how much of an "old timer" the user is.
- Posts. How many posts the user has lets you know how much they've engaged in the community. This stat is going to be in any community.
- Last Visit. Knowing when the user last visited the site lets you know if they are a current member.
The reason why I'm asking these questions is I'm thinking of user profiles and a user "business card" like feature. I want three big stats to display on both of these. I want there to always be three stats and not really have plugins add more. Plugins can add stats into a drill down tab or something like that.
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The key is that it's posts in the last 90 days tho. (//edit obviously I did not refresh before posting this)
The classic stats (register date & post total) are for nerds who want the rep of "look at how badass I am" and then they coast on that and it doesn't scale to let new members establish themselves. I don't wanna see stats that stop being meaningful when the member disappears.
Member A joined in 2003 and has 27,000 posts but hasn't said more than 5 things in the last 2 years. Member B joined in October and has 319 posts. To me, the latter is the better member, but if you hold their "cards" with those stats side by side folks think member A is king shit and I don't like that at all.
Last Visit is only useful for "have they been by recently" or "why haven't you replied to my PM" basically. Rolling 90-day stats convey this information naturally without breaking it out.
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I should also note that I had in mind what 3 things I wanna see as the community manager or a moderator, not necessarily what I think should be public. My latter 2 stats could be seen as embarrassing or invasive if anyone can see them.
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Here's a stab at a public-facing user summary:
- Date of First & Last Post ("Tenure"?) - this is my "lurkers don't count" variation on registration date. Fuzzy time is good for this ("2009 to yesterday").
- Current activity level (abstracted, like "Absent", "Low", "Very High" and not necessarily tied 1:1 to post count. See: Steam Rating)
- Some qualifier of how positive their contributions are (Reputation). To public it would range from Neutral to Super Positive (or whatever) but moderators could see when it was net negative. Signals like warnings & reactions could inform this.
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I immediately recognize my list in the last post basically avoids the notion of public "stats" for users, and while I wasn't thinking in terms of that as I typed it, I stand by it. Public-facing "statistic" aren't helpful. I don't wanna go all vBulletin with numbers numbers numbers trying to quantify everything in the public UI. Squishy metrics are simpler (to user) and more useful. I want a 1-glance "feel" for the user, not numbers to ponder (this is from public/peer perspective, not cmgr).
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I really like the idea of activity level last 7 and 90 days makes sense as does contributions (reputation). I agree with Linc, maybe use a graphic representation like Marvel did for reactions
or something similar to Github ( I think you mentioned that before Todd) which shows contributor activity.
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I think the number of user referrals you've made is more relevant than how many posts you've made. See: Nextdoor's platform. Not having proper referral tracking is a big hole in our software to me.
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@linc, I know when you invite it tracks, who invited who. You are right, though, there is no summary stat I believe. How would you track who refers who when it's non-invite? Like are you suggesting a share the community with a friend button?
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Inviting should always be allowed, and should always show who've you've invited, regardless of registration type. And normal registrations could prompt for the username of who invited you as an optional field with autocomplete.
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@linc, that's an interesting idea. I find our current invite system a bit unclear ( as in it's not obvious), so if we add that, we also need to revisit the whole "How one invites a friend"...
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From slackchat, I enjoy their simple approach to presenting the most current data:
The plain sentence is a nice, quick overview. Friendly for non technical people. I imagine their advance stats get into more complex graphs, But I can't find an example of the paid tier dash.
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