Popular Communities (implementing something similar to Livejournal's feature?)

[sparklycockles]

Title:
Popular Communities (implementing something similar to Livejournal's feature?)

Area:
Classification

Summary:
Livejournal has a feature called "Popular Communities" that sorts communities based on usage/popularity that I would love to see replicated for Dreamwidth.

Description:
On Livejournal there is a list of communities sorted from the most popular to the least. At the top of the list you can search for what community you're looking for and jump straight to it. There are other more complicated features relating to it (such as the social capital now displayed) but I don't really think they're necessary.

I think this feature, or something similar, could be useful for people searching to add new communities to their friends-lists or for looking up the activity in a community they are considering joining. It's a bit of an "extra" though - the site doesn't really require such a change.

But honestly I just really want to see where my own communities would rank! Mark did something similar to this on his own journal (informally, of course) and my community was #17 (or thereabouts). I'd like to know if it has increased or decreased since that time! (Another informal list would also be interesting!)

Poll #11552 Popular Communities (implementing something similar to Livejournal's feature?)

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 56

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
8 (14.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (8.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
19 (33.9%)

(I have no opinion)
24 (42.9%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[jjhunter]

I'm not sure about front-end use, but it would be fun to see this in the raw DW stats - maybe as a pop_comms section?

[ladyasul]

"Most popular" is such an interesting thing to try to define... It'd be neat to be able to sort by (and see the stats for) communities ranked by total entry views, total entries, total comments, average # of comments per entry, and main comm views, etc... for all time/last 6 months/last 3 months/last month/last week/last 24 hours.

Not sure if DW even keeps such statistics, but it would be fun to see some of the rankings and comparisons somewhere, yes! :)

[ciaan]

Yeah, I think more detailed stats are more useful, because how do you decide what "popular" means? Most members? Most posts? Most comments? It's not just ones axis everything can be ranked on.

[lorax]

+1! The flat out popular thing on LJ has never interested me much, but I think some expanded stats, if it's easy to implement, would be fun.

[musyc]

+1 I'd like to see some sort of breakdown on the stats, if such a thing were implemented. I'd never use it otherwise. I've already stopped looking at Latest Things because there's no way to eliminate the large/heavy-traffic RP communities from the main LT page and those hold zero interest for me. Some way to have a stats page that (hopefully) avoids the same would encourage me to use it.

[cesy]

+1

[marahmarie]

Voted should not be implemented because the most popular thing on DW are fandoms so the list would look like all DW is is fandom. It makes a questionable impression to outsiders and those wondering whether or not to join DW. I know that before and shortly after I joined DW I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what topics were most popular here and who was who in relation to what (especially community-wise) and what was this and how was that and if I had seen fandom dominating in any sense I may never have joined this site nor stayed. Which is exactly my point: keep highlighting of what goes on here general, not specifically pointing to the dominating non-official communities nor tied to user stats, to help not drive off any potential new users who might look at those stats or links and go: "Ew, this site is all about fandom| RPG | porn | the Easter Bunny" and run the other way.

On a related note, LJ still does this and it's confusing when MintyApple is always on that page because you start thinking it's an "official" (read: LJ-sanctioned, LJ-run) style community, but ASFAIK it's not. To this day that confuses me, though. I just hate the inference between "This is what's most popular here" and "This is *who we are* here", whether that inference is intended or not - I guess my mind reads "we're showing off who's hot" as "we're sanctioning or showing favor to this content", and I find this slippery ground for a site to be on. I don't think it's done much to to help LJ. :(

On another related note (I just keep thinking of more comparisons and so I can't get this done) tumblr recently started a "most popular tags" list in the sidebars of people's blogs and/or on the home page and the other day the top link took me to poetry, which I know is not the most popular thing on tumblr (I would think it's that thing that starts with a "p" in my list above). Which is another thing I don't like: when websites use the most popular tags not based on real stats but based on their own ambitions to get everyone to stop focusing on one use of the site and realize the site has other uses. Sure it does. But if anyone wanted to use it for those uses, they would.

[ladyasul]

I personally don't see such an implementation (with changes, as suggested) as being much more than a more in-depth statistics page... and the statistics would interest me greatly. I don't think it needs to be a front-page item, agreed with you there on that count -- but all the same, I'd be curious to find out which comms had the most and least of whatever factor I'm wanting to look up.

Besides, seeing some of those statistics linked to the comms that make them up would be interesting -- perhaps if I wanted to find the underwater basketweaving community with the most members and pageviews in the last week, to post my latest patterns for sale, or something? It would help. Or if I were hunting for a new RP game to join, and wanted to find one that went at a pace I was more comfortable with. Or a writing comm. Or a comm which had gotten little attention but on closer inspection, was totally worthwhile?

One person's trash, another's treasure -- but would looking through the statistics pages really have put you off of joining Dreamwidth, to see several fandom comms ranking in numbers of comments or entries, up there alongside cooking and knitting and non-fandom writing communities, or something?

[marahmarie]

OK, changing my vote to implement with changes - I like your idea of the stats off the front page but still available somewhere (since at least it gives curious types like us exactly the info we're looking for without broadcasting DW as or suggesting it is being geared toward or preferential of any one group). Thanks for that. My vision of this was seeing it slapped on the front page, like LJ has their stats, so I was all oh-noes the second I saw it.

...would looking through the statistics pages really have put you off of joining Dreamwidth

Perhaps not, if it was available somewhere other than the front page to begin with (never thought of sticking it elsewhere, quite honestly). But I might be a special case: I'm a queer-porn-fandom reject from InsaneJournal - not that I was into that or any other fandom (not ever) but thanks to some weird circumstances I ran afoul of one of their more well-known writers/financial supporters and that was the end of me. Just like that. I happily crawled back to LJ not long after, and only left for good after they started the click-jacking, or else I guess I would've stayed. So the problem for me when I considered joining DW was I was literally afraid of fandom/fandom avoidant solely from the bad experience I had on IJ, not because of wanting to avoid fandom itself.

Most people who don't like fandom? They just don't like fandom. So I was kind of an edge case, I guess. :)

[ladyasul]

Ah. Well, FWIW, I can definitely see how an experience like that could influence a person!

And agreed on a front-page presentation looking like an advertisement; I just like the idea of having some sort of easily-accessible up-to-date statistics page that I can poke at to see all the details. Raw numbers are kinda nice, I guess, but I like them better when there's more meaning attached. In this case, finding out which comms contribute to which statistics.

I do see a downside to that, though, having thought about it a bit more... some comms are private (or at least, are deliberately not advertised) for one reason or another, like people's personal museboxes. I think there ought be a way to opt a comm out of being linked to (or having its name listed) in the Privacy options in the account settings, if this does get implemented.