# Read time metrics

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/read-time-metrics/89916
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [June 14, 2018, 8:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/read-time-metrics/89916 "2018-06-14T20:05:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 4

<div class="post-metadata">

### 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: [June 2, 2018, 1:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/read-time-metrics/89916/4 "2018-06-02T13:30:19Z")

</div>

One thing I still feel like is missing from the dashbaord is any surfacing of information about how much people are reading since _Reading is Fundamental_:

> [@Include reading time in the site stats](https://meta.discourse.org/t/include-reading-time-in-the-site-stats/20108/3):
>
> I’ve said for a long time that Reading is Fundamental and that’s why read time (and read flags) are weighted so heavily in user metrics.

This is something I pay closer attention to than any other metric:

> [@What would you like to see on your Discourse 2.0 Admin Dashboard?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-would-you-like-to-see-on-your-discourse-2-0-admin-dashboard/67134/14):
>
> How much people are _reading_ seems like one of the most [_fundamental_](https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental-2/) 😉 things we should be measuring.

I think plotting it (and other metrics) as _distributions_ across the user base has proven to be the most informative way for me to understand how people are engaging with the site:

> [@What would you like to see on your Discourse 2.0 Admin Dashboard?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-would-you-like-to-see-on-your-discourse-2-0-admin-dashboard/67134/14):
>
> We’ve started to play around with better ways to measure this and so far, something like this is looking promising:
> 
> #### Number of Users who have read at least N Posts over 28 day periods
> 
> [![posts-read](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/optimized/3X/5/0/50347688adb0a1a6187f2a90a1aa84a020758eec_1_690x315.png)](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/5/0/50347688adb0a1a6187f2a90a1aa84a020758eec.png)
> 
> ### Writing metrics
> 
> We are also exploring measuring writing activity similarly:
> 
> #### Number of Users who have created at least N Posts over 28 day periods
> 
> [![posts-created](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/optimized/3X/6/6/66822feed7217e379364ba0d409dc96265dd38b2_1_690x315.png)](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/6/6/66822feed7217e379364ba0d409dc96265dd38b2.png)

I can imagine doing something more similar to this though, which would combine the percentile distributions on a time-series graph more like what you already have on the dashboard. (Just imagine the percentile “response time” buckets are instead bins of user engagement on the reading or posting axis).

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/1/b/1b98181df2d8ceace45ad8ccc7296cb0d7eea1d0.png)

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/read-time-metrics/89916)._