Notice: The WebPlatform project, supported by various stewards between 2012 and 2015, has been discontinued. This site is now available on github.

Web Platform Docs Community Engagement Goals, Metrics, and Execution

This document describes some high-level community engagement goals for the Web Platform Docs site, metrics to measure progress, and tactics and mechanisms for promoting those goals. These goals are not currently quantified. We can establish growth targets after setting a baseline during the initial roll-out of the site. Tactics are actions that support the goals; mechanisms are features of the site that support the goals.

Goal: Attract readers

This is primarily a marketing goal, addressed by marketing tactics, and measured by the usual traffic metrics. However one traffic metric is relevant to engagement.

Metrics

  • New visitors per week (need to figure out how this is defined)

Goal: Attract contributors

Visitors signal their interest in contributing to the site by registering as members.

Metrics

  • New registrations per week
  • New registrations/new visitors = conversion rate

Mechanisms

  • Call-to-action to join visible on every page
  • Completing registration takes the user back to the page on which they clicked “Join”, so they can finish what they wanted to do.

Goal: Encourage contributions

We want people to not merely sign up and lurk, but to actively and constructively contribute. Contributions include creating new documents and editing existing documents. Most people will contribute immediately upon registering; that is, registration is a hurdle in front of contributing. We want them to continue contributing after their first time.

Metrics

  • % new members that contribute to the wiki within 24 hours of joining
  • % new members that contribute again within 1 week of joining
  • % members that contribute over 30 days (“active” members)
  • Contributions per active member per month

Tactics

  • Send welcome email upon registering, with pointers to Getting Started Guide, list of things to help with, forums, IRC, user profile, etc.
  • Send personalized thanks email for first contribution: should be appropriate to the type of contribution, include title and URL of page modified, and include an expression by a real person of how the contribution will help the project.
  • Send congratulations email after N contributions (need to calibrate appropriate values for N)

Mechanisms

  • Auto-generated welcome email
  • Feed of changes by new members, with button to generate thank-you email based on a template; record of who emailed and when.
  • Auto-generated congratulations email
  • Tracking of number of contributions per member (so we can set milestones at 5, 20, 100, whatever)
  • Badges (recognition) for: first N members; contribution milestones; helping people on forums; being administrator, etc.

Goal: Encourage engagement

If members interact only with the site, and not with each other, they do not create relationships or build community. We want members to interact with each other through forums and IRC.

Metrics

  • Forum posts per week
  • Time to first response for new forum posts
  • Responses per post
  • Number of members who connect to IRC (per week)
  • IRC comments per member per session

Tactics

  • Send reminder email if member has not engaged within 1 week of signup

Mechanisms

  • Forum available from primary navigation
  • Feed of new forum posts displayed on site
  • Expandable IRC widget embedded in site, with nick==loginID