Re: [Mtgvenue] Exploration of a "posting" metric - draft-elkins-mtgvenue-participation-metrics

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

On 7/21/2016 6:44 AM, [e-mail] wrote:
>>The S/N ration for postings is sufficiently poor as to render measuring
>>posting possibly only slightly better than the 'just showing up' metric
>>of registering for a meeting.  Simply put, just counting whether a
>>person posts to the lists tells us nothing about whether they've
>>actually "contributed" to the substance of the work.
>
> Dave, respectfully, I could not disagree more.  I think that email lists
> and the way we participate on them works.

I didn't say they didn't.

The question is how to distinguish folks who post and their postings 
constitute real contributions, versus folk who post and don't contribute 
much or anything to the substance of the work.

That's a subjective call and there is no way to make the distinction by 
just scanning mailing list text, short of an AI engine that will have a 
very poor validity performance.  The acknowledgements/contributors 
sections of documents constitute the document author's performance of 
exactly that filtering function.  So let's use it.


>          By and large, if someone
> contributes and continues to contribute regularly on email lists (esp.
> the WG lists) and generates discussion, then that is definitely
> contribution.

Sorry, no it isn't.  Not in theory and not in practice.  And this is 
exactly the difference between activity vs. contribution.

It is quite common to have posters who contribute little or nothing, or 
even detract.




d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net