Re: User Stats [Used to be Re: Reputation]

[Chris Messina]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Monica Keller <monica...@gmail.com> wrote:

It is important to share this information when we exchange user
generated content so the external parties have some idea on the value
of the content when surfaced to their users. Activities/Tweets are
fairly compact so there is not a lot to match on. Who the author is
adds value and how others respond to him/her definitely adds value. I
would love to get more feedback on what others think good metrics are

For now http://userlabor.org/ looks very aligned with what we want.
The only piece that I do not understand is network given that it seems
they do not account for bidirectional and unidirectional relationships
or how to calculate the values below for density, betweenness and
closeness... I am assuming its out of 1 ? Ha if the authors are on
this mailing list, let us know.

<network>
       <item object="connection">269</item>
       <item object="density">0.101</item>
       <item object="betweenness">0.225</item>
       <item object="closeness">0.700</item>
     </network>

I looked at UserLabor a long time ago and had hopes that it could be the model for Activity Streams. Their model ended up being a bit too esoteric and original for my tastes, and hence our work was born.

Whether we can leverage their <network> concept is worth considering — though I don't know that it actually accurately models what we need. 

APML also tried to provide a mechanism for weighting tags some time ago, but that's not quite what we want either.

I worry a little about reaching beyond the core of what Activity Streams were designed to do, but I understand Monica's desire to meet developer's thirst for more data about the actor.

Finding a convention to convey stats certainly has merit and is worth considering.

I would be interested to know if anyone has examples of other networks providing friends/follower/contact counts in their APIs, and if so, how they represent such attributes?

Chris

--
Chris Messina
Open Web Advocate

Personal: http://factoryjoe.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrismessina

Citizen Agency: http://citizenagency.com
Diso Project: http://diso-project.org
OpenID Foundation: http://openid.net

This email is:   [ ] shareable    [X] ask first   [ ] private

[Robert]

Talk of metrics sent me off thinking in another direction, so I apologize for the tangent in advance, but has anyone ever though of what kinds of datasets or metrics are implicit in historical or genealogical types of social applications?  After all, libraries, universities, churches, government, national archives -- all sorts of institutions, basically, have interest in historical data, and it never occurred to me to think of the social network platform as directly commutable to dead people (ha).

</tangent posthumous="Maybe I should open another thread.">

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Diso Project" group.
To post to this group, send email to diso-p...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diso-project...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diso-project?hl=.

[Elias Bizannes]

Wow, great discussion. This has a lot of potential.

The mapping of social networks has had a huge body of study in enterprises, and people have been talking about it for a while[1]. My former employer PricewaterhouseCoopers spent a bucket on analysing internal networks. The reason being, informal networks within a company is how information flows, and so it was thought by studying it and determining who the connectors are and to what groups, there could be better organisational planning.

So a spec on mapping networks is huge. For a start, it creates a tool to start enabling better filtering on the web - and whenever the social graph is thrown around as a world changing concept, it's the ability for our graphs to be able to filter the world. This has more value than any other thing I can think of. To put it more bluntly, importing my friends' details is one thing and caters to my laziness, but leveraging it to filter my world, is a whole different level and quite transformative.

I looked at UserLabor a long time ago and had hopes that it could be the model for Activity Streams. Their model ended up being a bit too esoteric and original for my tastes, and hence our work was born.

Really? I think they've over-simplified it. There's some body of research by McKinsey on the subject and the UML spec looks very similar to it. Basically, McKinsey studied these informal networks not just how many and to whom people were connected to, but also the quality of those relationships (ie, frequency of contact). I can sympathise with people getting to academic on things and rendering something impractical, but I'm curious to think how those four measures are too esoteric?

APML also tried to provide a mechanism for weighting tags some time ago, but that's not quite what we want either.

What's the weakness with APML?
 

I worry a little about reaching beyond the core of what Activity Streams were designed to do, but I understand Monica's desire to meet developer's thirst for more data about the actor.

I agree and think the above discussion should make its way into a new effort. The more you dig into this, the more we'll realise how many ways it can go.

[1] http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000006.php