# Is there a difference in target retention rate between a support-first forum and discussion-first forum?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [March 30, 2023, 3:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940 "2023-03-30T03:21:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@joellabes](https://meta.discourse.org/u/joellabes)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2023, 3:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940/1 "2023-03-30T03:21:02Z")
We’re leaning into [our forum](https://discourse.getdbt.com) more, and although we also have spaces for discussion/show and tell, the primary focus right now is getting support-style questions out of Slack and somewhere that we can search and use an API with.
The result of this has been a significant (3-4x) increase on the other metrics measured on the admin homepage (Signups, Topics, Posts, Daily Engaged Users, New Contributors), but `DAU/MAU` is stagnant to slightly down.
_not sure what’s going on for March '22_
The UI says “aim for 30%” as a good indicator of stickiness. Is that an across the board recommendation, or do you think there’s different targets for a support forum vs a discussion forum? I can imagine support fora would be more transactional and so fewer people would return after getting their initial question handled (we notice this in our Slack community as well).
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2023, 6:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940/3 "2023-03-30T06:22:21Z")
> [@joellabes](#):
>
> The UI says “aim for 30%” as a good indicator of stickiness. Is that an across the board recommendation, or do you think there’s different targets for a support forum vs a discussion forum?
Excellent question @joellabes. The short answer is yes. When I designed the dashboard a few years ago, I had come from a very strong Community of Practice background, where stickiness was a vital health metric. 30% is a stretch, even then. I think we should drop that down to 20% these days because the landscape has changed.
If you are running a support community, you _may_ want people to keep coming back (i.e. be sticky) if you store your documentation there or you have built such a strong community presence that people come back to help others. If it is pure customer support then no, ideally you don’t want people coming back because that implies that there is something to be fixed or simplified in your product.
@mcwumbly let’s revisit that number on the dashboard.
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### Author:  [@joellabes](https://meta.discourse.org/u/joellabes)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2023, 6:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940/4 "2023-03-30T06:30:43Z")
Thank you! I found this thread while searching before posting
> [@Add new metrics in the administration interface](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-new-metrics-in-the-administration-interface/15179/3):
>
> I want to come back to this thread. I manage a community of community managers, and it goes without saying that platform shortfalls come up a lot. There isn’t a platform out there (that I’m aware of) that does metrics well. I’m a huge Discourse fan, but you’re letting yourselves down badly in the metrics/analytics department. I’m not suggesting that it should take priority over some of the other things that you’re currently ironing out, but if you want to be a market leader, my advice would b…
and it was very funny to see your messages from before you were an employee 😂 look at you now!
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> you have built such a strong community presence that people come back to help others
This is definitely the goal! It might be that we need to lean a bit more into the community of practice side of things, so that there are interesting reasons to come back beyond “I wonder what people are confused about today”.
But we’re also balancing against not trying to forcibly re-platform 50,000 people from Slack… that’s a different conversation though
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2023, 7:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940/5 "2023-03-30T07:12:35Z")
> [@joellabes](#):
>
> and it was very funny to see your messages from before you were an employee 😂 look at you now!
Haha right? I have the same realisation every now and then when I read those old posts. Never saw this coming. ❤
Happy to bounce ideas around re reciprocation and motivation if you’re interested, but you may already be on top of that.
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### Author:  [@joellabes](https://meta.discourse.org/u/joellabes)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2023, 6:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940/7 "2023-03-30T18:39:22Z")
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> Happy to bounce ideas around re reciprocation and motivation if you’re interested, but you may already be on top of that.
Yeah I’d love to! Thanks for the offer 🌟
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### Author:  [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2023, 1:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940/10 "2023-03-31T01:22:13Z")
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> I think we should drop that down to 20% these days because the landscape has changed.
Here’s a PR with that change:
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/20908](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/20908)
Longer term, I think a more nuanced approach could be powerful.
I’d love for communities to be able to set their own goals (with some guidance like what you shared above about why they might choose one vs. the other) and use the dashboard or other related features to help them track their results vs. what they are aiming for.
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### Author:  [@jordan-violet](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jordan-violet)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2023, 1:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-difference-in-target-retention-rate-between-a-support-first-forum-and-discussion-first-forum/259940/11 "2023-05-07T13:39:33Z")
> [@mcwumbly](#):
>
> Longer term, I think a more nuanced approach could be powerful.
⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄
It’s funny just finding this topic now, because I always recalled the admin UI mentioning 30% and when looking again recently, I saw it was 20% and couldn’t remember if I actually saw 30 or not.
As this thread has discussed, it can depend on the community. Here are some other thoughts I have from our enterprise usage:
- It would be nice to have a checkbox to ignore DAU/MAU on weekends.
- Generally speaking, 99.99% of corporate users, even if they’re in your top contributors, aren’t going to contribute on weekends.
- EDIT: Even more nuanced than this, it really helps us if they _do_ contribute, but it doesn’t hurt us if they don’t. I wonder how that would work?
- It would be nice to have visiblity into DAU/MAU by selecting one or more categories. While we want DAU/MAU to go up in our announcements, blog, “show and tell”, etc. categories, we actually want it to go down in our support categories.