this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Rethinking Community Vitality: Why Posts + Comments per Month Trumps MAU (programming.dev)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hey fellow Lemmings,

I've been thinking about how we measure the liveliness of our communities, and I believe we're missing the mark with Monthly Active Users (MAU). Here's why I think Posts + Comments per Month (PCM) would be a superior metric:

Why PCM is Better Than MAU

  1. Quality over Quantity: MAU counts lurkers equally with active participants. PCM focuses on actual engagement.

  2. Spam Resistance: Creating multiple accounts to inflate MAU is easy. Generating meaningful posts and comments is harder.

  3. True Reflection of Activity: A community with 1000 MAU but only 10 posts/comments is less vibrant than one with 100 MAU and 500 posts/comments.

  4. Encourages Participation: Displaying PCM could motivate users to contribute more actively.

  5. Easier to Track: No need for complex user tracking. Just count posts and comments.

Implementation Ideas

  • Show PCM in the community list alongside subscriber count
  • Display PCM in each community's sidebar
  • Use PCM for sorting "hot" communities

What do you think? Should we petition the Lemmy devs to consider implementing this? Let's discuss!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Creating a bunch of accounts possibly to manipulate votes

Looking from the admin level, doesn't happen that often. Vote manipulation is already something we keep an eye out for, and usually it's done to highlight certain content (ex. pushing some political angle) rather than boosting one community over another.

you can stop seeing by adjusting your "Show Bot Accounts" setting

I like some bots, but I only subscribe to a bot-only community if the volume of posts is reasonable.