[HN Gopher] Stop measuring community engagement ___________________________________________________________________ Stop measuring community engagement Author : rosiesherry Score : 225 points Date : 2022-09-08 13:13 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (rosie.land) (TXT) w3m dump (rosie.land) | felipelalli wrote: | But... How? It's missing how to do it (measure value) in the | article. | mhall119 wrote: | I've started writing those answers out as separate blog posts: | | Measuring Connections: | https://www.savannahhq.com/2022/09/06/measuring-your-communi... | | Measuring Support: | https://www.savannahhq.com/2022/09/08/measuring-your-communi... | slackerIII wrote: | Early on in a community, there often aren't enough data points to | cover other possible metrics. With that in mind, starting | somewhere is better than not starting at all -- measuring | engagement is a useful way to begin understanding what's | resonating in your community. As you continue building your | community, there are many different angles that you should use to | evaluate its health. | | Measuring engagement then becomes one piece of data that's | valuable, but shouldn't be the only piece. When engagement data | is combined with qualitative community surveys, enthusiasm from | members to contribute to a community, clear and timely | responsiveness to community needs, membership growth over time | and geographies, depth of member interactions (whether across | community channels or within specific channels), what's topically | important to members and why, and overall sentiment and change in | sentiment over time - that's when community builders can begin to | better understand the health of their communities and their | impact on their business. | | Engagement is an important piece, but just one of the pieces, | that helps paint the full picture. | | Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of Common Room [1] and a we've | invested a lot of energy in solving for this exact problem. | You're welcome to check out the product (it's free to sign up) | and would love to hear of ideas or feedback. | | 1: https://www.commonroom.io/ | dfabulich wrote: | This article completely undermines itself by arguing in the | conclusion ("Measure what you value") that we can and should | measure "meaningful relationships" instead. | | > _They're not as easy to measure as engagement, sure, but they | can be measured._ | | I'm afraid that a citation is sorely needed here. There are no | real measurements for "meaningful relationships." | | In fact, the only proxy metric we have for "meaningful | relationships" is engagement! | | And, yes, engagement is not a very good proxy metric for | meaningful relationships, but since there's no alternative, it's | all we've got, so this article is pointless. | nmilo wrote: | I don't get it. What is a "community manager"? Is it someone that | runs a company's social media page? And do they think that people | care about their brand so much that they would join a community | of people whose only common trait is liking the same brand? And | in the first place, how do you even build a "community" manually | and artificially? It's almost a bastardization of the word, as if | a community is not a set of people with similar goals but instead | yet another way to convert people's time and desire for social | interaction into profit. | | The article implies that community building should be some kind | of altruistic purpose, where your only goal is to maximize the | amount of "meaningful relationships" created? But building an | artificial community in the first place can never be altruistic | because the end goal of it all is to guide people to your product | or conference or whatever. If you were an actual altruistic | community builder, you would be telling people to get off the | Internet and go make "meaningful relationships" with people in | real life. | [deleted] | mhall119 wrote: | > I don't get it. What is a "community manager"? Is it someone | that runs a company's social media page? | | No, that's a social media manager, completely different role. | | > And do they think that people care about their brand so much | that they would join a community of people whose only common | trait is liking the same brand? | | Yes! It happens all the time. Most of the biggest brands have a | community of people who share that common trait. | | > And in the first place, how do you even build a "community" | manually and artificially? | | Again yes, just like you build a garden. The gardener doesn't | make the plants grow, but they do make sure they have the right | environment and resources to grow in. | | > The article implies that community building should be some | kind of altruistic purpose, where your only goal is to maximize | the amount of "meaningful relationships" created? | | That's not altruism. Those meaningful relationships help the | company/project the community was built around. They provide | feedback, help improve processes, make connections outside the | company/project, provide support to other users, there are too | many things that communities do to list them all here. | JohnFen wrote: | > That's not altruism. Those meaningful relationships help | the company/project the community was built around. | | Which brings up another aspect of this whole issue -- we're | talking about companies figuring out how to exploit the human | need for community in order to increase profits. The | companies themselves are not encouraging real community, | they're farming people. Companies are not people, do not have | the best interests of people in mind, but pretend like they | are. | | It's very distasteful at the least. | mhall119 wrote: | That's like saying grocery stores are exploiting the human | need for food. | | A healthy community benefits the people in it as much or | more than the company behind it. As you identified, humans | have a need to connect with other humans. And often they | want to connect around a product, service or hobby that | they share with other humans. | | It should also come as no surprise here on Hacker News that | humans also really like to tell companies what they think | about their product, and how to make it better. They also | like the appreciation they receive from helping others use | the product better. | | A company-backed community serves a need that the members | of that community have. Nobody is being forced into it or | exploited. We're giving each other a mutual benefit that, | as long as it remains mutually beneficial, we are happy to | keep investing in. | JohnFen wrote: | > That's like saying grocery stores are exploiting the | human need for food. | | No, because a grocery store's purpose is to sell a | product. That product happens to be food. That's very, | very different from a company leveraging human emotional | need in order to sell something else entirely. | | > A healthy community benefits the people in it as much | or more than the company behind it. | | I would argue that a healthy community doesn't have a | company behind it -- even if the community is centered | around a particular company's products. | | > A company-backed community serves a need that the | members of that community have. Nobody is being forced | into it or exploited. | | I think we have a fundamental disagreement here. And | that's OK. | | A company-backed community serves the company. The proof | of that is what happens when the company-backed community | starts becoming too critical of the company -- then the | truth of the relationship rapidly becomes very clear. | alexb_ wrote: | >Now imagine if this played out the other way around. Imagine | that the monsters originally focused on maximizing energy by | making children laugh as much as possible. Then one day, in a | horrible twist, someone discovers that a child's scream was a | much easier and more powerful way of meeting their goals. Their | company, which built a platform that gave them instant access to | children around the world, suddenly realizes that they could | reach their goals by spreading fear rather than joy. | | Then they would instantly start using screams? Nobody making | business decisions in social media companies will prioritize | "user happiness" over increased production of their main product | (your attention) for their customers (advertisers). | egypturnash wrote: | Congratulation, you grasped the intent of that analogy! | alexb_ wrote: | Maybe I'm reading the intent wrong, but no social media | company will ever take this suggestion. This line in | particular: | | >Let's bring this back to community building. We still want | our members to be happy, right? | | If it doesn't make them more money... no they don't! | mhall119 wrote: | That's why it also says "Community isn't social media." | | No social media company is going to do this, you are | correct. But community managers and community-led companies | absolutely should. | catherd wrote: | Some will and some won't. In the absence of rules that penalize | that type of behavior, usually the ones that will end up | winning. It has nothing to do with morals, those just seem to | be the rules of the game as we currently play it. | DoreenMichele wrote: | _Even though it's the energy they're after, not the screams, it's | the screaming that was their primary metric, and everything about | their company was organized around increasing that._ | | Missed opportunity to bring it full circle back to this. | | Otherwise, not bad. | pdntspa wrote: | Hot take: stop building communities around everything. | | People are highly tribalist and banding together like that | produces a lot of ugly outcomes. Communities form and likely | won't go away, particularly the more people internalize them | emotionally and integrate them into their identity. | | It is exhausting to see a community for literally everything, | even the smallest products. | | Perhaps we should let products simply exist. | neilk wrote: | You're raising an interesting point, but you're coming close to | saying that communities are bad, and in my experience they | don't have to be. Even ones based around a product. | | Near where I used to live in the Valley, there was a real-world | club for enthusiasts of a particular weird antique car. Not | toxic, just eccentric. They just liked getting together and | drinking in a nearby pub and showing off how they'd restored | this or that aspect of the car. | | I think our goals should be to replicate that kind of success. | | I think the other posters in this thread have it right, that | the reason why we usually can't is because our metrics are all | about selling audiences to advertisers. | BrianOnHN wrote: | The other day I was think, it's actually the platforms where | most of these communities that benefit _directly_ from their | existence. | | And we know those platforms are tools for manipulation. | | How much of the desire for these communities might be | manufactured in the first place? | pdntspa wrote: | That's the problem... so much of both the communities and | desire itself are manufactured. When they grow organically... | cool, for the most part. But the minute money becomes a focus | things go to hell. | wsb_mod2 wrote: | The profit motive is being blamed here for optimizing for | engagement. | | But how do you assess progress when you remove all desire to | monetize? | | I run r/WallStreetBets and "quality" is an extremely nebulous | term. | | I look for things like "novelty", "thought-provoking / well | reasoned commentary", "original content", "authenticity", "self- | awareness" or "primary research". But these are human assessed | metrics. | | Some more easily measurable metrics might include, "length of | submissions", or "number of outbound links excluding blacklisted | domains". Or even "number of tickers or quality-correlated | keywords mentioned". | | All these metrics have very clear downsides, and if generally | well-known, become useless. Interestingly, a score too high can | also result in something being unlikely to be authentic. | | Another challenge is your relationship with users. Surprisingly, | moderators are not innately adversarial to users, they can also | promote content through other channels (discord, twitter) or | sticky threads for a viewership boost. | | So, even without a profit motive, what do you do? | empathy_m wrote: | Historically, the immortals on MUDs used to optimize for thing | like "fun" and "clout" - how much do you enjoy interacting with | the players and being seen as the person in charge of their | game? How much do you enjoy telling people you volunteer your | time to work on it? | | If WSB members were doing bad stuff like, making mean jokes | about the leadership of companies Ryan Cohen divests from in; | or coordinating real-life harassment of family members of | employees of the Depository Trust Company or something; you'd | probably want to put a stop to that and focus them somewhere | else. Because it wouldn't be fun. | | If Fox News interviewed you and you sounded silly and all the | community members got mad at you, you'd probably also quit the | volunteer job. | | But as long as you make choices that make the community a fun | and engaging place to hang out and feel like you're part of a | big secret treasure hunt, that seems awesome, and you would | probably want to make choices that maximize that. | | TBH most MUDs were not data-driven and kinda govern by feeling | -- they'd sort of add steering they thought was interesting and | keep it in place unless there's a backlash. The tedious | administrative stuff (bans, moderation, player requests for | item reimbursement) would always have a backlog and you'd | recruit junior imms to help out and they would feel like they | were part of the fun too. | JAA1337 wrote: | Just want to give you a shout out for using the acronym MUD. | I havnt seen it used in like 25 years :). Thank you! | smeyer wrote: | What does it stand for? | solardev wrote: | Multi user dungeon, basically like early MMORPGs, usually | text based. MMORPG are massively multiplayer online role- | playing games, like World of Warcraft. | yoyohello13 wrote: | Multi-user Dungeon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD | jrochkind1 wrote: | > But these are human assessed metrics. | | OK, and? I could guess what the problem with this is, but let's | spell it out... maybe that they are subjective so different | assessors can disagree... and this is a problem why? | | What if there are some cases where it's actually important to | use human-assessed metrics as one component, or even as the | entire thing, cases where no appropriate 'objective' metrics | are available? (In scare quotes, because these quantitative | metrics are seldom _quite_ as 'objective' or independent from | human judgement as assumed. There is usually human judgement | involved in how the metrics are defined and measured, where | different people might define and measure a metric different | ways resulting in different numbers...) | zinglersen wrote: | There are definitely some cases where it's important to use | human-assessed metrics, like cooking a meal. | | But if you are the size of Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc. | it is too risky (and expensive) to let individuals define | what success looks like - you need something measurable that | you can spread to multiple projects or even across the | complete company culture. | | I fully agree with your point that metrics are typically not | objective, like any data once it's used to communicate | something. | | So the question should be what metric(s), if not engagement | in itself, should we measure for to create a healthy online | community? | | I wonder if it's less about metrics and more about | principles; how does HN keep the level of quality so high? Is | it because we share an interest? Because of the quality | control? The UI/UX of the site? Something else? | jrochkind1 wrote: | > how does HN keep the level of quality so high? Is it | because we share an interest? Because of the quality | control? | | My guess is that dang's moderation is a large part of it, | and I think dang moderates (creates moderation policy and | executes it) based on things that are "human-assessed" and | not quantifiable.... | | > But if you are the size of Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, | etc. it is too risky (and expensive) to let individuals | define what success looks like | | You're _probably_ right, but I think it 's worth | challenging this conventional wisdom. (Not necessarily | here, we're not going to work it out, but still, I'll ask | some rhetorical questions) Why is it too dangerous? Even if | you have quantitative metrics, are you _sure_ this isn't | still "letting individuals define what success looks like", | since individuals decided how the metrics were defined and | measured? So then, what's the difference? Why, | specifically, is it too "dangerous" to have non- | quantitative metrics defining what success looks like? | Danger of... what? I would say facebook as it is, is | actually _incredibly dangerous_ to, like, human society. | So... what kind of danger are we talking about? Danger to | facebook 's profits instead? Or what? | | > So the question should be what metric(s), if not | engagement in itself, should we measure for to create a | healthy online community? | | Sure. I don't know! I think that's the question the OP is | meaning to ask too, if not completely answer. The OP | suggests: | | > At the start of this, I said that people join your | community for support, connection, opportunities to give | back, and meaningful relationships. Those are the things | they value, and those are the things you should value. And | if you value them, you should measure them. | | > They're not as easy to measure as engagement, sure, but | they can be measured. The best part is that maximizing | these metrics is always going to be good for your | community. | | My point is that i'm not certain this should be short- | circuited with "Well of _course_ whatever metrics these | are, they need to be quantitative and have the appareance | of "objectivity". | bombcar wrote: | > I wonder if it's less about metrics and more about | principles; how does HN keep the level of quality so high? | Is it because we share an interest? Because of the quality | control? The UI/UX of the site? Something else? | | HN is successful because it can be moderated by one dang. | Maybe a bonus helper can appear. | | But once you get so big that your dang can't do it all | anymore, it will eventually fall apart. | marginalia_nu wrote: | Why does it need to be measurable? | runnerup wrote: | Measuring community engagement makes sense when your primary | mission / core goal is to build a strong community. When I was | building a large online third-party Discord community for a | university during COVID, I was very glad that Discord exposed a | lot of metrics for admins/mods to track. It's obviously | important to not "game" the metrics by falling into short-term | gain traps like over-pinging users, or encouraging high-volume | but low-quality participation, etc. But as long as you are | laser-focused on "providing real value" to members, then long- | term or multi-cyclical trends of community engagement is a | useful benchmark. | | But it doesn't make sense to focus on these metrics if your | mission is to create a great product -- focusing on community | engagement should be just one small aspect of your overall | marketing strategy, which should be a relatively constrained | part of your overall budget (both in labor and money). And even | within marketing, there are many other important metrics | besides community engagement. | | Soylent had great community engagement but not enough focus on | scientifically-guided product engineering. Tons of businesses | that get this wrong. | | Generally I interpret overcommitment to community engagement as | a signal that the founders are overly narcissistic and usually | apply a discount the expected future value/evolution of their | product. | JohnFen wrote: | > Measuring community engagement makes sense when your | primary mission / core goal is to build a strong community. | | But measuring community engagement doesn't tell you anything | about the nature of the community. Only that it "engages" | people. If your goal is to build a strong community, isn't it | more important that the community be a good one? | MartinCron wrote: | Lynch mobs are strong and engaged communities, after all. | runnerup wrote: | The most important things (quality of community) are not | generally quantifiable and proper "measurement" depends on | the leadership ability of those who choose to foster the | community. | wussboy wrote: | Strong does not mean good. Those are two separate goals. | The most important developments of the next 100 years will | be in determining ways to make strong and good communities | that scale. | tstrimple wrote: | > All these metrics have very clear downsides, and if generally | well-known, become useless. | | Good ol' Goodhart. | | "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good | measure." | AndrewKemendo wrote: | So, even without a profit motive, what do you do? | | I think there are two options here: | | 1. If the community that you have does a "foom" and grows like | crazy BEFORE it has a set of values, then you're at the whims | of the mob and where certain vocal and rallying members decide | they want to take the community. Usually this ends in | internecine conflict and the inevitable "break offs" into other | smaller groups | | 2. If your community starts with a value vector then you | structure, nudge and contain the community to a MDP (Markov | Decision Process) with the value vector as the reward, for | which the moderators are the critics and the community members | are the actors in the actor-critic model. | | It seems like the vast majority of organizations/movements | etc... fall into category 1 | | For me the learning here is, if you are a leader in your | community it's never too early to nail down what the core value | and benefit of your community is and stay obsessed with just | that. | hammock wrote: | Hard to scale, but farming out content samples to a panel of | your target market for them to rate on the attributes of | "novelty", "thought-provoking / well reasoned commentary", | "original content", "authenticity", "self-awareness" or | "primary research" might be an approach | groby_b wrote: | > So, even without a profit motive, what do you do? | | You acknowledge that human interaction and metrics are not | compatible, and apply actual judgment. You're a human being, | not a paperclip optimizer. | | Your goal isn't to stripmine anything of value out of a | community, but to provide a vibrant place people like coming | to. So, for feedback, you ask them what they like, what they | miss, what they wish for. | | Qualitative assessments instead of quantitative ones. Lean into | the power of the humanities. | JohnFen wrote: | > But how do you assess progress when you remove all desire to | monetize? | | If you ignore the profit motive, presumably you are doing it | for other reasons. You assess "progress" based on those | motives. Or perhaps you don't assess "progress" at all, beyond | "I like what I'm doing here and where this is going". | | I've run numerous internet services over the years without the | goal of them generating an income at all. I've run MUDs, | websites, discussion groups, etc. I didn't objectively measure | anything about any of them, because my goals were not ones that | could be objectively measured. And honestly, even if there were | some metric that could be used, I would have avoided using it | because then it becomes about maximizing the metric rather than | the purpose I started the activity in the first place. If I was | happy with how they were going, that counted as "success" to | me. | | > So, even without a profit motive, what do you do? | | I honestly don't understand this question. Without a profit | motive, you do it for other motives. If you have no other | motives, then why are you doing it at all? | scythe wrote: | >I didn't objectively measure anything about any of them, | because my goals were not ones that could be objectively | measured. And honestly, even if there were some metric that | could be used, I would have avoided using it because then it | becomes about maximizing the metric rather than the purpose I | started the activity in the first place. | | There _is_ a middle ground here. Choose a basket of metrics, | impose the natural partial ordering, and intuit your way | through pushing up one or the other. If this sounds crazy, | keep in mind it 's roughly how the Fed (inflation + | unemployment) runs the monetary system. | the_snooze wrote: | >because my goals were not ones that could be objectively | measured | | This is something that technically-minded people can take to | heart more. There's a lot of value in things that can't be | objectively measured. For instance, I'm in a bunch of group | chats with various friends. I don't always interact with it | (i.e., my "engagement" is fairly low), but I derive a lot of | enjoyment from those. Why? Because I like those people. Can I | put a number on how much I like those people? No, because I'm | not a socially stunted robot. | wolfofcrypto wrote: | Mark Cuban recently launched a community at https://biztoc.com | as sort of a WSB for business people. I wonder if that | will/could work without an umbrella topic. | swyx wrote: | when community engagement is measured badly, its because | community is being treated as a product like any app where MAU | and time on site is being prioritized, yet companies dont | dedicate even 1/100 of the resources to community "product" that | they do their software product (perhaps because it is not viewed | as a real job, as perceived in other comments here) | | that said, you do need a way to justify to others why you are a | better community manager than the next, and whether you are | doinng a good job. that part went unanswered here and the article | would be better if it had a constructive replacement instead of | just arguing to be unaccountable to the rest of the org. | mikkergp wrote: | I think people enjoy this argument because it's counter | intuitive, but I also think it's counter intuitive because it's | wrong. If you build a playground and everyone avoids the teeter- | totter, there's probably something wrong with the teeter totter. | Oddly the monsters inc example seems counter to his point since | it seems like they were measuring something to specific and the | proper solution would be to something more general (like | engagement) instead. It seems to me like trying to start with | something other than engagement would be premature optimization. | | Of course engagement is insufficient and of course if you want to | know something else, measure that other thing, and of course you | should interrogate your metrics, and maybe it's just this thing | that bugs me about modern writing where you have to take this | ridiculous extreme stance to get eyeballs but yeah. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | That's a great post, and I plan to share it with others. | | Sadly, it's pretty difficult to measure for some of the "values" | that my communities run on, but "engagement" isn't even on the | map. | | I suspect that "engagement" does, indeed, provide real monetary | value for advertising-based sites, as clicks == money. Since that | isn't a factor in my communities, we don't worry about that. In | fact, we try to minimize "engagement." | jpster wrote: | This sounds great, but I see a challenge. The author recommends | measuring e.g. user happiness instead of engagement. How to | measure user happiness? IMO, some type of survey could be used. | But the "best" metrics are based on observable behavior. Not what | users self-report, because they may not know how they actually | feel about the experience. In general it's better to see what | users do rather than what they say. | ItsMonkk wrote: | You must have an expert or experts. That expert will then make | decisions, and use metrics and surveys and intuition to drive | their new world view, but it's the expert that is always at the | top of the stack. | | If you then take that model and try to use them in a new | domain, that is never going to work out. The environment adapts | to the incentives that the current system produces, and will | instantly make your pre-created model worthless[0]. The only | way to work out long-term is by having an expert stay ahead of | the pack creating what they think are systems with better | signal to the noise. | | [0]: https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13 | mhall119 wrote: | I'd recommend reading The Community Engagement Trap[0] by | Rosie Sherry (which should also be shared here on HN), she | talks about Community Discovery as the process for getting | these deeper understandings. | | [0] https://rosie.land/posts/the-community-engagement-trap/ | Bjartr wrote: | Observables are better, but self reported metrics do still have | value. It's an aggregate version of the problem devs encounter | when doing usability testing. Users will tell you what their | experience is, but it's up to you as a software designer to | distill that feedback into actual needs. Which may not at all | be what they actually ask for. Survey responses are similar in | that they don't tell you exactly what to do, but they do | contain actionable information if you have the skill to | interpret it. | tamsaraas wrote: | > Originally they were there to connect people and let them share | in each other's joy. | | No, they looking for a ways how to easily and faster to fuck. | | > They couldn't measure joy, but they could measure engagement, | and so they did. > That measurement became their goal, and they | focused on maximizing it. | | Because this is social networks profit. Ads, and more people | attached to some topic where can be shown an ads to these people. | That's why and only that's why it is works like that. Nobody | cares about principles. Only money. Power in money, a money is a | power. | | > What they didn't understand was that negative, divisive, hate- | inspiring posts get more engagement than positive, supportive, | kind posts do. | | For what do your country has intelligence and different defense | structures? Because it is very easy manipulate by people and do | wars. Extremely easy to organize that and involve a lot of people | to mass destruction events. Extremely easy. And i do not know | (the same as you too) who is behind some kind of negative behind. | | > . The algorithm didn't care whether the posts brought joy or | anger, it only cared about whether they brought engagement. | | Because this is about ads and money. More people will watch ads | more money social network will get. Easy. | | > So in order to maximize engagement, the algorithm actively | encourages and elevates posts that cause unhappiness among the | platform's users. | | You said that? Is a bots with fake votes, SEO thing is not about | manipulating data, opinions? Its easy to make fake accounts and | promote hate as a wide interested topic, while it's not. Only | social network know that. | | > They join looking for support, or connections, to give back, or | find meaningful relationships. | | No, they looking for themselves reflected in the community. | | > Measuring engagement doesn't tell you if your community is | happy, or healthy, or even accomplishing any of the things you | were hoping it would accomplish. | | Depends on a case. Some measuring engagement can prevent negative | business processes. | | > Knowing how much engagement you have doesn't tell you how much | value you're getting | | For that you have another metrics. Depends on a case. | Registration, profit, grow, etc. Final countable results. | | > Let's bring this back to community building. We still want our | members to be happy, right? | | Who the fuck am i to let people happy? Happiness is subjective | thing. I have no clue, no ability to make someone happy. The same | as you, the same as anybody else. This is very agile thing | depends on many factors and the most important wish to be happy | and objective situation. | | > So what should we value? | | Does your community member even read or know about "values" at | all? Is it some kind of cult, or what? | | ---- | | I have a well known secret. To get maximum engagement need to say | that the white color is black color. Water - is not a liquide, | and planet earth is flat. | | And then your "engagement" will go above the sky. Just always | need to split people, and say that one thing is not the thing | what you used to think, it's another thing. totally vise versa. | | Oh... Darling, exactly this you have done by saying: "stop | measuring engagement". And by this title invited to engagement a | lot of people who forced to read all of your nonsense to one more | time confirm that white is white, black is black. | burlesona wrote: | Good article, though I think it missed explicitly making the | point that the _reason_ "engagement" is the metric is because | that's what platforms _monetize._ Engagement is a euphemism for | attention, and social platforms exist to sell your to | advertisers. | | Since the article is written for "community builders," | understanding that engagement is a metric to quantify the | advertising potential of a platform should make it obvious that | people who _aren 't_ in the business of selling attention to | advertisers don't _need_ to copy social media and optimize for | engagement; instead they should target better measurements of | value creation for their community. Of course Goodhart 's law[1] | still applies. | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law | | (edited for readability) | throw10920 wrote: | > the _reason_ "engagement" is the metric is because that's | what platforms _monetize_ | | ...and the implication of _that_ is that if we change the | monetization model, then the metrics _also_ change. | | For a company selling a paid product, metrics become things | like the effectiveness of the sales funnel, how much support | the average user requires, the rating of the product on app | stores, etc - which are not ideal, but still _far_ better than | "engagement". | crazygringo wrote: | You might be surprised to discover that even for paid | products, engagement is often still the #1 metric. | | Simply because people who are engaged with a | product/app/whatever are by far the most likely to be repeat | customers -- to renew their subscription, to buy the new | version, to adopt the next product. | | Once engagement drops, future revenue dries up. A drop in | engagement is the canary in the coal mine -- it shows where | your business is going wrong months/years before it shows up | in sales stats or renewal rates. | | So actually, the metric doesn't change at all. E.g. Netflix | is obsessed with engagement even though it's subscription- | based rather than ad-based. Because guess who winds up | cancelling their subscriptions? | mhall119 wrote: | s/surprised/disappointed/ | | A user's engagement with your product is a great metric, | because what you value is users using your product. | | But for a COMMUNITY it's the wrong metric, because you | don't value negative comments in your Slack no matter how | many there are (in fact, the more there are the worse it | is). | cyborgx7 wrote: | Exactly. It took me a while to understand that this article was | written for community managers of brands, not people developing | social networks. They keep saying engagement has no value, but | to social networks and to "influencers" who both make their | money off of ads, that is exactly what has value. | hinkley wrote: | Engagement is just a more sophisticated version of 'eyeballs'. | | For community building you want successful events, you want | interesting questions to be asked, and interesting answers to | be offered. Someone could write a book on how to make | communities work. Probably several books. | mhall119 wrote: | There are several books on precisely this. | phkahler wrote: | >> Good article, though I think it missed explicitly making the | point that the reason "engagement" is the metric is because | that's what platforms monetize. | | In the case of "community" around a product, the purpose of the | community is usually to provide free support. That's not so | much monetization as it is cost savings. For that to work, | people need to be "engaged" or kept around so they are present | to field those support issues. | Theodores wrote: | You are completely right on Goodhart's Law. I know this from | experience. | | I put the customer first in the belief that 'the rain follows | the plough' and, if you put the customer first, then all else | follows. | | I see metrics as there to be cracked. If you are measuring the | right things then you can see where the problems are, fix the | problems and move on to measuring different metrics that are | more specific and focused on the remaining problem areas. For | me it is a campaign where initial reactive firefighting gives | way to calm, proactive problem solving, fixing problems before | they are of consequence. Along the way many unexpected things | are learned about the customer. | | I do all this with a focus on the customer, meanwhile my | colleagues in marketing are out for themselves. They are the | dead weight keeping progress back as they have to do things | like buy traffic and hold on to keyword optimised URLs that are | cargo cult SEO. Their reports for their micromanagers are | always measuring the same stuff, e.g. 'engagement', yet they | could be engaging customers solely for the purpose of pissing | them off for them to never come back. | | My favourite is the pop up shown as someone leaves a website | begging them to stay, or the sign up to the newsletter popup. | These could get one extra sale at the cost of pissing off a | million people but if you only measure the former then it all | seems good. | | In the capitalist world only one metric matters to the | shareholders. Once I worked for a highly successful company | that sent out sales newsletters with no measurement whatsoever | of open rates or click throughs. None of that was needed. The | problem was emptying the warehouse too quickly to have no stock | left. Customers would be waiting for our email, not ignoring | them. We had plenty of engagement with the customers as they | actually bought stuff. | | Subsequently I have worked for agencies where they spend a | fortune on some email service and they get these fancy graphs | to show the clients of these open rates the world over. Which | had wow value at the time and 'engagement' stats. But I had | come from somewhere where we had no need to measure that stuff, | we weren't looking at these charts, we were coping with a | deluge of orders and had no time for that. | bluGill wrote: | Unfortunately what is really needed here is a suggestion of | something else to measure that is better. I fight this a lot with | bad metrics (code test coverage), nobody wants to give them up | unless I can suggest a replacement to measure. | mhall119 wrote: | Here's a couple: | | Connections between people: | https://www.savannahhq.com/2022/09/06/measuring-your-communi... | | Support: https://www.savannahhq.com/2022/09/08/measuring-your- | communi... | jamesknelson wrote: | This is an issue with more than just the tech industry. It's an | issue with modern society itself. | | Take the GDP, the number that when it's first derivative goes | negative, we shout "recession" and use it as an excuse for all | manner of harmful (and sometimes beneficial) behaviors. What is | GDP? It's not a measure of wealth; it's a measure of production. | | Take the boots paradox, for example. A society making $50 boots | that need replacing after a few months, will have a higher GDP | than a society making $100 boots that last for years. And the | shitty boots society, despite spending more on boots - to | paraphrase Terry Pratchett - will still have soggy feat. | | It's a hard problem, and I can't see any obvious way to solve it. | Both in social networks, and in economics. For whatever reason, | consumption seems to be much easier to measure than wealth. | fullshark wrote: | I enjoyed the Monsters Inc reference and the turning of it on its | head central to this piece. But we've said/argued this for years | and at the end of the day engagement = ad reach = profits and | until the economics there change any for-profit social media will | gravitate towards engagement. Hell ANY media gravitates toward | engagement and outrage bait. An actual community built around | Mastodon seems possible, and there's community discussions around | private group chats but they will always remain niche and not | profitable. | | I don't get what https://savannahhq.com is and what the value add | is there but that seems to be what he's interested in, niche + | small communities. | snarf21 wrote: | Well said! Outrage sells and it is easy to keep it stoked. | Everyone is addicted to free. If we get rid of ads, how does | (even the barest bones) Twitter keep the lights on? | | I wonder if there is a cross-over between Patreon, Substack and | Twitter. This would probably work for niches but not writ | large. But at the end of the day, we need to find a way to pay | for what we value because that is how we get more of it. | Interested in new ideas in this space.... | ethbr0 wrote: | The Medium/Spotify model -- per-user constant subscription | fee, apportioned to content creators on the basis of their | views + some time-viewing / read-to-end adjustments to | discourage clickbaiting -- seems fairly decent, but really | requires a global platform to work. | | But product companies don't like it because they can't scale | revenue user-transparently by repackaging data (e.g. building | new / better ad products), and raising prices for users | sucks. | | The original sin is that the web was free, and the | consequence of that, once post-content-scarcity in a free | market system, has been continual sleight of hand to make | money from "free." | | If everyone has gotten in the habit of paying for quality | content... we'd have a very different world now. | | (And this said as a hard-charging "information wants to be | free" type. But the end commercial result nowadays is | terrible) | politician wrote: | I'd prefer not to live in the AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve | blackhole that was the Internet before "the original sin | that the web was free." Originally, it wasn't free. | | I do agree with you that it would have been better if the | payment-related features of the HTTP spec weren't just | dead-on-arrival stubs. | JohnFen wrote: | But the internet before AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve was pretty | awesome. And free (aside from connection costs -- but | that's no different than today). | marcinzm wrote: | Spotify seems to be investing a lot into ads recently. | JohnFen wrote: | > The original sin is that the web was free | | I disagree. The thing that has destroyed much of what made | the internet great is that it became ad-driven. | ethbr0 wrote: | And how could it not have become ad-driven? | | Choices have consequences. We made a choice (free), and | now we live with the consequences (ad models). | JohnFen wrote: | Well, that there was a rich and vibrant internet before | advertising existed on it seems to indicate it's entirely | possible. | | But I don't think we chose ad-supported. The ads came in | before anyone was seriously thinking about how to charge | people for things. The decision was made for us. And even | if we did pay cash money, the ads would have come anyway | if history is any indication. | | So perhaps the degradation of the internet in this way | was inevitable. Still, it's a real loss and a real shame. | kevincox wrote: | I think the problem is that while engagement may be the source | of profits that is short-term thinking. If joy based engagement | drives profits and keeps users on your site long-term it may be | worth it to take the short-term revenue boost that anger-based | engagement brings you if it slowly drives people away from your | site. | | Of course it isn't completely clear if anger-based engagement | actually drives most people away. In that case it is actually | Facebook's fiduciary duty to capitalize on it which seems to be | a failing on our society. | marcinzm wrote: | Facebook is still not shrinking in the US in terms of users. | So even if there is a long term cost it seems well beyond the | time horizon companies care about. | mhall119 wrote: | Community isn't social media. | | You don't advertise to your community. If you do you're | actively killing it. | | Community is made up of people making connections and building | relationships with other people. Savannah CRM helps you manage | those connections and relationships. | fullshark wrote: | Yes I agree, I think this is basically the point I was trying | to make distilled. | puchatek wrote: | This. And also this: | | > We still want our members to be happy, right? | | ... _we_ might want that, but do the people running the | platforms? | photochemsyn wrote: | 'Stop making decisions based on engagment measurement' might be a | better approach, if what you care about is maintaining the | quality of your online social group. Some social media sites have | tons of high-quality original content submitted by people with | expertise in their domains, and some are 90% fluff. If you want | to attract people who'll make high-quality contributions, getting | rid of the fluff is the most important goal. | robust-cactus wrote: | Lately - it seems we're all caught between 2 worlds: | | 1. If you over focus on impact the quality of your product gets | torn to shreds. You've built great direction but do people really | use/like your product? | | 2. You build for engagement, people use the thing, but what | impact did it drive? | | This article is great, but it's unbalanced potentially. I think | directionally, some average in the middle is likely the way - so | why not both? And while we're add it, add in other indicators. | Success metrics that balance all of that, plus just a vibe metric | for good measure. | efitz wrote: | The article dances around a topic that is very relevant across | technology companies- toxic metrics. | | I worked for many years at a company that prides itself on being | metrics driven. To the point that they celebrated having many | significant figures after the decimal point when measuring length | of negative events in seconds. | | The good side of metrics driven culture is that having a metric | gives you a concrete goal. | | The downside is that really good metrics are often very hard. By | really good, I mean metrics that measure the desired outcome. | | It's much easier to measure, for example, how many operation X | your service performed, rather than the value the service | delivered to your business or your customers. So we assume that | each operation X contributes a uniform, positive quantum to those | outcomes and we count X's. | godelski wrote: | I don't think they dance around the topic so much as outright | state that it is bad. They mostly talk about engagement because | it is the primary metric but even state that we should not | value what we measure but measure what we value. Which it is | harder to do that, but hey, you got billions of dollars to work | with, it seems like the resources are there. | hinkley wrote: | Toxic metrics are a subset of perverse incentives. Necessary, | but not sufficient to stay out of trouble. | JohnFen wrote: | The software industry has made me very aware that being metric- | driven can be a terrible thing as easily as a good thing. | Software has been getting substantially worse over time (in my | opinion) in large part because of the use of metrics. | FalconSensei wrote: | Goodhart's law basically also. | | I've seen ppl on Twitter posting 'unpopular opinions' that | they don't even agree, just to get replies. And then admit on | the conversation that they don't agree with that. | yieldcrv wrote: | It's because investors aren't discerning either | | They chose to pay higher prices for shares, divorced from actual | revenue | | The companies, in-turn, found non revenue metrics to show quarter | over quarter | | and thousands of startups copied the model | | Just don't rely on the A/B test, be aware of it, but don't rely | on it. Put the human control back into the process. Users aren't | staying on your platform 5 seconds longer after you hid the | escape hatch because they love it, they are frustrated and lost! | The A/B test doesn't tell you why the engagement is longer, only | that it is. It takes an empathic human to say "okay, B got us | that result but not for the reason we want" | lucideer wrote: | Nicely written post but can't help noticing the elephant in the | room being tiptoed around, which really makes me question the | sincerity of the author. | | The monsters need energy to power their civilisation. Why do | social media companies measure engagement? What are they | extracting? There is not one single mention of the "p word" in | the article. | | The last two sections are delivered with such heavy doses of | naivety that this ends up just coming across as Orwellian in | tone. | | > _"We should measure what we value, not value what we measure"_ | | Who is "we"? Is "we" the shareholders? What do "they" value do | you think? | [deleted] | RicoElectrico wrote: | So please tell me, what should I optimize for when moderating a | local OpenStreetMap community. I personally feel it's crucial | people internalize that's a project with a bottom-up | organization. A "civil society", if you will. Alas, despite | 200-250 daily active mappers in Poland [1] only a fraction ever | posts on the forum, even if just to ask something. Meeting IRL is | also futile except 2-3 largest cities. We have a forum, Facebook | group and Discord. | | Whatever I'd come up with, I'd like it to be a self-healing | organism that would continue to thrive even if some important | members become inactive. And to feel it's not a Sisyphean task. | | [1] https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries&country=Poland | scoofy wrote: | I'm confused. I see OSM as a huge success. Firms like Mapbox | and Strava have an incentive to update that wiki with you. The | maps are amazing. Any local sub-community will be challenging | to organize, but maybe the metric should be making it fun for | you, and if you're having a good time others will join. | | I am also starting a wiki, a golf course wiki: | https://golfcourse.wiki | | It's still very early for me, but I see myself in this post. | It's going to be extremely slow going, as the main consumers of | the content created have no desire to contribute, but since | golf courses are mostly static, as long as i plug away, adding | a little bit all the time, the site will be a success. It costs | almost nothing to operate. Generating traffic is challenging, | and i've been trying to find more people willing to contribute, | but again, I see my product as best placed if i do exactly the | opposite of what most of the golf course info sites are doing. | Don't base my success on engagement, no aggregation, no overly- | prodding to contribute. Just one day at a time, with the | assumption that the task is endless anyway, having people share | their passion on their own time. | | If i can make that profitable at all, and it shouldn't be too | difficult as the site grows, i'll see it as a total win. | tikkun wrote: | People seemed to like the other summary I made. | | So I made a summary of this article too, using GPT-3. | | Here it is: | | The article discusses how social media platforms originally | focused on maximizing engagement, without understanding that | negative posts are more likely to be engaged with than positive | posts. As a result, these platforms have become full of toxic | people and ideas. The author argues that engagement is not a | valuable metric, and that community managers should instead focus | on metrics that are related to the things that people join | communities for, like support, connection, and relationships. | torbTurret wrote: | You preface all of your posts with, "people seemed to like..." | | No. HN does not need the spam. Save that for Reddit. | | Ironically given the topic, it's posters like you that ruin the | quality of online communities and make engagement hard to | measure. | tough wrote: | damn yeah that is good, should build a bot we can summon by | mentioning or something for the lazy: like @tldrbot | scanr wrote: | I wonder if measuring engagement and optimising for engagement | should be separated. I'm glad that there is lots of engagement on | HN but I'm also glad that HN chooses not to implement a number of | engagement optimisation features as well as downranking topics | that result in high engagement flame wars. | MoscMob wrote: | JAA1337 wrote: | Couldn't agree more. | | I believe this falls into the 'Results Oriented' mindset of | delivering value. This means figuring out your desired outcome | ahead of time, then measure it over time. In addition, overtime, | you may determine that your desired outcome has changed and you | need to measure differently. Yes, iterating is not just for | software. | | IMHO pure quantitative metrics are of little value for customer | experience. I believe metrics should be a little squishy and | subjective. The value in the subjectivity is that it spurns | conversation and actual thought instead of simple counting. | forbiddenvoid wrote: | I like the premise of the post. I think it paints a rather overly | idealistic view of social networks, who exist to make money | first, not to create value (if they could make money without | creating value, they certainly would do that). | mikejulietbravo wrote: | engagement takes many forms. If you value people connecting with | each other, measure how many messages they're sending or | connections they're making. | | Saying stop measuring community engagement is a good clickbait | headline, but it's absurd advice for community managers that even | your own article doesn't agree with. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-08 23:01 UTC)