[pvg]

The "decreased per-user engagement" evidence in this post is a bit thin. Mostly based on a kind of strange apparent outlier of accounts going idle (1+ year) in 2023 but the binning is also a full year and the 'idle year' is counted in a weird clippy (i.e. looking at calendar year rather than elapsed year) way. So it's one (aggregate) data point at the very end of the data. It might not be wrong but it feels somewhat iffy to draw conclusions from.

[osm3000]

> Mostly based on a kind of strange apparent outlier of accounts going idle (1+ year) in 2023

Well, it is just outliers in 2023. This is an upward trend since 2020.

> but the binning is also a full year and the 'idle year' is counted in a weird clippy (i.e. looking at calendar year rather than elapsed year) way

Granted, and I acknowledge this limitation. My idea, however, is that when studying many users in the same manner, this will even out. Why? Because a full calendar year implies somewhere between 0-2 elapsed years. So the average elapsed year, over many users, is 1 year.

[pvg]

The upward trend is much smaller than what happens in 2023 so that looks worth looking into. When you have this one outlier and one year can actually mean two years, it's not completely clear how much of the outlier is actual outlieriness and how much is some accidental artifact.

[osm3000]

Hey,

I double checked. I don't really see an issue. The only specific thing that affects 2023 is that I removed the users seen / last seen in 2024 (since it is not complete year). The aggregation is simple also: count the users first seen, grouped by year. count the users last seen, grouped by year.

There was a separate issue though (I didn't filter out the "dead" and "deleted" stories / comments). I fixed that and updated the article. Some values changed, but the patterns and conclusions stands.

[pvg]

Thanks for looking into this. I'll try to reproduce this myself (but with elapsed times) and see what happens.

Just to double check we're talking about the same thing: The red line is 'users who have been inactive for a year or more, at the time of the aggregate point'. So, for instance, for 2016 you'd have a point for 'users with a year+ inactivity, counted from 2016 back'.

[osm3000]

> Thanks for looking into this. I'll try to reproduce this myself (but with elapsed times) and see what happens.

That will be great! Please don't hesitate to reach out if there is anything I can help with.

> Just to double check we're talking about the same thing: The red line is 'users who have been inactive for a year or more, at the time of the aggregate point'. So, for instance, for 2016 you'd have a point for 'users with a year+ inactivity, counted from 2016 back'.

Not quite. It is means the user has been last seen in that year (2016). By "last seen" I mean the user last shared story or comment (separate graphs) was that year.

[pvg]

I guess I don't exactly understand 'last seen, (not active from >= year)'. So to be part of the red value for a given year, you have to be seen in that year and then what? Be idle for a year after that? What's the connection between seen-ed-ness and idleness?

[osm3000]

I will double check. I see your point