Current status : Finalizing the edgesense 1st testing, a report combining the 2 wikis will be added with visual examples. ( and if there is any new features being developed to be tested )
Challenges:
The visual complexity of the network is a challenge in the beginning.
The colors used in the network is similar to the ones used around it in the different tabs, it is better to use different colors to avoid confusion.
For older and big communities, it is hard to know which are the old communities and which are new, and how many of the old members are still active in discussions.
Double clicking on a node to show its network and moderators nodes are in black aren't mentioned in the tutorial.
overall, the tutorial helps a lot new users.
The size of the database is a challenge, sometimes it requires some processing beforehand in order to have a cleaner database to be used with edgesense.
Lessons learned
edgesense provides an easy way for users to have more of a network thinking about their communities.
It provides an overall understanding of the network, how big it is, how modular, and how information flows throughout the network.
It provides a quick tool in knowing more the central members of the community and the load of communication done by moderators.
It shows how the community develops, which could be used in various ways.
It shows how sustainable the sub-communities are with or without the moderators. ( sustainability here is about keeping the discussions going )
Some proposals
For the search feature:
adding “auto complete” from the user data base would be helpful. ( as in mentioning someone on the platform )
highlighting the searched node would be helpful.
For time-related Features
Having a 2 time sliders equivalent.
Distinguishing between fresh nodes and old nodes using colors or the ability to ghost out the currently ( choosing a time period of a year or 6 months ) inactive nodes.
Having the info of the “ time of changing the user to a node or the little active node into an active one” in real time. This would be helpful in on-boarding people and saving this info to check if there is a pattern in between signing up and contributing which could be helpful to know when to intervene as a community manager.
@Luca_Mearelli is leading the next big thrust for the development of Edgesense. So, this would be the right time to get some feedback to him.
However, realistically: our resources will soon dry out, and we will go into maintenance mode. So we are prioritizing hardening Edgesense (making it simpler to install and use, and debugging it) over new and fancy features.
