Timeline for What data about meta has eluded Stack Exchange until recently?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
37 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 14, 2020 at 6:57 | history | bounty ended | Resistance Is Futile | ||
| Apr 3, 2020 at 19:52 | history | bounty ended | gnat | ||
| Feb 24, 2020 at 14:32 | history | bounty ended | gnat | ||
| Feb 22, 2020 at 7:54 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | Could you add the %answers from meta visitors? Doesn't have to be a graph, numbers would be fine too. Quite a lot of people would find that interesting I think. | |
| Feb 21, 2020 at 23:15 | comment | added | jpmc26 | "...specifically looking at flags submitted, review tasks performed and post edits made..." What happens to the data if you expand that to include close votes and down votes? Something else to look into would be how post score correlates to Meta participation. (I.e., do Meta participants/viewers post most of the high quality content?) | |
| Feb 19, 2020 at 10:12 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | Actually there might be an effect visible in the data. %of reviews of Meta actors went down a little bit over 2019 (at least the orange line from 50% to ~40%) and all the other lines for Meta Actors remained kind of constant, while the engagement peaked in October to December (8-10% compared to 5-7%). This means that Meta Actors did lower their share of curation (per person), probably they were busy writing on Meta instead. | |
| Feb 19, 2020 at 6:48 | comment | added | Tiago Cardoso | As one of these visitors who don't actively participate in meta but rely on the discussions taken here, now that's clear that decisions were (about to be) made based on the wrong information, isn't it opening some sort of a Pandora's box? What if the same knowledge issue triggered some of the last fires we saw lately? Hope the data (mis) reading on meta importance was a one-off case. | |
| Feb 19, 2020 at 6:17 | comment | added | gnat | ...speaking of participation tabs, fun fact is all sites have them, not only per site metas: see example for MSE and for SO main site | |
| Feb 19, 2020 at 6:08 | comment | added | gnat | @Troyen FWIW it was designed this way from day one, and even officially supported by per site meta UI, see eg explanation here for meta participation tab, "combined number of posts, votes, comments and edits" | |
| Feb 19, 2020 at 0:30 | comment | added | Troyen | Can you clarify what "engaged" means? It sounds largely "people who post on meta" but voting is thrown in there too. As someone who visits MSO/MSE almost daily, but whose main interaction is votes and comments, I'm not sure if I'd be classified as "engaged" or "active" because usually someone else has already posted my point-of-view. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 23:22 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @gnat It was always clear that a percentage of users is not the best metric. Always people suggested that the impact of these users is much higher than average. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 23:17 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | Thanks for posting all these graphs. It's so nice to actually get a more quantitative feeling. I wonder why April 2019 was such a good month to engage or visit MSO/MSE? Interestingly, the curators do engage and read on MSO/MSE, but even with the crisis in the second half of 2019 they continued curating in the same manner as before. Either this whole crisis has no impact at all or a really long inertia, something comparable to climate change maybe. It may mean that nothing is yet lost, if only the right steps will be taken. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 23:11 | comment | added | Sebastian Simon | If “active” is defined as “viewed a page other than the home page”, I wonder what happens if we disregard clicks on the “Hot on Meta” or “Featured” links as well (but little further engagement beyond those clicks). These links are only one (possibly accidental) click away; I’m not so sure, however, why only visiting the home page, specifically, was excluded from the definition of “active”. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 22:30 | comment | added | gnat | @Lamak in the light of what I learned today, this old story of .015% feels like "Titanic, meet the iceberg". Granted, there were signs of it even back then - I recall thinking of thousands votes cast on prominent meta posts and suspecting that company may underestimate its influence | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 21:01 | comment | added | Mark | There's one graph missing from this that I think would be extremely valuable: "% of answers from Meta visitors". | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 21:00 | comment | added | Steve Bennett | Just wanted to say how much I appreciate this post, and particularly the tone. Feels like a long time since we have heard this level of transparency and acknowledgement of SO's mistakes. Personally, I found the company's position that (my words) "meta is just a bunch of angry people who don't represent the community" hard to fathom, but it sounds like there is maybe a shift away from that. Thank you so much. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 20:56 | comment | added | Resistance Is Futile | What about actions, like casting close and reopen votes, outside the Review queues. I rarely used those since I crossed 10K on SO. Are those actions included in statistics? | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 19:43 | comment | added | anonymous | @VictorStafusa I'll be shocked if anything of note is really said. Given some of the comments that staff (e.g., SC) made about Meta and some of the layoffs, short of spinning SO off as a non-profit or having a user Board of Directors I don't see anything being meaningful change anymore. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 19:34 | comment | added | Yaakov Ellis StaffMod | @VictorStafusa great question. I recommend that you check out MSE tomorrow, hopefully around this time. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 19:29 | comment | added | Victor Stafusa | Ok, now management have numbers to know what every regular on metas already knew for a long time: that metas are critically important and shouldn't be neglected and that SE can't simply get rid of them thinking that tomorrow will be a better day than yesterday. Now, what SE's management will do to recover the broken and lost trust from the communities? What SE's management will do to recover from the loss of many experts on many sites? | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 18:40 | comment | added | jscs | This analysis is nice to see. I might suggest looking at trends over prior years as well. I don't know if I'm alone, but I was sure fed up by mid-2019 and deliberately not "engaging" even when I saw things that I would have spent time helping with a year prior, to say nothing of two. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 18:40 | comment | added | Scott Seidman | Is this the analysis that Jon is referring to in his answer? | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 18:32 | comment | added | anonymous | Anyone else find it really ironic that this answer includes a link to a question and answer that points out these conclusions, back in July 2019? | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 18:27 | comment | added | Scott Seidman | @hazzey -- the boycotts don't seem to have impact yet, but I think that might speak to just how strong the community is, surviving through the perceived hostility. Despite the way some of the powers that be feel, Meta is filled with allies interested in continuous improvement, not whiners. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 17:53 | comment | added | Lamak | @gnat yup, I remember having read it there first, but thanks for posting a link to it. It helps to read again some other "well-intentioned" things like "SO users don't participate on Meta. In fact, Meta has so few active users I could have them all my apartment over for a potluck :). Yet, it seems to be a place that a lot of people leave unhappy." | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 17:15 | comment | added | Ian Ringrose | Have you looked at gold tag badge holders activity on meta? | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 17:14 | history | edited | Yaakov EllisStaffMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Credit to Kevin and Jason
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| Feb 18, 2020 at 16:49 | comment | added | Don't Panic | Hmm, I wonder how much of that content editing statistic is just Perter Mortensen ;-) | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 15:45 | comment | added | TylerH |
Thanks for sharing this. It seems to clearly vindicate the voices on Meta who've been saying for the past ~n months "no really, we are worth far more than 0.015% of your calculus". I think Pekka's comment rings quite true. Regarding "61% / 66% of *post edits* on SO are saved by users", what do you mean by "saved by" here? Submitted by? Or something else?
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| Feb 18, 2020 at 15:43 | history | edited | TylerH | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
General revision
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| Feb 18, 2020 at 15:37 | comment | added | El'endia Starman | Trying to reinterpret what the difference in lines means, I think this suggests that somewhere between a quarter and a half of people who perform mod/curation actions and visit Meta do so roughly every week. I'll bet there's some kind of 80-20 rule where 80% of actions are performed by 20% of Meta visitors or something similar. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 15:26 | vote | accept | Andy | ||
| Feb 18, 2020 at 15:02 | comment | added | Jon Clements | Thanks so much Yaakov. While it's still slightly frustrating that those invested in SO have known this for ages (if just intuitively - or in some cases being a mod recognising the same users in the flag/review queues and in meta posts either guiding/helping people, reporting bugs or suggesting new features), it's very welcome that someone's thought to ask a question of community concern from a different POV. It seems the numbers have talked and there's been a bit of a eureka moment here... I sincerely hope the momentum continues on this. I'll keep my fingers crossed (even if you don't! :p) | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 14:46 | comment | added | gnat | ...also, please consider editing to clarify whether analysed data included deleted posts or not | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 14:35 | comment | added | gnat | "% of answers" is provided only for meta actors but not for meta visitors, why is that? | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 14:31 | comment | added | fedorqui 'SO stop harming' | So curators are very much Meta visitors and displeasing them over and over again shouldn't be the way to go if we want clean sites. | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 14:19 | history | answered | Yaakov EllisStaffMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |