Speaking of 'things that should be tracked' - I'm blown away that it didn't raise any red flags when I 'lost' ~50 Drivers Licenses over the course of a year or two.
From a gross accumulation of points, yes. From a 'most likely to go viral' standpoint, we've noticed quite the opposite.
In the several communities my team and I manage, those most likely to go viral / frontpage / call it what you will, are members of one of two camps: Great curators or trolls.
Trolls will generally go viral almost immediately based on the sheer volume of interaction with their posts (think, nude selfies posted as 'fashion').
Being pretty proactive with the banhammer will enforce the norm reasonably well, as people will pretty rapidly figure out that in order to make it to the leaderboard, you need to not be banned. It's more Hunger Games than Cocktail Party.
Also as a bit of a tangent - those who spend the most time on site are overwhelmingly not top commentors, contributors, or voters. They're consumers. We have several thousand users who spend an average of 4 hours on site /per day/ who've interacted with a post less than ten times.
Don't necessarily agree with this point. If the total interaction for the community decreases with the influx of new users, and community abandonment > recruitment, the community hits decay.
I will give you the value argument as a bias. The idea that "it's not as cool anymore" absolutely holds true, and imo is a more apples-to-apples comparison to gentrification.
Exactly. Like Pandora - here's a bunch of things we think you'll like based on what we know about you. Correct our assumptions and we'll make them better.
The problem isn't that there are ads juxtaposed against content, it's that historically, the ads have been fucking awful.
Open up a GQ, Vogue, or Condé Nast Traveler. Look where the ads are and how many there are. It's quite possible that ads act as content, and have for quite some time in traditional publishing.
Speaking of 'things that should be tracked' - I'm blown away that it didn't raise any red flags when I 'lost' ~50 Drivers Licenses over the course of a year or two.