Replies: 20

Govind Ramu Posts: 835 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Sep 4, 2004 11:42 AM > ASQ discussion forum reaches first 30 days of the > implementation of Jive discussion board. I just > manually counted the New threads and reply postings > in the ASQ Forum. It turns out we have 92 threads and > 407 postings excluding the special forums that come > with an additional cost. > This averages approx 3 new threads/day and 13 reply > postings /day. Since there was no Response for the above thread from the "web Offering", I will just continue my thread for this month. ASQ discussion forum reaches first 60 days of the implementation of Jive discussion board. I just manually counted the New threads and reply postings in the ASQ Forum. It turns out we have 164 threads and 761 postings excluding the special forums that come with an additional cost. 60 day average approx 3 new threads/day and 13 reply postings /day (for all practical purposes,remain same as 30 day metrics!) Regards, Govind.

Govind Ramu Posts: 835 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Nov 1, 2004 7:33 PM ASQ discussion forum reaches first 90 days of the implementation of Jive discussion board. I just manually counted the New threads and reply postings in the ASQ Forum. It turns out we have 277 threads and 1330 postings excluding the special forums that come with an additional cost. 90 day average approx 3 new threads/day and 15 reply postings /day.There is a slight increase in number of posting/day at the end of the 3rd month. Last 2 months were 13 posting/ day. Now it is close to 15 posting/day. Well, I have been doing quick metrics for the last 3 months out of my interest to see how the discussion board is performing. I would request ASQ staff to continue to monitor these metrics. I still stand by our suggestion to open up all the boards to members. This will definitely benefit everyone. Regards, Govind.

William Pflanz Posts: 1,400 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Nov 2, 2004 8:28 AM Govind, The statistics are a little misleading since a small number of posters are people like us who answer questions and give advice. I did a small but somewhat biased sample of posters and found the following. Govind 159 posts Wes 215 posts Steve 79 posts myself 44 posts Four of us acccount for 37% of the posts so far. The metrics should be based on number of users per potential users i.e. ASQ members. The unknown users are guests who are posting but are not ASQ members or signing in as guests but are members. ASQ probably needs to at least identify users as member or non-members to determine who the discussion board is reaching. People like us would need to be counted differently to determine use of the board. Bill

Wes Bucey, Quality Manager Posts: 1,336 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Nov 2, 2004 10:34 AM > Govind, > > The statistics are a little misleading > > Govind 159 posts > Wes 215 posts > Steve 79 posts > myself 44 posts > > Four of us acccount for 37% of the posts so far. The > metrics should be based on number of users per > potential users i.e. ASQ members. The unknown users > are guests who are posting but are not ASQ members or > signing in as guests but are members. ASQ probably > needs to at least identify users as member or > non-members to determine who the discussion board is > reaching. > > People like us would need to be counted differently > to determine use of the board. > > Bill @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Looks like I need either a vacation or a pay raise. I think you have to score my "kvetching" posts differently than my "advice" posts. (LOL)-Wes Bucey, Quality Manager

William Pflanz Posts: 1,400 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Nov 2, 2004 11:55 AM Wes, Not to mess with the statistics but now you are at 216 postings and counting. The metric for use of the Discussion Board needs to be re-evaluated. We, as quality professionals, can devise an appropriate metric and suggest it to ASQ or ASQ Web Offerings can use the quality methodology to develop their own metric based on the objectives they are trying to achieve to meet the ASQ Living Model strategic objectives. I would think they would want to quantify the use of the board to demonstrate their value to ASQ. Bill Pflanz

Govind Ramu Posts: 835 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Nov 2, 2004 11:58 AM Bill, You are right. I was trying to do a quick capture of some obvious metrics.I should have also excluded the "discussion board" topic posting as well and calculated only the subject topic threads and posting. I hope someday ASQ Jive forum will also have the same Luxury as Elsmar Cove Statistics page http://elsmar.com/Forums/statistik.php Regards, Govind.

Govind Ramu Posts: 835 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Feb 10, 2005 7:12 PM Out of Curiosity, I wanted to see how we are doing after 7 1/2 months of Jive implementation. I manually counted the New threads and reply postings in the ASQ Forum. It turns out we have 466 threads and 2371 postings excluding the special forums that come with an additional cost. 227 day average approx 2 new threads/day and 10 reply postings /day. There is a decrease in number of new threads/day and posting/day compared to first 3 months. But my general observation is, in the first 3 months few of us posted 40% of the posts. Now I can witness many regular users and posters. Many regulars average over 20 posts. During 9am to 4Pm EST usually there are 7 to 9 users online. All good indications to say that ASQ Board is being visited more often and participation has increased. Let us review the stats end of June 2005. Well, no metric is good until it is utilized to take meaningful corrective action. What is our Quality objective for the ASQ Discussion board? Regards, Govind.

William Pflanz Posts: 1,400 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Feb 10, 2005 7:40 PM Continal improvement. We should go back and look at our list of suggestions and see how many have been implemented. We have gotten more cooperation so we should give them some credit for listening. It would be nice if we could easily separate questions and replies since regular users posts more responses than ask questions so they skew the results. Bill Pflanz

Govind Ramu Posts: 835 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Feb 10, 2005 9:26 PM > Continal improvement. We should go back and look at > our list of suggestions and see how many have been > implemented. We have gotten more cooperation so we > should give them some credit for listening. I agree. Web offerings did implement some of those we suggested. Example: 1.Member moderators 2.Certification Topic board 3.Student Board 4.Link from Main webpage asq.org anything else..? Most important still waiting to implement are: 1.Open all boards to all members. 2.Open a Membership board (Questions on ASQ Membership, model and related discussions) 3.Bring in ASQ Leadership to respond to membership questions. 4.Communicate the availability of discussion boards in a better way. Eg: ASQ Wire (email), Quality Progress,etc 5. Resolve issues wrt Sign and Sign off to discussion boards. anything else? > It would be nice if we could easily separate > questions and replies since regular users posts more > responses than ask questions so they skew the > results. > > Bill Pflanz From my previous post; 466 are questions and 2371 are reply posts. That is correct we all post 2 Questions per day and answer 10 responses per day on an average. Regards, Govind.

Wes Bucey, Quality Manager Posts: 1,336 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Feb 10, 2005 10:40 PM I care less about quantity of use than Quality of use. I see some posts get good solid answers to anything that does not involve ASQ. Questions that involve ASQ, especially top paid management and transparency and disclosure of minutes of top elected ASQ officers seem to drop into the bottomless abyss. Why? Questions which involve the bureaucratic services of ASQ get answered by lower level ASQ staff quickly and completely (as long as they are within the scope of the department.) They do what they get paid for. Good for them and for us. -Wes Bucey, Quality Manager

Guest Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Mar 21, 2005 9:22 PM Hey Wes, It looks like at least some of your suggestions/comments/complaints have had an effect. The Board of Directors minutes are now posted at http://www.asq.org/members/leadership/min/bod/bod_min.html They produce about 1 page of minutes for a 2 day meeting, which seems a bit sparse, but it is nice to see that some report from our leaders actually gets posted on the website. Now if we could just get the financial statements, we would be in a position to judge the direction and the fiscal priorities of "our" organization. Tim F

Wes Bucey, Quality Manager Posts: 1,336 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Mar 24, 2005 8:58 PM > Hey Wes, > > It looks like at least some of your > suggestions/comments/complaints have had an effect. > The Board of Directors minutes are now posted at > t > http://www.asq.org/members/leadership/min/bod/bod_min. > html > > They produce about 1 page of minutes for a 2 day > meeting, which seems a bit sparse, but it is nice to > see that some report from our leaders actually gets > posted on the website. > > Now if we could just get the financial statements, we > would be in a position to judge the direction and the > fiscal priorities of "our" organization. > > > Tim F @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ As a 501(C)3 not-for-profit organization, ASQ is required to file Form 990 with the IRS. It becomes a public document. There is a website, Guidestar, which reprints the Form 990 from most organizations. (http://www.guidestar.org) ASQ's 2003 Form is available there as a pdf file. (2004 isn't due, yet) You can register for free on the site to view and/or download the file. I have written about this resource on occasion here in the Forum. It's where you can learn that Paul Borawski, the ASQ Executive Director, pulls down more than $300,000/year from ASQ. I strongly recommend EVERY dues paying member familiarize himself or herself with the Form. There are some very interesting details to be learned.-Wes Bucey, Quality Manager

Guest Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Mar 25, 2005 1:30 PM Wes, That is an interesting site. Just for fun(?) I started checking a few organization that might be familiar to people here. All are engineering-type societies. I was going to include AMA and ABA, but they are apparently not non-profit organizations. Here, in order of overall revenues, are the results. The columns are name, total revenues, Dues collected, Salary of the director (not including other benefits and defered compensation, which can be considerable), the management expenses and the program expenses. Other than Director salary, all numbers are in millions of $ Revenues Dues Dir Sal Mgmt Program IEEE 227 40.7 411,000 6.6 212.4 ASME 61 8.3 246,000 11.7 57.1 SAE 48 4.3 265,000 13 35.8 ASQ 37 9 317,000 9.5 29.4 ASTM 36 2.3 342,000 3.1 27.8 SPE 18 3 240,000 0 17.7 (Sorry about the formatiing. It looks nicely aligned as I type, but the spacing gets lost in the process somewhere.) Some highlights: * ASQ is by far highest in % of revenue from dues. 24% compared to 18% for IEEE. * ASQ is a close 2nd highest in (Management expense)/(Program expense). 32% for ASQ compared to 36% for SAE. For every $3 spend on programs, $1 is spent on management. (I still haven't figured out how SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) can pay a director but not have any managment expenses!) * The director's salary seems pretty much in line with other organizations. Others are welcome to do their own comparisons. Tim F

Wes Bucey, Quality Manager Posts: 1,336 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Mar 25, 2005 1:49 PM > Wes, > > That is an interesting site. > Here, in order of overall revenues, are the results. > The columns are name, total revenues, Dues > s collected, Salary of the director (not including > other benefits and defered compensation, which can be > considerable), the management expenses and the > program expenses. Other than Director salary, all > numbers are in millions of $ > > >Org....Revenues...........Dues.............Dir Sal............Mgmt........Prog > IEEE..........227........40.7.........411,000........6.6...........212.4 > ASME..........61..........8.3.........246,000.......11.7............57.1 > SAE...........48..........4.3.........265,000.......13.0............35.8 > ASQ...........37..........9.0.........317,000........9.5............29.4 > ASTM..........36..........2.3.........342,000........3.1............27.8 > SPE...........18..........3.0.........240,000........0..............17.7 > > Tim F @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ For futures, Forum doesn't recognize tabs or hard spaces - silly, huh? Complicating the problem is that data entry has every character take same horizontal space, while printout is in proportional font ("i" takes less horizontal space than "m") Hence my attempt to fix your chart is still not perfectly justified. This software does not have WYSIWYG data entry.-Wes Bucey, Quality Manager

Guest Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Mar 25, 2005 2:56 PM >Hence my attempt to fix your chart is still not >perfectly justified. Oh, I don't know. I think you were perfectly justified to try to fix the spacing problem. It was kid of hard to read, after all. And I can understand some of the formatting problems. Tabs, for instance, are often used to move from one field to another, so it is hard to insert them within messages. I still don't know why multiple spaces can't be allowed. Tim F

Govind Ramu Posts: 835 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Jul 2, 2005 5:55 PM ASQ discussion forum reaches the first year of the implementation of Jive discussion board. I just manually counted the New threads and reply postings in the ASQ Forum. It turns out we have 831 threads and 4503 postings excluding the special forums that come with an additional cost. 1 year average approx 2 new threads/day and 12 reply postings /day. I would request ASQ staff to continue to monitor these metrics. I still stand by our suggestion to open up all the boards to members.This will definitely benefit everyone. Regards, Govind.

Timothy Folkerts Posts: 396 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Apr 3, 2006 3:21 PM I just did a quick check of usage and we are now over 10,000 total posts. As of 3-Apr-06: 10,875 post in 2,029 threads in just under 2 years Some of the more prolific posters include (I’m sure I missed a few): Bucey 903 Prevette 635 Miura 579 Ramu 529 Pflanz 517 Shelor 368 Richardson 214 Hodek 118 Ickler 115 Willett 95 Folkerts 61 Thus 11 people produced 4,134 post = 38% of the total, leaving about 6500 posts = 62% for all the other posters. Not too different from earlier comments in this thread. How many other people have participated depends on how many posts they write on average. The minimum average posts is, of course 1, which would be 6500 people. A more realistic estimate would be 2-3 posts per person, or 2000-3000 participants. Since there are +100,000 members, then perhaps 2-3% of members have participated. Also, a significant number of posts are by guests, so the actual number is probably around 1-2% of members actually have participated. Many of them only participate at limited times and on limited forums. Tim F

Wesley Richardson Posts: 1,258 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Apr 4, 2006 12:05 PM > Bucey 903 > Prevette 635 > Miura 579 > Ramu 529 > Pflanz 517 > Shelor 368 > Richardson 214 > Hodek 118 > Ickler 115 > Willett 95 > Folkerts 61 > Tim, Thank you for this summary. That is quite a list of people that have contributed. Just on volume alone, one can conclude how important it is having the above contributors taking their time and adding to this knowledge resource. Whether a person has only read the posts, made one post, or made many posts, their participation is encouraged. Now we need to get the word out to members in our local Section so they know about the Discussion Board (and the one at Elsmar Cove) and then they can join the group discussions. Bill Pflanz has a great post at http://www.asq.org/discussionBoards/thread.jspa?forumID=58&threadID=2653&messageID=37307#37307 that can be used to help spread the word about the Board. Wes R.

William Pflanz Posts: 1,400 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Apr 4, 2006 3:43 PM The reason why ASQ should continue to promote the Discussion Board is exactly because of the list of regular contributors. I consider it an honor to be listed in the list Tim created. Not only do each of us spend a lot of time helping other quality professionals but I learn something new all the time. I cannot confirm that I have read all of posts from the identified prolific posters but I always try. There is always something valuable in their postings. Hopefully I have made some contributions to the quality body of knowledge. Those ASQ members who do not use the ASQ Discussion Board are losing a valuable member benefit and also depriving their companies of a valuable resource. ASQ should promote its use for that reason. Bill Pflanz

Akio Miura Posts: 1,593 Re: Discussion Board Metrics Posted: Apr 5, 2006 1:30 AM I entirely agree with Bill Pflanz. Thanks. Akio Miura