Importance of Taking a Break

Recently I have been looking into @holoz0r 's Hive Report Card. If you haven't seen it, go do it now, because it will tell you lot about the following:

• Yourself
• People you are curious about

Both are important to me, but the second bullet is about an order of magnitude more important than the first. This is simply because I don't have enough time in the day to read all posts at hive, LOL! I don't even have enough time to read the people I like to read. However, I do fee responsible to know about their writing trend from the data. There are many ways to do it. If you read holoz0r's recent post, he made an excellent tool to do just that.

I responded to him that I have many comments to make, which will require a full post, so there you have it. I will start with my own data.

The first image is a basic information dashboard, which I find useful. First it pull my 700 total post in 49 seconds (yes, I used a stop watch), that is impressive. It shows my longest break time, 1 year almost precisely. Then below it shows the words that I have written over time. The plot is very revealing. It shows the big break and a smaller break, and how my writing frequency (performance?) improved after the breaks. Here are my suggestions for the dashboard, if you please consider @holoz0r ...

1. Currently you have 4 text button right under the name search bar, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Year-to-date, and All time. May I please suggest a few addition buttons
   • first 6 months
   • first 1 year
   • first 2 years
2. In the dashboard, "second longest break" and period length
3. Post/day during first period, and second period, and third period (if there are two breaks, then there are 3 periods, n+1)
4. I think post/week box will be valuable, as lot of people see hive 'active posts' that way

It would be nice to label those breaks with a arrow markers on this chart above. Like this..

It is very interesting, that my writing style and, I would say my goal at hive, changed drastically after break 1. After break 2, the change was subtle, but incremental. I have life events associated with those, so I remember clearly what happened. I am excited to see it reflected in the data.

Then it is the day of the week, moth, year breakdown of posting. I like this a lot too. I notice the break in the yearly post display. I live in Houston, which is UTC -6. So I see my sleeping time in the hour of the day plot. The single digit numbers in purple boxes are 11pm to 5am CST. The few that I see there are likely I was writing from other parts of the world during my travels. I see 2pm - 4pm, Friday to Monday is the time I most commonly post, which makes sense to me as those 4 days I don't work. I only work 3 days a week typically.

Only one suggestion I have for @holoz0r here: is it possible to set your local time zone here, so that an user can customize this display (only optional and nice to have).

Readability

I have two kids in school, so Flesch–Kincaid readability tests is nothing new to me. I am glad to see that they are incorporated here. Personally speaking, I like to write as I speak. I write this blog as a journal. I write directly on peakd without any spellcheck or grammar check. You it is very common to find a lot of typo on my posts, I rarely read back and correct them. I feel free to write this way, because I am just writing for myself. If you are reading it, that is your choice! That said, I am glad to see that my writing style is rather consistent. I also like to write in a way that an average middle school kid can consume and understand (my older just started high school).

I don't know which formula you are using, it might be helpful to mention it.

Regardless, both are simplistic metrics but objective at the same time. These are accepted method to understand readability, so I am supportive of this tool.

That is all that I have in terms of review and request. I am glad that you have put this together for the community. I am looking forward to use it more to test others writing and therefore hive etiquettes. I think it is also critical for many game related content writers, as English is not their first language (just like me). One thing I have always said that people can use hive in a variety of different ways. Gamers from all over the world blogging and improving their English writing skills is an important by-product of this ecosystem.