This page seems long on cute fuzzy pictures and short on content. They don't say what discussion forums they sampled: most likely, their own. They don't describe their methodology in detail (I looked in vain for a link to or citation of a proper experimental writeup.) And what did they learn?
As far as I can tell, they learned that people who bother to sign up for forum accounts ("pseudonyms", in their terminology) make more return visits/contributions than people who use least-effort ways of logging in (existing Facebook account, or anonymous contribution).
We're going to blog about it which should shed more light on methodology -- TC just linked to the infographic. But yeah this was across the entire Disqus network, ~600 MM monthly UVs and ~60 MM commenters, and I believe "pseudonyms" include proprietary site logins + social media handles besides FB.
The major insight was that pseudonyms yield significantly more quantity and quality on the network. May seem obvious to you but wasn't so for many, including a number of us who've been with Disqus for years. The conventional wisdom was that anonymous comments would rank highest in quantity and FB comments would score highest in quality.
If I may offer a suggestion, perhaps mention that pseudonyms generally tend to be long-held identities - a lot of people think that pseudonyms are just throw-away identities used to gossip about your employer safely, instead of identities that persist for months, years or even decades. (A lot of people would recognize the handle CmdrTaco, but how many know his real name?)
"pseudonyms generally tend to be long-held identities - a lot of people think that pseudonyms are just throw-away identities used to gossip about your employer safely, instead of identities that persist for months, years or even decades."
A fact too often forgotten. This is the same ignorance that keeps me from using Google+ while I'm prolific on Twitter.
Honestly I don't see how you could possibly have a reasonable methodology for the claims you make in the infographic.
How do you avoid selection bias, particularly in regards to frequency of comments? For example, a source of technical bias could be that it is a simpler process to log into a Disqus pseudonym than to authenticate with Facebook when posting. Usability is incredibly important in attracting repeat users, so if it is easier to post under a disqus username then it is not surprising that pseudonymous users post more frequently. Another source of obvious selection bias is the disqus branding: I expect people who have Disqus accounts are both more likely to frequent blogs, and are more likely to recognize that they can easily comment on a blog with a Disqus comment section. By way of contrast, Facebook users may not even recognize that they have the credentials to easily comment, and may be reluctant to share their credentials with your third party service except in cases where they have a strong opinion about a piece of content.
I can see the data on comment quality being more objective and interesting, but even here there is probably selection bias: if most of the indicators of quality come from Disqus accounts' appraisals, then you may be measuring whatever bias Disqus users have as regards comment quality from Facebook commenters.
There's no selection bias here (other than the obvious, blogs using disqus), since they are using aggregate data. They make the false claim that pseudonyms contribute more though which does not follow from their data. They should show comments per user per login source data to make such a conclusion. Their current data only hint that using a disqus account is easier than facebook or anonymous.
I don't think there's such "comment racism" in disqus. I 'd argue most disqus users barely notice they are using disqus.
We sample data from the entire network of Disqus (which is over a million sites).
I may be wrong (as I'm not on the marketing side of things), but I believe when we're saying pseudonym we're saying "not Facebook". Things that let you choose whatever name you want, and not require your real name/singular identity.
Thanks for following up. I think you're confirming my assumption on the definition of "pseudonym", but correct me if you disagree.
Oh, and since I seem to have zeeg's attention ... why is it that every site I care about works just fine on my browser (Chromium/incognito mode/AdBlockPlus) but Disqus comments never load (I just get a "Disqus" spinning/loading GIF for ever)? I have stopped commenting on BoingBoing because it switched to Disqus and I don't care enough to debug.
If you don't have JS disabled like zeeg mentioned, AdBlockPlus is a red flag. Can you try incognito mode with no extensions enabled? If that doesn't fix this reach out to our support team at http://disqus.com/support and we'd be happy to lend a hand.
Comments
This page seems long on cute fuzzy pictures and short on content. They don't say what discussion forums they sampled: most likely, their own. They don't describe their methodology in detail (I looked in vain for a link to or citation of a proper experimental writeup.) And what did they learn?
As far as I can tell, they learned that people who bother to sign up for forum accounts ("pseudonyms", in their terminology) make more return visits/contributions than people who use least-effort ways of logging in (existing Facebook account, or anonymous contribution).
Well, that's a surprise.
We're going to blog about it which should shed more light on methodology -- TC just linked to the infographic. But yeah this was across the entire Disqus network, ~600 MM monthly UVs and ~60 MM commenters, and I believe "pseudonyms" include proprietary site logins + social media handles besides FB.
The major insight was that pseudonyms yield significantly more quantity and quality on the network. May seem obvious to you but wasn't so for many, including a number of us who've been with Disqus for years. The conventional wisdom was that anonymous comments would rank highest in quantity and FB comments would score highest in quality.
If I may offer a suggestion, perhaps mention that pseudonyms generally tend to be long-held identities - a lot of people think that pseudonyms are just throw-away identities used to gossip about your employer safely, instead of identities that persist for months, years or even decades. (A lot of people would recognize the handle CmdrTaco, but how many know his real name?)
(p.s. your backyard is awesome)
"pseudonyms generally tend to be long-held identities - a lot of people think that pseudonyms are just throw-away identities used to gossip about your employer safely, instead of identities that persist for months, years or even decades."
A fact too often forgotten. This is the same ignorance that keeps me from using Google+ while I'm prolific on Twitter.
Honestly I don't see how you could possibly have a reasonable methodology for the claims you make in the infographic.
How do you avoid selection bias, particularly in regards to frequency of comments? For example, a source of technical bias could be that it is a simpler process to log into a Disqus pseudonym than to authenticate with Facebook when posting. Usability is incredibly important in attracting repeat users, so if it is easier to post under a disqus username then it is not surprising that pseudonymous users post more frequently. Another source of obvious selection bias is the disqus branding: I expect people who have Disqus accounts are both more likely to frequent blogs, and are more likely to recognize that they can easily comment on a blog with a Disqus comment section. By way of contrast, Facebook users may not even recognize that they have the credentials to easily comment, and may be reluctant to share their credentials with your third party service except in cases where they have a strong opinion about a piece of content.
I can see the data on comment quality being more objective and interesting, but even here there is probably selection bias: if most of the indicators of quality come from Disqus accounts' appraisals, then you may be measuring whatever bias Disqus users have as regards comment quality from Facebook commenters.
There's no selection bias here (other than the obvious, blogs using disqus), since they are using aggregate data. They make the false claim that pseudonyms contribute more though which does not follow from their data. They should show comments per user per login source data to make such a conclusion. Their current data only hint that using a disqus account is easier than facebook or anonymous.
I don't think there's such "comment racism" in disqus. I 'd argue most disqus users barely notice they are using disqus.
Sorry, we put up the image first but haven't gotten a blog post up yet. We'll write about this and put up our thoughts soon.
We sample data from the entire network of Disqus (which is over a million sites).
I may be wrong (as I'm not on the marketing side of things), but I believe when we're saying pseudonym we're saying "not Facebook". Things that let you choose whatever name you want, and not require your real name/singular identity.
Thanks for following up. I think you're confirming my assumption on the definition of "pseudonym", but correct me if you disagree.
Oh, and since I seem to have zeeg's attention ... why is it that every site I care about works just fine on my browser (Chromium/incognito mode/AdBlockPlus) but Disqus comments never load (I just get a "Disqus" spinning/loading GIF for ever)? I have stopped commenting on BoingBoing because it switched to Disqus and I don't care enough to debug.
If you don't have JS disabled like zeeg mentioned, AdBlockPlus is a red flag. Can you try incognito mode with no extensions enabled? If that doesn't fix this reach out to our support team at http://disqus.com/support and we'd be happy to lend a hand.
Are you blocking JavaScript somehow? Or AdBlocking the disqus media maybe?