The Leaderboard Work in Progress Thread

[nickbike]

 Hello NI Community members,
     I have been tasked with creating a leaderboard for the NI Discussion forums.  I am trying to get an idea of exactly what stats the community wants on the leaderboard.  We want to try and avoid making it cluttered and unreadable, but still provide our users with the data they need.  As of now, I can get the number of total posts for each user in a specified time range for each board.  The leaders in each board was something that I wanted to start with and I can add to it from there.  

I'm envisioning a 2 part system.  A detailed list very much like chilly charly's LIST that will be posted every week, and then an HTML page that is a summary of the data for quick glances.  It's a work in progress, but I don't want to get too far and start programming features nobody wants.  I am open to suggestions (within reason )

Nick C
National Instruments
Web Support and Operations

[chilly_charly]

Hello Nick !

Congratulations for being in charge of this "enthusiastic" task !

I you had some spare time, you could read the comments in the Enthusiast II thread (I'm sure you already read it...).

For a summary, I think the number of replies, the average star rating (one more digit please) and last month (or quarter) activity could give a fair image of the Enthusiast. We lack an Enthusiasm indicator. I hope I'll be able to construct one before you release your Leaderboard !

A more detailled description should include as additionnal informations (with the List as reference) : the number of replies during last quarter, last 6 months, last year. The max numbers of replies within 24 h, 1 week, 1 month could also be good indicators. For some reason, the number of star given (and average star number) was considered as a personal information. Can this be changed ?

The most delicate part has been to keep track of technical replies, excluding most of the Breakpoint, part of the Feedback on NI Discussion forum, and a few threads, to create the "Actual replies" and "Break" columns. I think that this separation should be kept, not because technical replies are more valuable, but because it is symptomatic of a difference in behaviour.

[Ben]

Hi Nick,

Thank you for asking.

I would like to have the summary pages to offer the option to sort on any of the collumns.

The following is based on my own experience of climbing through the ranks.

Newbies will have to dig many pages if they can only view the list based on # of answers. They would probably like to see their names toward the top and could choose to sort on "average rating".

Optionally sorting by user name.

In each view there should be an indication of the users position in each sort view.

So...

A user could find their name and see that they are #X in ratings, #Y answer count, etc.

Ben

[altenbach]

I wonder if it would be useful to be able to express some of the numbers in percentiles instead of raw counts. Descriptive statistics is often more meaningful.

[tst]

In reply to what Ben said, I think each user should see their own stats all the time, maybe in a side-bar or something similar.

I didn't get too many comments, so I don't know how popular it is, but I happen to like my VI which allows you to see the data on a graph over a length of time. It would be nice if this could be implemented, either directly into the site, or as an indepedent tool which will operate on the weekly data you promised, similar to what my VI does now. The main problem in writing that VI was that I had to account for the fact the list structure changed wildly over time. Columns were moved or added and that had to be accounted for. In the end, the data was stored as a non-relational DB (or, put simply, a 2D array in which each row holds one line from each of the list files).

Maybe the data should be kept on NI's server and the VI will connect to the server to extract it?

[Ben]

"percentiles instead of raw counts"

Even Dennis would not make 1%. maybe millage (sp?).

Ben

[nickbike]

Hello Community,
        It's been a long time since you've heard from me, but here is the version 1.0 of the Leader Boards.  Right now it's HTML in 2 different knowledgebases, but it's a start. 

The NI Discussion Forums Software Leader Board

The NI Discussion Forums Hardware Leader Board

The next step includes adding overall leaders for all time (not just for one week).

Nick C
National Instruments
Web Support and Operations

[xseadog]

Well As a 'relative' newbie  I have to admit

I LIKE IT  To see my alias amoung the grand masters

Keep up the good work

ruff ruff

xseadog

[nickbike]

Hello again community,

I  just pushed 2 more Leader Boards live.  These ones include leaders of all time!  Enjoy.

The NI Discussion Forums Software Leader Board of All Time

The NI Discussion Forums Hardware Leader Board of All Time

-Nick

[Ben]

Well after about 6 years of work I have to face defeat.

Dennis has actually doubled the number of contribution o fhte next highest contributor.

I am betting on tst to be the person that fixes that situation.

Ben