Brian Oblinger’s Post

It looks to me like Community B either 1) radically changed their moderation policy so that team-members curate questions by marking answers far more actively than before (possibly including posting more answers themselves) or that 2) have radically changed their program to engage and incentivise superusers and top members in a far more active way, potentially including giving them the right to mark answers themselves. I would ask the Community B team if any of the above is the case. And would note that Community A is also trending upwards over time. Community B is not necessarily in a 'better' place than Community A, it depends on a lot of factors.

& I respond with more questions...you said no wrong answer 😉 💡 Part A - Spike Cause Analysis What caused the spike? Initial Consideration A: A strategic intervention/investment? Initial Consideration B: Is there some content fluctuation creating what appears to be a higher rate (but may mean a lower number of contributions)? 💡 Part B - If it was due to an intervention or investment... #1 - What intervention or investment created the uptick? #2 - What resources (people, budget, etc.) were required for the intervention to be successful?

Community B's stakeholders really started looking at solution rate. So the team changed their strategies. Incentives for community members changed. The team got more hands-on. Simple UX tweaks to make it easier/clearer how to mark the solution. "What gets measured gets worked on."

Not enough information.

Is it member to member or is the Company answering.

Community B might also just be deleting posts with no solution after a certain amount of time 😉. OR someone or something (bot) is marking what they think is an answer just to get a higher rate, so it might be quantity over quality. So yes, always important to ask more questions and gain context. Just seeing numbers without that is meaningless.

Amazing graphic Brian Oblinger. For my oponion Community B have a great participation that have a 100% solution rate... maybe is a support group user rate. Community A maybe is suffiring without invest and just create it to stay like that just 40% or less solution rate

My hot take here Community A: Has been steady at marking solutions in the community and providing support Community B: Hasn't been a priority until 2019 and then started to deploy more focus/resource on marking best answer to more posts. Maybe even gamified this a bit.

Love all of these thoughts and insights...I wonder what the community size has been doing during this timeframe and what impact that might have? Did they move from staff only answers to allowing members to answer as well? Was it a closed community until mid-2019 and they opened it? Such a great conversation!

All that I can understand from this is that two communities have been around for five years and one has recently become more impactful. Knowing the difference between the communities (you could use the graph title for this, or even a blurb about it) is going to be important to those who want the main insights quickly. More descriptive title is for sure going to be the best thing here. In my eyes, if I can't resolve 100% of the solutions in a community through either resource or reference, I wouldn't use it. That's the consumer part of me speaking. The communist part of me speaking loves the idea of crowdsourcring knowledge.