What is on Your Mind?

Working on some "new forum virtual economics" I have taken the total number of Bits in Circulation (user checking + savings) and divided that by the total number of posts, and have called this (for a lack of better name), the Forum Activity Index (FAI).

You can now see this index on your banking page.

Next, I am thinking to take the total Bits in Circulation (as above) and divide by the number of members who have posted, but I need to think more about this.

If you have any ideas, please do post them.

Right now, the FAI is 2,333 User Bits / Post ....

But I am not sure what it means

---------- Post updated at 21:39 ---------- Previous update was at 20:49 ----------

One problem I thought of right away is that the central bits bank has been reclaiming bits from users who are inactive for over two years. This means that the FAI is lower than it should be if all the inactive user bits were in circulation.....

hmmmmm

I think that works pretty logically to me.

Activity/registrations are like demographics ( births/deaths ) so for it to be skewed by reclaiming bits doesn't really matter.

Well, one of the problems with it is that if a person posts a great post 5 years ago, and it is viewed by 10s of thousands of people, all that activity is lost when we reclaim their Bits (f they are inactive for two years). The post activity is lost as well as all the activity of people reading it (losing economic significance).

One idea I had is to simply change the algorithm where

Code:

FAI(2) =   Bits in Circulation (Activity within 2 Years) / Number of Posts (In the Past 2 years)

Or:

Code:

FAI(2) =   Bits in Circulation (Activity within 2 Years) / Number of Posts (By Users with Activity Over the Past 2 years)

Making it the "Two Year FAI" ..... or something along those likes.

Be like other central banks and report yearly figures.

OK, for the time being, I made the change above, which translates to (for those who care about the technical details):

Code:

$fai2_posts = $db->query_first('SELECT COUNT(*) AS total FROM ' . TABLE_PREFIX . 'post WHERE dateline > (UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - (60 * 60 * 24 * 365 * 2))');

I think I'll add one for one year as well, maybe the FAI(1)

Would it be an idea to graph such metrics?

Changed this metric to the FAI1 on the banking page - the One Year Forum Activity Index (FAI1)