# Encouraging User Participation - Some Ideas, More welcome **URL:** \ **Category:** Community Building\ **Created:** [2016年四月13日 16:37 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511 "2016-04-13T16:37:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 11:11 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/21 "2016-04-14T11:11:20Z")
Yeah I think we have a limit on the query, I will relax it ---
**Author:** ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 11:26 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/22 "2016-04-14T11:26:50Z")
I am not sure what you are running there but it appears 2013 - 2016 is working well. ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/6/b/6b676c0273a9b5ac823c591b98d39ccf7f244bd9.png) I can see 2 big bumps in “user visits” First was around Feb 2014, and another around Dec 2014, stuff has been pretty steady visit wise for the last year. ---
**Author:** ![mikechristopher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mikechristopher/32/89135_2.png) [@mikechristopher](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mikechristopher)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 13:05 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/23 "2016-04-14T13:05:43Z")
I just upgraded my localhost environment and love the new graphs! So much easier to see than the bar charts. I just wish now we didn’t have to wait for our live environment to be updated to 1.6 on discourse hosting before it becomes available. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![mcwumbly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mcwumbly/32/103861_2.png) [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 13:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/24 "2016-04-14T13:15:49Z")
Looking forward to these vs the existing bar charts too! These screenshots do make me want a “per week” drop down to smooth them out a bit though… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 16:22 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/25 "2016-04-14T16:22:17Z")
> [@sam](#): > > Looking at @BCHK’s site I am definitely seeing a trend of increased user visits: > > Pasted image1861x1023 151 KB > > Stuff moved up from 160 or so last year to around 200 now. It is trending up. Sure - we’ve seen a bit of an increase on user visits - but I would expect a lot more since registered users have gone up from 1,000 to about 4,000. ---
**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 16:27 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/26 "2016-04-14T16:27:38Z")
By the way - the graphs look fantastic! ---
**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 16:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/27 "2016-04-14T16:49:39Z")
Sam - here is what concerns me (from a usability / interaction aspect). Here are the daily “logged in API calls” totals for my site for the past two years. As you can see, despite a quadrupling of my user base - its largely flat. I find this very strange and unsettling. Something isn’t working, it seems. One issue is that for my site generally (the wordpress part of my website), mobile visits are almost 50% of my visitors, but in the forums only about 20% of visits. We seem to be losing a lot of mobile visitors for some reason. ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/f/6/f6f7f997b921df388c8ea1be76364ed428fb08bc.png) ---
**Author:** ![HAWK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/hawk/32/86627_2.png) [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 17:44 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/28 "2016-04-14T17:44:55Z")
> [@BCHK](#): > > but I would expect a lot more since registered users have gone up from 1,000 to about 4,000 That’s not unusual though. That’s a retention issue (goes back to that long term behaviour change thing that I mentioned). ---
**Author:** ![Grex315](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/grex315/32/115868_2.png) [@Grex315](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Grex315)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 18:58 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/29 "2016-04-14T18:58:41Z")
Sorry for the dumb question but how do you get the graph view? I only see “table | bar chart”. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 20:32 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/30 "2016-04-14T20:32:28Z")
Update to very latest Discourse. ---
**Author:** ![riking](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/riking/32/170938_2.png) [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 21:11 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/31 "2016-04-14T21:11:18Z")
Yep, remember that you’re looking at all-time registrations @BCHK, so there’s literally nowhere for that number to go but up. ---
**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 22:29 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/32 "2016-04-14T22:29:52Z")
Of course, but thats not the point. All the social platforms that I’m familiar with (ok, mostly facebook since there is a lot of data available for that platform) suggests that DAUs climb with MAUs and total registered users. Don’t you find it strange that this isn’t holding true for Discourse forums? It seems like we’re not being as effective at pulling people back to the forums, for some reason - and I think its important for all of us (perhaps most of all to Discourse as a company) to figure out why this is the case and how to fix it. ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/f/3/f3f995e6ce975a3efc9c5f890214698c39a1a69c.png) > Facebook now has more than 1.5 billion users, more than 1 billion of which use the service daily. > More specifically, in its third quarter 2015 earnings announcement today, Facebook revealed it now has passed 1.55 billion monthly active users (up 14 percent year-over-year), and 1.39 billion are mobile users (up 23 percent year over year). > Facebook also shared that it now has 1.01 billion daily active users (a 17 percent bump year over year) and 894 million mobile daily active users (a 27 percent increase year over year). Put another way, 65.16 percent of all Facebook members use the service daily, and 64.32 percent of mobile members use it daily as well. > Once again, Facebook has managed to keep all its numbers growing, albeit slowly, on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Source: [http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/04/facebook-passes-1-55b-monthly-active-users-and-1-01-billion-daily-active-users/](http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/04/facebook-passes-1-55b-monthly-active-users-and-1-01-billion-daily-active-users/) ---
**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 22:33 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/33 "2016-04-14T22:33:12Z")
> [@HAWK](#): > > That’s not unusual though. That’s a retention issue Of course its a retention issue. The question is why are we having this retention issue, is it common to all discourse forums (seems like we really need to have as many datapoints on different discourse forums to find out what the range is, and compare it to other platforms - then try to figure out what we can do to improve it. Thats my point. This not something that can be “taught” - this is a issue of identifying key strategies that are working on other social platforms, and trying to integrate them into the discourse plaform or plugins so that we can all have better communities with more active and engaged users. ---
**Author:** ![HAWK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/hawk/32/86627_2.png) [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 22:35 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/34 "2016-04-14T22:35:24Z")
> [@BCHK](#): > > Of course its a retention issue. Glad we’re in agreement. 😉 Until now we’d been discussing engagement and conversion. I don’t believe it’s anything to do with Discourse. You’ll find similar patterns across all platforms. I agree that there are systematic things that can be done to help, but this is not a software issue, it’s a human/behaviour issue. The best platform in the world won’t fix a community with an engagement or retention issue. ---
**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 22:36 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/35 "2016-04-14T22:36:38Z")
> [@HAWK](#): > > You’ll find similar patterns across all platforms. I disagree, I think something in the plaform isn’t working as we want it to. I know that my graphs look nothing like the facebook graphs - and I suspect that this is common in the discourse world (and probably the old-world forum software too) - but there is definitely something we can learn from the modern, well implemented social platforms that are not suffering from the same problem (and there are many). ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/b/4/b491bde526ac9c41998aee3543ee07345cbbc627.png) ---
**Author:** ![HAWK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/hawk/32/86627_2.png) [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 22:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/36 "2016-04-14T22:38:21Z")
Respectfully, you can’t compare Facebook to any other community platform. Facebook is already a habit for people, and that has nothing to do with an individual community (which can obviously take advantage of that). ---
**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 22:48 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/37 "2016-04-14T22:48:44Z")
Snapchat is another example - approaching 200 million monthly active users, and around 100 million DAUs - so again, a ratio of 50%+ of DAU/MAUs. I’d be very interested to know what the ratios are for Discourse forums as a combined platform/ Source: “Snapchat has an estimated 200 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active users, which puts it ahead of all of its other competitors after four years. Instagram is close behind with 180 million monthly active users in 2014.” [http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/26/snapchat-has-100m-daily-users-65-of-whom-upload-photos/](http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/26/snapchat-has-100m-daily-users-65-of-whom-upload-photos/) ---
**Author:** ![HAWK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/hawk/32/86627_2.png) [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 22:51 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/38 "2016-04-14T22:51:35Z")
In the same vein as Facebook, Snapchat is not a ‘community platform’ in this context. People aren’t on Facebook or Snapchat (or Twitter or Instagram etc etc) to discuss a specific topic. That is the fundamental difference here. Those platforms have intrinsic motivators attached to them in the form of an emotion. When we’re bored we check Twitter When we’re lonely we check Facebook We only check ‘Discourse’ when we want to discuss/learn/read something specifically subject related. ---
**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 23:03 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/39 "2016-04-14T23:03:07Z")
While part of the “difference” in terms of the DAU/MAU ratio (or DAU over total registered user ratio) may be the general nature of the platforms, I fundamentally think that people like to look at things, read things that they are interested in - so the real factor, my hypothesis is, is how well the platform does as filtering and prioritizing the flood of posts/ information for a given user. I think this is likely the key issue once you get above a typical number of posts that the average user reads in a day. This is, I think, increasingly Facebook’s secret sauce. Sure - Network Effects and behavioral psychology is important, but ultimately if the flood of information is not of interest to you - you’ll tune it out. More info on the range of DAU/MAU ratios: [https://www.quora.com/Social-Network-Analysis-What-of-MAU-should-DAU-be](https://www.quora.com/Social-Network-Analysis-What-of-MAU-should-DAU-be) I suspect that this also has been increasingly a factor over the past two years as mobile dominance has taken effect: > **[Facebook Reveals 78% Of US Users Are Mobile As It Starts Sharing User Counts...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/facebook-mobile-user-count/)** > > A new level of transparency from Facebook will help the world see whether its mobile growth is entirely propped up by international users that don't earn the company as much money. Today Facebook announced it will start sharing country-by-country web... ---
**Author:** ![riking](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/riking/32/170938_2.png) [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)\ **Post date:** [2016年四月14日 23:10 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511/40 "2016-04-14T23:10:29Z")
Here’s a DAU chart for another product with an **established user base**. It’s pretty much flat, but still growing. [FrankerFaceZ Active Users - Google Sheets](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u4agPtJOBbLQAq-OFXFz_S9H6xtqeS-CpAMO1g8p9j0/edit?usp=share) . [上一頁](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511.md?page=1) [下一頁](https://meta.discourse.org/t/encouraging-user-participation-some-ideas-more-welcome/42511.md?page=3)