Observations on point accumulation by the top 60 Element 14 members

Observations on point accumulation by the top 60 members in Element 14

Back in October of 2015 Element 14 announced its first Hertz level member, who, at the time, was mcb1.  The Hertz level starts at 100,000 points, which in the Element14 community is really a lot of points.  Accumulating that many points is no easy feat, as I will illustrate in this blog.

On the day I read the announcement, just over a year ago, I checked my point accumulation and found I had 7051 points, placing me 61st in line to the throne.  I wondered about how the community in general was doing in terms of point accumulation because point accumulation can be a good proxy indication of member participation.

Point accumulation is not 100% correlated with member participation.  A strong case supporting this assertion can be found in the very prolific and highly participatory benheck  who is not among the top 60 members ranked in the chart below. From April 2016 to October 2016 Ben slipped from 64th to 81st position. Clearly, this does not mean Ben has been participating less over the last year, it means that he has been concentrating on making valuable contributions through The Ben Heck Show.  I think it is quite possible that Ben's contribution to the community through The Ben Heck Show has inspired many members to increase their participation, helping them move up the ranking scale.

Nevertheless, observing point accumulation should provide the temperature of member activity and plotting member activity over time should provide insight into the climate of the community.  With this hypothesis in mind I started a spreadsheet to record the point accumulation of the top 60 members in the community longitudinally, or, over time.  I could have selected the first 100, or the top 50, but because I was sitting just on the other side of 60 I arbitrarily decided to track the top 60 members.  I have maintained the spreadsheet for the last year and would like to share the chart below with the community because I believe other members and element14 administrators might find it interesting.

The process I used to gather data for the spreadsheet is pretty straightforward, if perhaps a little cumbersome.  It went like this:

1. Log into my E14 account
2. Select Reputation and Points from the drop down menu next to my name.
3. Select Ranking from the Activities list on the left side of the screen. Doing this brings up a screen that shows your point accumulation and rank in the middle of a field, with the 5 members ranked above you and the 5 members ranked  below you arranged in a column.
4. Record point accumulation and rank for everyone shown on the screen in the spreadsheet.
5. Select the member at the top of the screen.
6. From the More drop down menu, select Reputation
7. From the Activity list, select Ranking.  This will produce a screen of ranking information with the selected member placed in the middle of the field. Repeat from step 4 until the rank of the member at the top of the list equals one.

For reference here is a link to the point accumulation rules and the levels currently established by element14.

The chart below illustrates the progress in point accumulation for the top 60 members of the element 14 community from October 27, 2015 to October 27, 2016.

The vertical axis represents the number of points accumulated, obtained via the method described above.  The horizontal axis represents member ranking from 1 to 60,  The third axis, the depth axis, contains a series of snapshots taken through the year, each one labelled with the date the snapshot was taken.

Several observations can be made from this chart.

First, the vertical axis is pretty much asymptotic around the top point accumulator. There isn't enough data on the horizontal axis to confirm this, but it looks like the horizontal axis is pretty much asymptotic to member rank as the rank number increases above 50 or so. I explored a bit well beyond the 60th ranked member to see what the chart would look like out there.  Now I couldn't determine exactly how many members there are in the Element14 community because odd things happen when member rank numbers get into 5 and 6 digit territory.  For example, I know of three members that have less than 100 points accumulated.  These members have ranking numbers ranging from around 36,000th to around 228,000th.  So there are probably at least 228,000 members in the database. However, the ranking system breaks down at high rank numbers because multiple members have the same rank position if they have the same low point accumulation number. For example, at least 6 members share rank position 31,851.

From examination of the data set gathered over a year, I believe I see a very large number of inactive, or barely active members, and a small clutch of moderately to highly active members, likely under 200 in total. I may be wrong.  The data set I gathered is incomplete, so I am making inferences and my conclusions are certainly open to debate. The chart does not show this well, but the raw data shows that some members shoot up through the ranks over a relatively short period of time, then stop advancing.  Others have steady point accumulation over time, using various participation strategies, advancing up the rank at various paces.  None of the members on the chart have activity levels as frenetic as the levels achieved by the top three members.

As can be seen from the chart, the top three members are very active.  The number 1 position has advanced by 44,598 points in the one year time span displayed in the chart.  Ownership of the top member position, by the way, has changed hands several times among the top three.

Here is a question:  If Element14, as a community, has a desire to increase awareness and participation in electronics/computing as a hobby or as a career, should more be done to encourage participation among the many thousands of inactive or barely active members?  Is this a topic of interest to the membership?