Hmmmm ... I've been begining to notice some things about MR
anyway, this was just a useless rant so ... reply if you want to :P
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Thanks for the post CJ.
There tends to be a 90:9:1 rule when dealing with online communities.
90% of people are just passing through (lurkers)
9% of people are passively engaged (members)
1% of people are actively engaged (you know who you are :) )
Really since the launch of the website this general rule that applies to many other niche online networks holds pretty true.
We have about 30,000 visitors a month (just hit 1 Million visitors since launch a few weeks ago).
We have about 4,500 member profiles.
We have a couple hundred or so actively engaged members. (I believe this is definied by 3 or more visits per month).
I haven't seen any studies lately to talk about hyper-engaged type members which we do have some that would probably be engaged 3+ times a week.
What does "passively engaged" mean? How many times per month/week do they visit?
Every community can define it in different ways.
Maybe it's your crazy uncle who lives down the street but only stops by once a year for thanksgiving dinner.
Maybe on here its just that they took the effort to create a profile.
I believe one of the dominant case studies for the 90:9:1 rule is YouTube.
90% - just watch the video
9% - will actually leave a comment on the video
1% - will upload a video
It's scary to consider that only one in a hundred actually make something for all those passive viewers.
No wonder folk get bored and run out of content if 99% don't make anything in return. =)
Actually, I do agree that there's nothing wrong with checking in and adding something (even just a few photos) every 6 months. I think the real problem is when others check in and aren't bothered to add anything or reply to comments left on their photos, comment walls, etc. Even the courteousy 'thanks!' stops happening to the last few people in their recent activity. They lose their online 'presence'.
There are so many ghosts around - you see them browse the site via the chatroom list of visitors and if you view their profile's activity you see they had activity from others long ago, but none from them anymore.
I like the term 'ghosts', very apropos in the way that I think about online communities.
It also makes you wonder if we should leave their tombstone profiles there as a piece of history or eat them up like Pacman and recycle.
Trouble with deleting old profiles is that it deletes there content too. Some may have had important messages or video tutorials that I'd hate to delete. Some have reasons as to why they have not logged in again like death in real life. That of course opens a whole new can of worms.
This is very true. I think old profiles that have no content (e.g. photos), blogs or any real comments in them could be eaten. I've been noticing that the Birthday features is a useful one for spotting old, empty profiles for years ago. It brings them to the surface in a nice manageable way. It even brought up an old blog link spammer that had been missed. =)
A lot of profiles only have a few 'welcome' and 'thankyou' comments and then nothing ever again. After two or three years, I'd suspect that would be a reasonable timespan to suspend rather than delete. I agree, those that have content should be left.
That other option to suspend the profile, could include a contact mohawksrock.com email if they wish to unsuspend it. That would keep even those profiles intact and allow them to be easily returned to activity as if they never disappeared.
Using the birthday updates each day, it wouldn't lead to very many being put into suspended animation until they may decide to return after two or three years.
Oh! There's another idea! Add a comment to them to ask if they wish to keep the profile active? And if by the next year that comment hasn't been replied to(checked via the birthdays), then the profile is kept & suspended. If they do reply within that year, then another comment is left and that would ensure they weren't suspended the next time.
There's always periods in an online community when it is more active though. More members on Mohawks Rock in the first couple years or so were actively involved. They commented, replied, posted pics and kept returning. Threads got huge, big debates went on. That rarely happens now.
It has changed over the years and now, it is a lot less active. More people are passively visiting and not bothering to put much energy into replying or posting. It's become less of a community. That's natural, I agree, but not good.
I think that's the case for any starting online community that has enough initial momentum, because it's small, people take more interest and become more involved. As online communities become big, lilke YouTube, then the amount of active participants decrease to the average GMM posted above.
It certainly has been my experience in many other niche forums, they all start off very active and then they get lots of members gradually, but the amount of activity from them all decreases. Forums & profiles become ghost towns. All because they don't feel the need to get involved - perhaps because they can be forgotten in the sea of profiles.
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