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As far as I'm aware, the stats page on Area 51 is the only way for participants of new SE communities to see some stats on how their site is doing.

What I would like to see is a more extended "How is our community doing?" page directly on the site in question. Some metrics already exist:

  • Questions per day
  • Percentage answered
  • Avid and total users
  • Answer ratio
  • Visits per day

In addition, a dedicated stats page would contain real-time info like

  • Geographical distribution of users
  • Intensity of activity during various times of the day (aka when is the best time to ask/bump a question)
  • Historical development of the existing metrics since the site started as suggested here
  • Notable external links pointing to contributions on the site - what better motivation is there for a community than getting attention from outside, and seeing it?
  • Questions with the most views

Effectively, this is a request for a light-weight analytics suite for SE communities - maybe accessible as a privilege for 500 or 1k rep users?

It would be a lot of work, but I think it would be very good to have for a growing community, and a necessity in the long term - avid users of a community deserve to know these stats; in light of the ever-growing number of SE sites, asking for this kind of data manually is unrealistic. So is querying the data dump.

Maybe this could even be solved through Google Analytics, giving eligible users automatic restricted access to the site's GA account, enabling them to see selected metrics. No idea.

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  • Related: Graphs showing Area51 stats over time
    – Pekka
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 13:32
  • Just as a side note, and not because it changes anything, but there is some data shown on the main page of the public beta website on the right hand column. Most of the data is duplicated in both places, true, just a comment/point/thought
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 17:13
  • @pekka you do know that those site analytics data are known to the team and to the moderators of the site. But I like where you're going with "notable external links" etc.
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 17:14
  • @jcole ah, didn't know that! If that could be extended to {insert amount here}+ rep users...
    – Pekka
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 17:25
  • @Pekka Yeah I wasn't sure about that. They have a lot of analytics data, but they don't want to reveal all of it, for many reasons. This is a bit of a hazy ground so I won't say any more for my part. I figured as long as you had been around you might have known that already. You should pick a proposal and join it and become a pro-tem mod :)
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 17:27
  • @jcolebrand yeah, I can think of a lot of reasons not to reveal many metrics. But my expectation as a user is that in the long run, us being the community and all that, some vital stats will have to be shared, at least among the most active members of a community. It's impossible to shape a community without some key data.
    – Pekka
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 17:32
  • @Pekka'sothertrollingaccount oh yeah for sure, so I am firmly in favor of upboating this proposal ;)
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 17:33

1 Answer 1

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What I would like to see is a more extended "How is our community doing?" page directly on the site in question.

This is visible on the home page for all beta sites:

beta homepage stats links

Note that clicking "Area 51" or "Stack Exchange" in the footer there will reveal even more stats, so please click away.

Maybe this could even be solved through Google Analytics, giving eligible users automatic restricted access to the site's GA account, enabling them to see selected metrics. No idea.

Diamond mods (pro-tem or elected) have access to exactly this, an analytics tab on the moderator dashboard that displays real-time Google Analytics data for dozens of stats, more or less exactly what you described.

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  • @pekka looks like someone needs to get themselves elected or appointed to diamond-hood...
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jun 13, 2011 at 9:54
  • fair enough, but a defined subset of this data should really be made available at least to top non-mod users as well. You can't help shape a community without it. As long as it's only mods that have access, this request should be tagged status-declined or status-deferred rather than "completed"
    – Pekka
    Commented Jun 13, 2011 at 10:01
  • @Pekka 21 sites have launched without it, and I think some of them actually came out before we even had it (I can't recall the exact date the analytics were added). Many of them, if not all 21, have built solid communities. It certainly helps, but is far from necessary. That all said, there's nothing which stops you from asking your pro tem moderators to step in, look at the stuff, and to identify problem areas or points of interest.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Jun 13, 2011 at 11:54

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