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The Grand Wazoo
09-02-2010, 10:43
I'm not convinced this is the correct place to put this, as it's neither Feedback or a Suggestion, but as it concerns the forum, this is where I'm stickin' it! No doubt if I got it wrong someone will stick it where it belongs - maybe even the deleted dustbin, I don't know.

Anyway - Measures of Success

Prompted by Barry's observation that the AoS member head count is approaching a landmark figure, I was thinking about how difficult it must be to measure the success of a thing like an internet forum.
So I'm interested about how the various members of the team view this.

Obviously a measure of success can only be defined if you are clear in your own mind about what your goals are and, depending upon those goals, I suppose each owner and member of the management team will have different measures of success.

Bearing that in mind there will be a different perspective from everyone concerned can I ask that those members of the team who're sufficiently motivated might help me understand what your own personal measures of the success of AoS are. Also, if they differ from their own personal view, could Steve & Marco tell me what the AoS 'corporate' measures of success are.

Personally, I think it would be naïve to settle on a single factor to measure this nebulous thing that is success, so I've listed some of the things that I would expect to take into account were I asked to define this. Can you give each a score out of 10 for me or number them in order of importance to you?


Number of Members
No. of Posts
The ratio of number of members to the number of posts (ie: is the bulk of the traffic caused by a low number of highly active members or not?)
Quality of posts (Purely subjective but everyone will have their own view on this)
Returning visitors - members who stay for more than x no. of visits/weeks/months
Search engine results
Advertising revenue
Variety of content
Amount of advice given by you personally
Increase in your personal knowledge
Conversion to 'the cause' – whatever that might be (if indeed one exists in your mind)
Low number of management interventions - bans / warnings / post removals or edits etc
Something I haven't considered – if so, what might that be?


……….alternatively, you could tell me to mind my own bleedin' business.

John
09-02-2010, 11:10
Chris your views are always welcomed

The Grand Wazoo
09-02-2010, 11:17
Thanks John.
Can't help being curious. Sometimes though, curiousity can be construed as tinkering.
I was once described as 'a bit of a thinker' and not in a complimentary way!

Marco
09-02-2010, 11:31
Hi Chris,

This is just a quickie, as I'm in the middle of work at the moment :)


Personally, I think it would be naïve to settle on a single factor to measure this nebulous thing that is success, so I've listed some of the things that I would expect to take into account were I asked to define this. Can you give each a score out of 10 for me or number them in order of importance to you?


From your list, in order of importance (for me):


Returning visitors - members who stay for more than x no. of visits/weeks/months

Quality of posts (Purely subjective but everyone will have their own view on this)

Variety of content

Increase in your personal knowledge

Number of Members

No. of Posts

Low number of management interventions - bans / warnings / post removals or edits etc

Search engine results

Conversion to 'the cause' – whatever that might be (if indeed one exists in your mind) - *note*: 'convert' isn't really the right word.

The ratio of number of members to the number of posts (ie: is the bulk of the traffic caused by a low number of highly active members or not?)

Advertising revenue

Amount of advice given by you personally

There ya go!



Something I haven't considered – if so, what might that be?


I'll get to that one if I have time later :cool:

Marco.

Filterlab
09-02-2010, 13:20
Chris and I have had a chat about this thread, and to make it a little easier we'll move it over to a poll. If people vote for their top five points (out of the thirteen) then we'll get a picture over time of the rankings for each of the points Chris has made.

Top stuff. :)

Filterlab
09-02-2010, 13:41
Obviously the admin/mod votes will be slightly different in nature to user votes, but it'll be nice to see how the two cross over in importance. We'll leave it open indefinitely so we can see the change over the months / years. I'll stick it to the top too.

Great idea for a thread Chris! :) I'm itching to see the results!

Alex_UK
09-02-2010, 20:50
#14 - A friendly environment, where we can virtually enjoy the company of others interested in audio & music

OK, very subjective and hard to measure, but it's what keeps me coming back...

I'll do the poll now...

The Grand Wazoo
09-02-2010, 21:16
Alex,
I was going to put something to that effect.......oops it looks like I forgot.

Mike
09-02-2010, 21:19
Alex,
I was going to put something to that effect.......oops it looks like I forgot.

Looks like it's there to me...

The Grand Wazoo
09-02-2010, 21:57
ahem, so it is.............I wonder how?................must be to do with yer telepathicals or summink

Alex_UK
09-02-2010, 22:01
So it is! :scratch:

The Grand Wazoo
09-02-2010, 22:14
So does that bugger up the votes then?

Mike
09-02-2010, 22:21
Nah!

I can get it removed though, if you like? :)

The Grand Wazoo
09-02-2010, 22:28
Well, folks may have voted differently if it had been there all along

The Grand Wazoo
12-02-2010, 07:27
Blimey - 15 votes!
If the turnout's as good as this at the General Election, Labour might stand a chance of winning!

Marco
12-02-2010, 09:35
It's in the 'wrong' section of the forum in that respect, Chris - people rarely look here...

I can move it into the Blank Canvas if you like, but it'll depend on how many people are really interested in this type of thing :)

Marco.

The Grand Wazoo
12-02-2010, 09:43
I don't mind Marco.
I put it here because I was interested in how you guys saw things.
Rob was interested in widening it out a bit, so we thought turning it into a poll might be fun for all.
Whatever you think mate!

Marco
12-02-2010, 09:53
We'll see how it goes here then for the time being...

The next impending 'milestone' is 100,000 forum posts! :)

Marco.

Filterlab
12-02-2010, 10:12
I'll pop a sticky link to it in the Blank Canvas section. It's ideally placed in Critic's Corner as it is feedback, but it needs more exposure.

Alex_UK
12-02-2010, 21:04
Would be interesting to hear how others view the forum - I use the "new posts" link, so I never miss a trick! ;)

(All of the above is just a thinly veiled "BUMP"!)

Joe
12-02-2010, 23:03
Would be interesting to hear how others view the forum

I mostly use my eyes.

The Grand Wazoo
12-02-2010, 23:33
HohohoJoe!!!

Steve Toy
13-02-2010, 02:36
Joe never misses a trick!

Filterlab
13-02-2010, 10:44
Joe never misses a trick!

Or a cheap gag seemingly. :D

Joe
13-02-2010, 12:28
Not so much cheap as completely free!

Filterlab
13-02-2010, 14:06
Not so much cheap as completely free!

Indeed, it's as if the door was left wide open. :)

Barry
14-02-2010, 15:52
Blimey - 15 votes!
If the turnout's as good as this at the General Election, Labour might stand a chance of winning!

Statistically, if we want a margin of error on the results of 5%, a confidence level of 90%, then with a population size of 2000 and a response distribution of 50% (to be conservative), we need a sample size of 239.

If the margin of error is increased to 10%, the required sample size comes down to 66.

Get voting out there; if this poll is to be of any use!

Regards

Joe
14-02-2010, 16:20
Vote early, vote often!

Spectral Morn
15-02-2010, 12:10
Done my duty...votes cast..:)


Regards D S D L

DevillEars
16-02-2010, 06:33
G'Day Ladies and Bruces,

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I think we need to define the word 'Success' - particularly in terms of from whose perspective...

There will be different priorities and different criteria for 'success' from the different perspectives of the two main categories of stakeholders:


Forum 'management'
Forum 'participants'


In fact, the term 'success' is probably not quite appropriate from the perspective of a 'participant'.

From a 'management' perspective, the criteria for success will depend on the original motivation behind the creation of the forum and could include:


A genuine desire to provide a service to like-minded people
A need to provide something to occupy themselves in retirement ;)
A need to generate a positive cashflow as income


On the other side of the coin, from the perspective of 'participants' the issue lies squarely in the area of how enjoyable it is to read and add to the posts in the forum, which tends to be dependent on the following factors (in no particular order):


The level to which one is made to feel welcome on joining
The match of posted topics to personal areas of interest
The level of 'fun' in the dialogues (Humour and 'not too serious')
The absence of aggression directed at individuals and not the subject
The level of activity on the forum (Is it enough to spark interest/involvement)
The diversity of viewpoints with healthy, constructive dialogue


To reduce this to a couple of buzzwords, participants look to a forum to provide:


Relevance
Tolerance


If 'management' can steer and guide the forum to ensure that it complies with these two buzzwords, then the likelihood that the forum will survive and grow is high.

When either of these drop below a threshold, a forum is likely to start losing active participation. If both factors are eroded, the forum will probably shrink to being a place frequented by vitriol-throwers (usually the last to leave).

So, I ticked 4 but battled to identify #5 so wimped out and chose the 'not listed' option... :scratch:

My $0.02 worth...

Dave

Joe
16-02-2010, 07:56
What he said.

It's worrying to see 'conversion to the cause' listed as a possible measure of success, even if it was meant tongue-in-cheek.

The Grand Wazoo
16-02-2010, 08:54
Well Joe (and Beelzebub's lug'oles),
Please bear in mind that when I posted the OP, it was addressed at 'the suits' rather than us rabble, & that the premise of the thread became changed after Rob & I discussed it.

Joe, your cynicism (& there's nothing wrong with a healthy dose of that) about the motives behind the item about conversion to the cause might be misplaced, but that depends on what your view of what 'the cause' might be or what you think might be the particular crusade those in the management of the site might be on.

I had in mind that The AoS might in some small way be helping some people find their way through the potentially expensive minefield of achieving good sounding music in the home, and even alerting some people that there is more than the iPod out there.

You may feel 'the suits' have a different agenda & I understand that certain members of other fora may also hold that view. Whatever is the case I feel that the inclusion of that item is justified.

Whichever way you look at it, we're all here for one 'cause' or another.

Stratmangler
16-02-2010, 10:33
My initial thought on the membership number reaching 2000 is "so what ?".

So as not to get carried away with the numbers, it needs to be tempered with a at least a couple of questions.

1 - How many members have been active have been active here in the last 3 months ?

2 - Does this number (2000) include persons banned from having further say here (and there are quite a lot of them) ?


I had in mind that The AoS might in some small way be helping some people find their way through the potentially expensive minefield of achieving good sounding music in the home, and even alerting some people that there is more than the iPod out there.

I agree with the sentiment here Chris (TGW), however most participants here are long time converts to decent quality music reproduction.

Chris:)

Joe
16-02-2010, 10:42
Are there any forums dedicated to promoting poor quality musical reproduction?

Stratmangler
16-02-2010, 11:08
Are there any forums dedicated to promoting poor quality musical reproduction?

Very good question, Joe. :D

Chris:)

The Grand Wazoo
16-02-2010, 11:17
My initial thought on the membership number reaching 2000 is "so what ?".

So as not to get carried away with the numbers, it needs to be tempered with a at least a couple of questions.

1 - How many members have been active have been active here in the last 3 months ?

2 - Does this number (2000) include persons banned from having further say here (and there are quite a lot of them)?
I completely agree with you that the raw statistic of the number of people who have filled out the registration form is close to meaningless – indeed there are some individuals, are there not, who've joined more than once! I think, like you, most people's idea of the measure of success with regard to members would be the number of active members.
But, (and this has only just occurred to me) how about looking at it this way:
It's true that a lot of people must register only to find the answer to a single specific question and then disappear, but even that might be considered to be a success, because the site and it's members have provided a service to someone in need.

Re. Converts

I agree with the sentiment here Chris (TGW), however most participants here are long time converts to decent quality music reproduction.
Agreed, but don't we all hope that we might help wean folks brought up on ropey old 'stereos' onto something half decent? Or that we can give someone like 'Wobbly Dave' (DaveK/C/Dave&Sue) another halleluiah moment like when he discovered the magic of stereo & realised just what was possible? - Now he may already have invested some cash in some half decent components but that was a moment when we collectively converted someone to 'the cause'.

Whatever subsequently transpired with Dave, for me moments like that are the absolute pinnacle of what The AoS should aspire to.

The Grand Wazoo
16-02-2010, 12:30
Are there any forums dedicated to promoting poor quality musical reproduction?

No, but there are plenty of people out there who don't know what is possible & who think poor quality musical reproduction is good quality, or that it's all they need or can afford.

DevillEars
16-02-2010, 16:01
At the risk of causing some dissension, let me comment on the poll options...

One of the most difficult tasks in creating a meaningful poll lies in the structuring and wording of the options in poll. To do this right, there are a few guidelines that help:


Define the objective of the poll (note the use of singular - limit the number of objectives to one per poll)
Define the perspective of the objective (in other words 'whose standpoint')
Review each poll option against the objective and perspective to ensure alignment and replace any that don't fit.


Lets now examine this poll's option set:




Number of Members
No. of Posts
The ratio of number of members to the number of posts (ie: is the bulk of the traffic caused by a low number of highly active members or not?)
Quality of posts (Purely subjective but everyone will have their own view on this)
Returning visitors - members who stay for more than x no. of visits/weeks/months
Search engine results
Advertising revenue
Variety of content
Amount of advice given by you personally
Increase in your personal knowledge
Conversion to 'the cause' – whatever that might be (if indeed one exists in your mind)
Low number of management interventions - bans / warnings / post removals or edits etc
Something I haven't considered – if so, what might that be?




How clearly stated (explicitly or implicitly) is the objective of the poll?
Is the perspective from which the results are to be viewed clear?
Does the total number of members mean anything if only a few are active?
Does the total number of posts mean anything if only few are worth reading?
Does the total number of returning visitors mean anything or is the proportion of 'active visitors' have more relevance?
What is the relevance of search engine results to members?
Advertising revenue is relevant to 'management' but not to 'visitors'


That's probably enough to illustrate a point:


The objective is not clear
The poll options show a mix of 'standpoints' (management and visitors)
Some poll options are redundant


To The Grand Wazoo:

Please don't read this as destructive criticism - that is not what is intended.
The concept of getting feedback on how to improve things is always a good idea (hence this post...) :)

Multiple objectives and mixed standpoints do, however, tend to confuse the basis for selection in the poll, thereby impacting its usefullness.

And now I think I'll shut up before I get clobbered! ;)

Dave

Steve Toy
16-02-2010, 17:27
Dave I think there is greater convergence between members' interests and those of 'management' than perhaps you believe, especially as we are not looking to run the forum for profit just simply recover some of the costs.

The Grand Wazoo
16-02-2010, 23:32
Dave,
You should always consider yourself safe from a clobbering from me.
While tempered with what Steve says above, I mostly agree with what you say.
If I were devising this as a poll from scratch it would be different. However, I'm not. The original points were intended for the management team & not the general population.

The thing was shoehorned into a poll for the consumption of everyone in order to provide some element of fun while giving the management some feedback from us rabble.

I'd still like the manangement to answer individually as Marco did, because my question still stands. And as I can be a brutal sod, I'd not want them to have the opportunity to hide behind an anonymous poll(!)

They know me well enough to understand that I don't have any ulterior motive or malicious intent.


(See I never once reached for a baseball bat!)

Alex_UK
17-02-2010, 00:01
I'd still like the manangement to answer individually as Marco did, because my question still stands. And as I can be a brutal sod, I'd not want them to have the opportunity to hide behind an anonymous poll(!)

ooohhhh you are awful, but I like you! ;)

The Grand Wazoo
17-02-2010, 00:06
ooohhhh you are awful, but I like you! ;)

Hehehehe..............

97aB71F-430

Marco
17-02-2010, 00:27
Hi Chris,


I'd still like the manangement to answer individually as Marco did, because my question still stands. And as I can be a brutal sod, I'd not want them to have the opportunity to hide behind an anonymous poll(!)


Quite right, matey, so my fellow admin and mods, let's be 'avin ya! :eyebrows: ;)

Marco.

Alex_UK
17-02-2010, 00:59
Hehehehe..............

97aB71F-430

At least I didn't get it wrong again, Dad! ;) Or get recruited... :stalks:

AQ8HjDRrHt0

MartinT
17-02-2010, 10:13
For the 'something not in this list' I would cite the continued focus on the love of music coupled with equipment fanology and I think this is largely to do with the lightness of touch of the moderation. I stick to visiting AoS daily because it's fun, it fulfils my need to learn something every day and it allows me to give back something in the form of knowledge to others. Overall, the focus is spot-on.

Filterlab
17-02-2010, 10:23
Quite right, matey, so my fellow admin and mods, let's be 'avin ya! :eyebrows: ;)

Marco.
I'll be on to it shortly. :)

Beechwoods
17-02-2010, 19:22
Looking at it from a 'macro' level - rather than what an individual member might consider to be sucess as far as the forum is concerned, my top picks were, in priority order first to last...:


A friendly environment
Quality of posts
Low number of management interventions
Number of members
Number of posts


If I were responding as 'a member', then I think that increase in personal knowledge would have sneaked into the Top 5. I was also torn in terms of number of posts versus ratio of number of members to the number of posts - for obvious reasons as your parenthesis suggests, but in the end I figured the ratio of active posters on here is such that it's not tending towards being exclusive - in fact we embrace and encourage new posters to get stuck in, and they do...

So that's me!

Spectral Morn
17-02-2010, 19:51
Number of members

Number of posts

Ratio of number of members to the number of posts

Quality of posts (See variety of content)

Number of returning visitors (for this I would have included members too(of course we want visitors, but we want them to join and contribute and not just lurk. In my ideal version of AoS, all members would be regular visitors and contributors. Sadly many join, post a bit and vanish(don't always know why), some come and suck us dry of info, contribute nothing (Must say I am very sad about that....sometime lots of trouble too) and then vanish. I guess I wish all who join would stick around, and enjoy AoS. Of course that's not the real or AoS world )

Search engine results

Advertising revenue

Variety of content (I want AoS content to be broad and have real depth, and for the most part it does.)

Amount of advice given by you personally

Increase in your personal knowledge (Its all about learning on the journey of audio life imho)

Conversion to 'the cause'

Low number of management interventions

Something not on this list (please post your thoughts)

A friendly environment (Self explanatory.)



That's my votes.


Regards D S D L

Barry
17-02-2010, 23:27
Neil, your votes were exactly the same as mine!

It's that special AoS form of Jungian synchronicity at work again. :eyebrows:

Regards

Spectral Morn
18-02-2010, 11:22
Neil, your votes were exactly the same as mine!

It's that special AoS form of Jungian synchronicity at work again. :eyebrows:

Regards

I might put it as, great minds thinking alike Barry ;):):lol::lol::lol:


Regards D S D L

Filterlab
18-02-2010, 12:00
Well, being an administrator I voted slightly differently to the current top votes, what is important to the running of the site from an admin point of view differs from a user's perspective of course.

My votes are as thus (in no particular order):

Quality of posts
Number of returning visitors
Search engine results
Low number of management interventions
Ratio of number of members to the number of posts

The Grand Wazoo
10-04-2010, 00:40
I've not checked by this for a while & I see that no-one else has either since I was last here!

30 responses & pretty much what I though would be the results. But there have been a lot of new members over the last few weeks- it would be great if they were chalking up their thoughts here too.

The Grand Wazoo
02-05-2010, 11:16
I was re-reading this thread again today & pondering on Barry's statistical gymnastics as well as other peoples comments about 'active' members.

For example:

QUOTE: Stratmangler -
My initial thought on the membership number reaching 2000 is "so what ?".

So as not to get carried away with the numbers, it needs to be tempered with a at least a couple of questions.

1 - How many members have been active have been active here in the last 3 months ?

2 - Does this number (2000) include persons banned from having further say here (and there are quite a lot of them) ?


So I had a bit of a poke round in the list of members & found something that rather surprised me.
At the moment, there are 2288 registered members, but 1301 of them have never made a single contribution! This kind of makes Chris' comments above rather relevant, I think. This makes the number of people who have ever been active, only 987, and those who are currently active would be a lot lower, of course. However, I don't think any of us would see this as a Measure of Failure

Beechwoods
02-05-2010, 13:45
889 members have been active in the last 3 months.
389 members have posted in the last 3 months.
1010 members have posted at least once.
13 users have been banned with 3+ posts (this number ignores spammers who generally get the boot after 2 or fewer posts).

The Grand Wazoo
02-05-2010, 15:19
Aaah! You get to see the juicy stuff!
One more number: 30 members have voted in the poll above.

goraman
02-05-2010, 17:15
One thing that might give ths forum a shot in the arm is the ability for each member to contribute a little money through pay pal ect...
In that as contributeing members we can make some improvements all can enjoy.
Mabey a contribute button at the top.

As a former member of a larger site from which I am proud to have been banned for life.
The moderators had no sence of humor and something like the 3 words daily thread would have been locked out after the first post.I was always in troubble for makeing jokes about my nemisus (cats).My last infraction was my post to a thread called crap this thread. It was a youtube link to a guy trapped in an elevator with explosive diareia.

I like that people here can rib each other a little like family and there are rarely any hard feelings,as it's all just in good fun.

I would like the AOS to grow into a world wide forum with it's roots in audio and music but it's charm is in the sub forums like abstract chat. And the open fun way people get to know one another.I feel this forum is going to out grow any single topic due to the light handed freindly moderation. It makes this a really fun place to exchange thoughts,Ideas a little freindly banter,Hell! we even have a jokes and funnys thread!

The Success of this forum will not need speculation, It will continue to grow in all areas till it's success becomes self evedant.
I belive we are headed down the right road and as we move forward others will hitch up for the ride.

Beechwoods
02-05-2010, 18:02
My last infraction was my post to a thread called crap this thread. It was a youtube link to a guy trapped in an elevator with explosive diareia.

:lol: That has got to be the definition of toilet humour! Thanks Jeff. And thanks for your comments about the forum; we're pretty young by most measures and still have a lot of growing to do. Money isn't a problem at the moment - the Google Ads cover costs though a few others have also suggested the donation idea and we will bear it in mind for the future...

Rare Bird
02-05-2010, 18:26
One thing that might give ths forum a shot in the arm is the ability for each member to contribute a little money through pay pal ect...


:lolsign: Doubt that will happen

Marco
02-05-2010, 18:29
Chaps,

Here's another statistic: 36 dafties are currently lying in limbo 'awaiting moderation', having been sussed as trolls/spammers, and therefore have not been authorised by me to contribute ;)

Nick's stats are rather telling and show that we're doing ok!

Jeff,

Superb post. What you've written is *precisely* the feeling we try to engender amongst our members, so it's satisfying that you've 'got' exactly what we set out to create - top man! :cool:

Marco.

Marco
02-05-2010, 19:16
:lolsign: Doubt that will happen

S'ok, we're investing the money you earn from sellin' yer bod around Rotherham every weekend to sex-starved OAPs! :lol:

Marco.