When I joined 5 years ago, Observables was a more active community. It seems like more high quality notebooks were being published, and there was more community engagement. Now, it is hard to find new good notebooks, because note many people are staring them.
Before, if I made a cool notebook, there was a good chance people would see it. Now, the only chance is if I share it on the Forum or slack, and I want to share only sparingly so other people have a chance to share their projects.
A few features I miss:
- a trending page that was not hidden, which increased engagement and the reward for creators
- notifications when someone hearted/starred your notebook. I search and star related notebooks for inspiration when creating a project. I check the profiles of people who star my stuff in case they are working on something related. You could also "farm" stars, by liking other peoples content so they check out your stuff. If you like 10 projects related to what you just published, there is a chance to get the 2 stars needed to get on trending. I also use my stared projects to save notebooks I might use as inspiration, so I don't like anything I don't actually want to save for later. It seemed like a good incentive structure for positive engagement
- Even though it wasn't implemented very well, it was nice to be able to subscribe and follow people, so if you find a creator that made good quality notebooks, you wouldn't miss them. What made this annoying was seeing when ever someone modified a notebook
Social engagement encourages creators, builds skills from feedback, connects people, and filters content. It feels like all that is lacking.
After a lot of dataviz people left twitter, there is not a clear community out there. Observables is my #1 dataviz community. Have better social features would benefit me, and the network effects and content creation would benefit you.
In general, I love observables. I spend a lot of time and effort on this site. I know you guys are focusing on more enterprise users, but please don't forget about the rest of us. And honestly, if the community was thriving and post would get more attention when they deserve it, I bet I could use that as a reason to use Observables more for work projects. The community engagement could help spot bugs or mistakes, and creating content and sharing on observables would help promote the stories and articles I work on.
When I joined 5 years ago, Observables was a more active community. It seems like more high quality notebooks were being published, and there was more community engagement. Now, it is hard to find new good notebooks, because note many people are staring them.
Before, if I made a cool notebook, there was a good chance people would see it. Now, the only chance is if I share it on the Forum or slack, and I want to share only sparingly so other people have a chance to share their projects.
A few features I miss:
Social engagement encourages creators, builds skills from feedback, connects people, and filters content. It feels like all that is lacking.
After a lot of dataviz people left twitter, there is not a clear community out there. Observables is my #1 dataviz community. Have better social features would benefit me, and the network effects and content creation would benefit you.
In general, I love observables. I spend a lot of time and effort on this site. I know you guys are focusing on more enterprise users, but please don't forget about the rest of us. And honestly, if the community was thriving and post would get more attention when they deserve it, I bet I could use that as a reason to use Observables more for work projects. The community engagement could help spot bugs or mistakes, and creating content and sharing on observables would help promote the stories and articles I work on.