The reputation league is a good motivator to keep people participating. I think it would be interesting to see a new feature which showed a further split for 'trending users: reputation earned only for content added this week/month/quarter/year', excluding reputation earned on questions/answers that were written before this time period.
I've been gathering a few more statistics here on the Stack Exchange Data Explorer.
In technical terms my suggestion is the equivalent to adding a new category where statistics are generated by adding the last 2 AND clauses on the SQL below (I believe most stats are currently based purely on when the vote was given):
and vote.creationDate >= '2012-05-01'
and vote.creationDate <= '2012-05-31'
and post.creationDate >= '2012-05-01'
and post.creationDate <= '2012-05-31'
The difference with adding the last 2 clauses is significant. E.g. for a top user...
- 751 votes received in May
- 290 votes related to posts posted in May
Obviously generating content that has lasting value should be rewarded but I think a new category which helps focus on recent content may motivate new users more as well as giving existing users a new challenge!
Would anyone else find this new 'trending users' category interesting or motivating? Or am I just bitter/jealous because I only recently started actively contributing!? :-)
