I have a particular puzzle, and I’d like some community help in solving it.
I collect two particular statistics for the site and have been for years. One is the distinct number of people who have recommended any story during the past month. Another is the distinct number of people who have written any comment in the last month. As a human, I expect that recommending stories is relatively easier than writing comments, and that more people would recommend stories than write comments. And yet: I’ve always been wrong. It’s always been that more people write a comment than recommend even one story in any given time period.
I don’t understand this.
Similarly, I also am interested in increasing a specific metric: the number of recommends that the top 10 recommended stories during a month receive. Most typically, the most recommended stories in a month might get ~1,000 recommend votes — even though those same stories might be viewed by hundreds of thousands of readers, a mix of anonymous and logged in.
Why do I want this? It seems to me that having more people weigh in on the stories that are most interesting and most important would improve the quality of the Trending List. I also am aware that authors rely on this count as an important source of feedback and a metric of whether or not they were successful in their writing, though it’s an imperfect one at best.
Authors currently feel appreciation in three ways:
- Story recommends
- Tip jar recommends
- Story comments
Each of these are a little different, but they all have a place. Even if you have nothing to say, it can be really nice to get a “Thank you for writing this.”
(I’d like to also get authors access to view counts for their story, but that’s a longer term project. I’m working on it! I have seen that getting this data is really exciting and motivating to writers.)
So, please tell me:
- How often do you recommend?
- Which recommend button do you use? Top of story, middle, or bottom?
- When, in the story-reading flow, do you recommend the story?
- What is an obstacle to recommending for you?
I have some ideas, but I want to hear what y’all think.