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    "...There are groups of a few hundred people on both MSE and MSO that essentially show the kind of engagement that we'd normally see on the main site, without much activity on the main site..." - How are you defining "main site" the second time here? Just SO? Or any site on the network? Also, what time frame for engagement are you taking into account? If I've largely paused activity on main sites for a few months yet still partake in meta, in what category would I fall?
    – Mithical
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 18:37
  • 73
    Tl; Dr: the town council meetings are boring and poorly-attended, but turns out the entire Chamber of Commerce membership reads the minutes.
    – Shog9
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 18:49
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    Downvoted - not really an answer, or at the very least an extremely evasive one.
    – Sébastien Renauld
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 18:52
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    @SébastienRenauld I appreciate your position. It's not my intent to be evasive, but to give you what I have, even if it's not much. That's better than deliberately not answering until "everything is clear" (which objectively might never happen), and answering is better than crickets. If I had more solid info I'd provide it (and I imagine it will be provided once we're more sure of a bunch of things).
    – user50049
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 18:57
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    @Mithical Most reporting is quarterly and under perfectly normal circumstances, quarterly would make a lot of sense when we set meta engagement goals going forward. The last six months do skew things pretty considerably, but not so much that your previous activity would have made you less visible when all of 2019 is examined. If anything, you'd just fall in all categories, which isn't uncommon with a lot of folks that stayed logged in but didn't do much else pretty suddenly. It'll be months before that data normalizes again no matter what.
    – user50049
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 19:06
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    Folks that are heavily invested in Meta might not always show the same behaviors in how they use it ... until lately, I intended to do both. It is up to SE Inc. to convince that I want to seriously contribute to any main ever again ...
    – GhostCat
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 19:07
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    @Tensibai I did not ask for approval of this post or show it to anyone prior to writing it.
    – user50049
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 19:07
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    Well, it was intuitive enough that I depended on it to do my job for 9 years, @anonymous. But different people have different intuitions... That's always the danger with data: if you're not careful, you cherry-pick the facts that reinforce your existing biases instead of looking for that which might explain what has been observed, or reveal what is unseen.
    – Shog9
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 19:15
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    People, it's all about perspective here. Some of you claim Tim is being evasive, as he isn't sharing much facts. On the other hand Tim thought, let's be pro-active and show what we DO have right now, instead of waiting 6-8 time units untill things are set in stone. Lets just remember we can't have it both ways...
    – Luuklag
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 19:16
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    @Luuklag Agreed. Also, to me this reads as a completely appropriate response to looking at complexities in data of this type, and reflects a much more reasonable approach than throwing out some numbers to say: "oh, before we thought X% of users were on meta; now we realize its Y%" - that approach itself is the wrong one so I think it's misguided to demand more specifics when more specifics are not useful. Thanks Tim.
    – Bryan Krause
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 19:28
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    It might be light on details, but it IS an answer; and the tone while vague seems to be "meta might have more impact than we initially thought".
    – Culyx
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 19:31
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    @TimPost Thank you for your answer. One of the things that I, and others here, have been complaining about is that there's not enough communication from company staff to us. Although I would've preferred more specific & conclusive info, I appreciate that you made the effort to communicate to us what you currently know as best as you could. I trust that you, or somebody else, will continue to keep us informed with the best data available at the time.
    – John Omielan
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 19:45
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    Thank you for your answer. The communication is greatly appreciated.
    – Stevoisiak
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 20:27
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    @SébastienRenauld but this post isn't "legalese/marketese language", it's sharing what can be shared from incomplete work in progress, which is a good thing and one of many things that has been desperately lacking recently. We want to see incomplete ideas early like this, because that's the point it's possible to help improve them, before they're set in stone. I understand the frustration and feel the same way, but please don't poison the well by lashing out at baby-steps in the right direction.
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 21:50
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    One of our devs (actually, the one that had the eureka moment) will be chiming in soon folks. I don't have an ETA because they've got to take a lot of internal stuff and get it ready for display (although, not much of it is really all that seekrit, it's just hard to explain without some context). Anyway, they said they'd drop a line soon to get specific where I just wasn't sure enough about what I interpreted to really say. So there should be another answer soon. Hang tight :)
    – user50049
    Commented Feb 18, 2020 at 4:01