I want to preface this discussion with an excerpt from a recent Creating Passionate Users post:
The part of this chart that I really find interesting is the inclusion of the “User Journey” — meaning the maturation of each individual user. Give that some thought…
How Do I Relate This to Our Little Neighborhood?
Honestly, recent posts haven’t been very valuable to me*. More often than not a scan down the YOUmoz posts results in 0 clicks and 0 comments left. Even the point system has failed to peak my interest in getting me to post or make comments. I’d like to attribute this to the quality of the posts themselves. *Rubbing hands together sinisterly* I really would like to attribute this to you people… but first I need empirical evidence…..
Math Usually Requires Payment in Advance
But how do I measure the quality of posts, especially when I’m trying to make a generalization across a community — suddenly the value to me recedes in importance to some greater value to all users. I suppose page views over time, or comments over time, or thumbs up vs thumbs down over time could all give me an idea of quality — but this idea would inevitably be tangled up in a whole host of other factors. I suddenly find myself making assumptions as to the intentions of other users when they contribute: trying to make it over 100 points to get that nofollow removed? Trying to link-bait? Trying to hate-bait?
This Pseudopod is the Product of Much Concentration
As hard as quality is to quantify, community-wide quality and value is daunting. Maybe it’s actually impossible to accurately measure — and maybe it’s futile. Community lives and dies by the individual user–it’s all about me, it’s like the 80’s all over again, it’s the age of trickle down value. We’re the amoeba and what part or which molecule is both indiscernible and inconsequential — at least to the individual user. The community owner, on the other hand, well…Rand can stay up late nights trying to measure that…
That’s Interesting…Now Back to Me
After wasting a few minutes of your time, I’ll return to my favorite topic — me. Looking back at the chart at the top of this post and conceding that community value on the whole is too difficult to measure for one user, I’m left with my personal dynamic in relation to the elements in which I interact. In the spectrum of a user journey, I would definitely admit that I’m somewhere nearing ‘Intermediate.’ When I first began contributing, I thought I was already there or more. I posted and commented and said “Advanced users should contribute” (patting my own back) — but knowledge is transformative, and it’s humbling…as evidenced in my little chart:
For the sake of a 5 minute chart, knowledge is represented as static, which it isn’t: knowledge becomes deprecated, forgotten, and unused.
It Isn’t the Destination, It’s the Journey…and Other Such Fortune Cookie Wisdoms
So what began as a quest for “quality” or the measuring of an external subject really lead to self reflection — or back on planet earth, a user in a community can really only understand themselves (and that’s what’s important, anyway). Especially in business related communities, value is all temporal**. Today I want information on User Experience, and SEO takes a back seat.
So in the end, there’s no blame to throw around for my dip in interest or motivation, although I so wanted a sacrificial lamb. After all of this conjecture, I’ll take a note from Creating Passionate Users, and motivate myself to contribute more! Oh wait, I already did!
* I do just want to say that the SEOmoz blog has been delivering more and more quality content. It seems as though Rand is adapting his posting style and communication method, and both the quality of the content and its communication have been improving dramatically.
** That temporal nature raises a whole host of other concerns that I won’t cover here (but SEOmoz already understands them — they pace the flow of YOUmoz entries so that users can come back and still catch-up on what’s new).
