Statistics and privacy

@manuelbichler
thanks Manuel, I realized that now but missed the discussion :(

I'd sign @rekado 's comment over there

I don't think statistics are at all important. Pod-local stats are important for the pod admin; since there is no "network admin" in a decentralised network I don't see the need for stats at that level. Email didn't need usage stats either.

If we follow the idea of decentralization iow every user setting up her/his own pod they'll know their activity … and I agree with @flaburgan 's comment too

…having a better list of the pods than poduti.me

would be more interesting.

@adrenalin Well, apart from the fact that there is no statistics interface specialized for podmins, don't you think that @flaburgan 's arguments up there are pretty much showing why a good estimate of the network-total number of users would be good for pushing the project? I mean, you can't compare Email 1993 with D* 2014. Email went popular because it empowered people to do things they could never do without it, whereas D*, from a functional point of view, is for most users just a feature-poorer version of Facebook.

Oh, and @adrenalin "having a better list of the pods than poduti.me" already happened, and Jason had the motivation to do it because of the new statistics feature ;)

I agree with @jonnehass Closing the vote and reopeing it saying that the update interval should be configurable might be a good idea.

I obviously overreacted by starting the vote (didn't know how to start a discussion on Loomio the best way), so if nobody has objections, I will close the vote. Sorry for taking your time.

Do you think it's still worth discussing the update interval or granularity or should we just totally close this topic? As I hear it, the grand majority is not at all interested in changing the stats behaviour (although I'm still strongly in favour of doing so).

We can't close a topic once it's been opened in Loomio. If anyone wants to comment further they can.

I don't think anyone's saying that the topic should not be discussed; it's more that perhaps your proposal contained too many specifics (Tuesday 00:00GMT, etc) when there hasn't been a discussion about even whether there's a need to change the behaviour of the stats feature. It might well be that there's a benefit in providing the option to configure the interval the stats are generated by each pod.

Let's see where the discussion goes, and then when there's a consensus being generated, take a vote on what seems to be a workable solution with some support.

My main reason for not wanting to change things is that diaspora* does not have any cron like scheduling component. Sure we might need one, but just to change this I don't think it's a good idea to add any either, unless needed for some other reason.

I find the privacy issues from on-the-fly statistics very very minimal, if at all. But that is why it is opt-in - not opt-out.

But of course, discussion should continue. If we can make the statistics feature more acceptable without losing statistics quality, then by all means. A weekly snapshot is one way but does not really change the privacy fact. For a small pod with little activity, stats once a week can be considered real time too.

The question is in the end - how much complexity do we want to build into something that really has very very little gain, in terms of privacy?

In terms of stats collection, it's the bigger pod which are more important (because the greatest numbers of users are on them), so if small pods don't join the stats collection, it will have less effect on the accuracy of the numbers than if some big pods don't join.

Rather than producing stats every week, how about building in an option to allow a pod to produce a number range rather than an exact figure for users? We could have ranges of say 1–5, 6–20, 21–50 users, or perhaps more precise than that. But by producing a range rather than an exact figure, even when the stats are produced in real time it wouldn't provide the accuracy of data some podmins are concerned about.

@flaburgan

the statistics are really needed, because we need credibility. To have more people coming in diaspora, more journalist and projects talking about us, more developers helping us to build a nice software.

exept for more developers we need I think you are wrong.

Following your logic Facebook would have to be the company with the highest credibility worldwide out of all SN's. The opposite is true, it is a total fail in many ways.
Now:
What attracts users?

To know there are 1 or 2 or 3 million users? Guess not. They are registered where they know their friends are and where they find the functionality they think they need.

Usability is important if you want to attract a crowd that isn't geeks. Diaspora seems to be more complicated for newbies as they need to make choices (which pod should I register) without knowing what is behind. Wiki's aren't that sexy for non-geeks to find info on how to use your new SN as an easy to understand tutorial with pictures or animated. My guess quite a number of users or potential users give up as they think things are too complicated and unknown and for techies only.

Privacy matters?!
For a few yes, for the majority not at all.

How many more users d* has acquired since Snowden and NSA leaks? If that scandal doesn't provoke privacy concerns for Facebook Users what else?

Journalism is working in a different way. If you want articles written you'll have a good story to tell. And you need to establish long lasting contacts, maybe know some in person etc.

Noone is interested in those boring statistics it is not a story that sells. And journalism must sell or raise click rates.

@manuel Bichler

see my reply to flaburgan