Last monday on our weekly call, mk, thenewgreen, forwardslash, and I were talking about the current state of data you can view about yourself and others. Basically, right now, it's just those little spark graphs that are in your profiles.
TNG, like me, was mildly aware of them but it was actually quite cool to look deeper and compare posting, sharing, and commenting history with each other. They may be little, but they're packed full of information.
Here's mine - you can hover to see the amount of shares / posts per day over the past couple weeks:
You can also see the total number of shares, total number of posts, and both as a percentage of the total activity:
Some interesting discoveries:
1. mk tries to keep his oranges and teals about the same and has about 2,300 posts about 2,800 shares. I personally like sharing more than I post.
2. thenewgreen also likes his blues bigger. While TNG's ratio and my ratio is about the same, he beats my total number of shares by 7,269! He's also been on the site for 384 more days than I have...but that still means he's been sharing an average of 18.92 more posts/day than I have. (I might have done that math wrong? Otherwise TNG is literally insane :-P).
3. minimum_wage's orange is bigger than yours (and the teal) with a whopping 66.9% of activity being posts rather than shares.
4. Unless "you" happen to be Mindwolf, who's orange is bigger than minimum_wage's (and yours) with 97 point fucking 4% of activity being posts. This is the largest orange I've found that isn't all the way 100% (which I am ignoring because typically those with 100% are at worst spammers and at best non-commenters. LMK if you find an exception to this assumption).
So Hubski, what does your orange say about you? Is it big? Is it small? Do you think it accurately reflects the way you consciously use Hubski? Can you find any other crazy high ratios (in either direction)?
I share a lot. If I like your post, you're getting a circle-dot to the clockwise. I post a lot of personal stuff, and stuff that I don't think anyone on here has seen before. I would hate for my hubski post-list to just be a heap of stuff from /r/truetidder and similar sites.
I'd like to think I'm a pretty active poster (and the community pg seems to reflect that, esp. bearing in mind that I've been here for <100 days), but I share fully 7 times as many posts as I post. Do I just share a whole fuckin' lot? I definitely would like to contribute more, but I feel like whenever I come across worth sharing, there's about a 35% chance it's already been discussed on the site. On top of that, it definitely feels disingenuous to share something without reading (or watching, listening to, etc) the whole thing first, and combined with the fact that most of what I find worth posting is pretty long content, that reduces how much I post in a given interval. Now that those are out of the way, I can get to the really honest part: I don't post as much as I used to because so many of my posts go unnoticed. I know it's stupid and selfish, but damnit, a lot of the reason I post is in hopes that the content will be well-received. Does anyone else find themselves suffering from this crippling (i.e. negatively affecting posting habits) need to be recognized/accepted?
I followed you just to see what kind of posts you are posting. Doesn't mean the follow will still but hey might as well try out a new flavor. For what it's worth...I think we all have unshared posts. There are some things I care about - I've posted two articles about how the banking industry is FUCKING prison inmates - no one else cares about. But I'm not going to shut up in the hopes that one day one of my posts will get really popular. Because shit like that should be read.
I think this just takes some time and it depends on the type of content. I post stuff that doesn't get shared (ie: design & user experience content) simply because there aren't a ton of designers currently on Hubski. There are times where I don't share something I really enjoyed because I assume that no one is going to be interested in it. (ie: this video I'm in the process of watching on habits) Sometimes, I post it anyways and it gets shared and that surprises me. Sometimes I shoutout to users who I think will be interested in it. Sometimes I post it so I can find it later and to keep adding new content to lesser used tags. I think about what I post way more than I should but I also try to analyze the reason why it's not shared. I would try to not let it bother or discourage you. You seem have the same tendency to overthink as I do so I fully realize that comment isn't going to stop you from being bothered. Something that I used to do that I don't as much anymore is reach out to people on other websites who are interested in the same things as me. If theres a great comment on the article I like but no further discussion, I try to reply there and mention that I'm posting it to Hubski. I hope that this will slowly get new users who are insightful AND interested in the same things as I am to join Hubski. However, it's a bit of a catch 22 because what XYZ-minded person will stick around a place without XYZ content/discussions? Oh well. You may find these discussion interesting: How judicious are you about sharing? If you click the wheel to share content does it mean you endorse it? I don't post as much as I used to because so many of my posts go unnoticed.
It turns out that "I" happen to be Mindwolf. I am an active poster but only respond to comments on posts I have made. Rarely will I comment on other posts. The reason for this is time. I unfortunately have little time to devote to Hubski as I wish. I don't know if there are analytics for posting vs time but there are times where I won't post for a couple of weeks. Simply because I just can't. Yeah so that's why my orange is higher than blue. :)
My numbers are ridiculous. Yes, I am "literally insane." I dig it here, I spend a lot of time here. If I had no affiliation with the site, I'd still likely have the same numbers. It's just how I roll.
It is though! We all treat Hubski differently. For me, I almost exclusively devote time to consuming the content, commenting, and attempting to curate (via circle-dotting) things I find most important... a pretty brutal and unforgiving selection criteria. Still, I make exceptions, sometimes for humor, Hubski self-diagnostics and community discussion (such as this post, Pubski, etc.), even art. I comment about as often as I circle-dot, and value the discussion aspect of this site above all other places on the 'net. Besides, if we all focused on submitting content, we would have much higher numbers of redundant links, less discussion, and fewer "curators". As it is, Hubski seems very well balanced to me in the way its users behave. If I had more time I'd make more submissions, more comments, and would share/circle-dot more content. That seems to be a common sentiment though.My Orange is Bigger Than Yours
I just remembered something that I was going to mention a while back about the profile page - the article titles on the profile page click through to the actual shared link, whereas on feed pages, the article title clicks through to the comments. Obviously not hugely important, but it seems like they should both go to the same place for consistency's sake. mk
I'm trying to keep it half and half but all your posts are too damn interesting. I like the idea of uphubskiing(sorry) only as much as you contribute. I want to take as much care in a share as I do in a post.
I'm at 96.8% shares. Which doesn't surprise me. I use Hubski primarily as a news source. For some reason, I have much higher standards for posting too. I won't post something unless I think it's exceptionally relevant or interesting. Whereas I still view sharing as upvoting to some degree. I'll share anything I think is interesting, almost as a credit to the poster. "I also agree this is worth reading."
I like a 25% post 75% share balance. I haven't even tried to keep it at that but it's pretty much always been that way. In fact, it feels to me like I share wayy more than I post just to have a 3:1 ratio, yet I'm also one of the most active posters on the site according to the community tab. Hm.
I'm at a 1:3 ratio - 1 post for every 3 shares - I'd really like to be back at a 1:1 ratio which is what I aspire to, like mk. However, it is difficult. On the other hand, I do find it relatively easy to scrape the two posts I put up per day on average. I'm on Hubski a lot.
I never really paid attention to that, but it makes sense. I rarely post things unless it's content from my website, which is fairly few and far between. Generally anything interesting I read, I've already seen around here or don't feel it needs to be posted.