Visualizing the Unfettered Mind Network (Part VI)

[Ann Braun]

Continuing on from part v, first a summary of this series of blog entries, then a bit about the diversity of participation in the Forum conversations and finally a few questions.....

Summary of previous blogs on this topic:
The first two blog posts on the topic of Visualizing the Unfettered Mind Network appeared in Dec 2008, when there were about 250 people subscribed to UM Ning. These posts focused on the geography, age and practice level of members. Most of the members were from the USA with a small contingent in Canada, the UK and the remainder dispersed around the world. More than half of the USA-based members of UM Ning were living in California. Interestingly, the Dec 08 snapshop indicated that participation in forums and blogs tended to be lower among people who live in Los Angeles and in the surrounding state of California and higher in zones further away.

Ages of UM Ning members ranged from 22 to 72 with the biggest chunk between 50 and 60 yrs old (noting that only about half supplied birthdates when joining), and most classified their practice level as experienced (2-5 yrs) or mature (>5 yrs). Participation in forums and blogs was higher amongst people at experienced and mature practice levels. An update based on today's membership (423 people) shows that these patterns have changed very little with growth. (Click link for graphs showing this: current age & practice level profiles.ppt )

The third blog entry cast attention on the intention behind Unfettered Mind (see HERE for details) as an open, fluid and responsive network of relationships between participants who live and practice to be awake, and also as an experimental model of Buddhist perspectives and methods in action. The network is envisioned as three concentric circles. The outermost circle consists of people who use the various UM resources in their own way. The second circle consists of those who use the resources to transform understanding into knowing; by coming to retreats and other programs, and making use of individual consultations. The innermost circle, or "core participants" are those who make things happen: retreat and program managers and those who see to the recording and posting of podcasts, design and development of the websites, transcriptions of talks, design of newsletters, books, and other forms of communication, etc.

Info collected for the fourth blog entry on 19 August showed that membership had increased to over 400. With the implementation of Google Analytics in Jan 2009 data on visits to the site became available. While 69% of current members live in the US, 42% of visits to the site are from outside the US. Sixty three % of visits are made by people returning to the site. New visitors most often visit the main page, the Barometer and the members page. This is followed by Photos, the Forum, Group and Ken's profile.

The Google Analytics data show that connection (through the messaging and comment functions available on the personal profile pages) is the first priority for returning visitors, followed by content.
The most popular content for this group is the Forum followed by Groups, Events and lastly by the Photos and Videos.

In fifth blog in the series I reported on a quick survey of other sites on Ning with a Buddhist theme and concluded that UM Ning's participation level is encouraging when viewed in this wider context.

Participation in the Forum:
Turning to the question of participation in the Forum conversations, I wondered about the diversity of participation. Unfortunately Google Analytics can't help here -- the only way to explore this was to tabulate manually who the participants are and how frequently they contribute. This raised the question of how to sample the Forum conversations --I opted for a pragmatic approach and looked at the most popular conversation in each forum category.

The findings are diagrammed in this downloadable file:
Participation in the most popular conversations on UM Ning.doc

As of 13 August 42 people had participated in a set of conversations consisting of the most popular conversation in each Forum category. These conversations drew 5 to 16 participants. Seven people participated consistently across the categories -- (consistent is defined here as participation in 4 or more of the 9); four participated frequently (in 3 of the 9) and 31 participated occasionally (in 1 or 2 of the 9). The findings suggest that a person who initiates a Forum conversation is more likely to participate in other conversations across the Forum, and that the conversations with a greater diversity of participants also tend to have larger numbers of replies or contributions. In other words, conversations with a lot of contributions tend not to be restricted to a small number of people.

[Sharon]

Thank you for all your research.

[Sharon]

Amazing. You statistics confirm what I had surmised.

[Ann Braun]

Hi Ellen,

Thanks very much for reading this blog and especially for sharing your feeling of surprise about what you've been finding as you explore the site as a new member. It was set up to provide a channel for finding and interacting with like-minded people around practice points and related matters. This is a very open field. While there are many topics that have a scholarly flavour, there is no intention or expectation that discussions and responses should do so. It's really up to us as participants to open new ground and to take our explorations in directions that are useful to us. I do hope you will feel free to raise the questions that are important to you and to share your experience.

[Ellen Fishman]

Hi Anne,
Being new to the ning network I was surprised by the consistency of participation of a few.
One part of me is hesitant to place a topic up for discussion because of the past conversations.
Some of the responses are very scholarly . I am not a scholar of Buddhism , rather a
practitioner who is new to this part of the site. Therefore I am just reading not participating.
Ellen

[Henry Landry]

Thanks for this Anne, Henry Nichiren Buddha Hokekyo Society, Vancouver Island, BC Canada