From Fedora Project Wiki
EKG
An ECG of a Mailing List- Measuring the pulse :)
Vision: Information at your fingertips!
The Project seeks to be one stop "status monitor" of the general Mailing List activities.
Aims
1. To Display data in a clear concise way such that nitty gritty details don't bother the layuser(eg. the "websurfer"), while at the same time providing in-depth details for those who truly want it(eg. Developers).
2. The tool is NOT just for the "boss". It is for everyone to see whats going on.
3. "A picture can speak a thousand words"- use of visual aids-charts, graphs- to quickly get a glimpse.
4. Provide a way for the community at large to know the effectiveness of the ML-
- a. How quickly people respond to queries- { This could act as a method of comparison between two ML dealing with similar topics. }
- b. Hotspots- Based on usage of certain keywords and the depth of replies hotspots can be detected(say if an update breks, there will likely be a lot of questions and comments and replies on the topic)
- c. Common cases: { We would like to know what are the frequently asked questions. This could be based on keywords from subject lines}
- d. Posting guideline violators: {Top posters, people who quote entire digests, HTML,etc}
- e. New Members: Number of new unique posters on the ML. { This will indicate the effectiveness, popularity of ML(related to point a. ?) }
- f. Finding Mr/Ms Helpful: { based on keywords in replies we can get an idea of people who are most helpful on the ML- this is often beneficial information for newcomers }
- g. Working Hours: Estimate the working hours and working days of developers. { For example certain developers work on weekend while others do not; some reply to ML threads on certain days only- this info is useful in many cases }
- h. Hot Projects: { Projects which are drawing the newcomers, projects having
- i. Locations: We'd like to know where our posters are from.
5. The details should be current and there should be options for downloading/archiving results.
6. Fedora-Specific:
- a. Number of meetings(based on announcements on ML). { This will tell how frequently meeting are held by a specific group.-Often people don't update the meeting schedule wiki so this will give more accurate results about both frequency and schedule(date-time formats will be a trouble?) }
- b. ML subscribers who became contributors: { By correlating information in one list with that of other list we can track new members who became contributors. say by correlating new ambassadors(Joerg uses a pretty standard format =) ) with eg. rawhide report to see how long it takes for ambassadors to turn developers, packagers, etc }