We recently decided to review the top 25 users on Indianpad.com as ranked by Karma. The top Indianpadder list can be found here. There appears to be around 30,000 users on the system but growing daily. The users are gain power (or karma) on the system by actively participating on the site, by submitting and voting on stories, and by voting early on an emerging article or video.
New users start with a Karma level of 6.0 and can increase to as high as 20. When a user has a high Karma level, the user wields considerable power on the site. For instance, if a high karma user votes down your story, you can pretty much kiss it goodbye.
You have to admire these users though, they spend significant time building a community that in the future will have considerable influence on what’s popular in India.
The Gender Break Down
The gender break down was a little surprising given the amount of men that dominate the list. 16% of the users didn’t identify themselves as either so they are listed as unknown in the chart below.
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The Age Range
The average age of the IndianPad user is 24.6 years old but only 13 of the top 25 gave their age in their profiles so the sample is slightly limited. The oldest user in the top 25 is only 36 which may mean that the community is likely to cater to the younger Indian generation or that younger users have more time to build up their Karma. I did a quick sort on the age tab and found that the oldest user is
Geographic Break Down
Most of the top 25 users are located in India, while the remainder are predictably in the US and the UK (one power user is in Canada). This shows that while articles and videos on India are mostly being promoted on this site by Indians, the site does have some top users from outside of India.
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Vote Count
Votes are used on the Indianpad to promote or demote a story. The top 25 users have much more influence than you do over which stories are put on the Indianpad’s homepage (which creates more traffic). I was amazed at the amount of votes some of these users have made with the top voter Indianboy responsible for an amazing 41,574 votes. According to his profile, Indianboy started on Indianpad on July 11, 2006 which means that he is voting on average 100 times a day!
Karma Levels
As we mentioned earlier Karma is a score that is determined by the user’s participation on Indianpad but also how other users view your participation. For instance, you can’t spam the site or your Karma will be quickly driven down. The Karma levels on Indianpad are interesting because even the top Karma user Devilsworkshop has only a 14.8 (out of 20) rating on Indianpad. One wonders even with all of his work on the site, the user can get to 20.
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News Stories Submitted
It’s clear to me that the number of stories that are submitting by users has a significant effect on a users Karma level. As you can see below, the top users;
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all have contributed a significant amount of story items. In fact the top story submitter Devilsworkshop is also the top Karma user.
Comments on Stories
The number of comments also seems to be a significant part of the Karma equation while maybe having a slightly less effect than story submission, because it appears that a story that is submitting then promoted to the front page gives one a higher Karma while a comment cannot. spencer_911 and avaksi seem to be benefiting from higher comments levels and for that contribution it helps them stay in the top 5.
In Summary
The top 25 Indianpad users wield significant influence on what is published or sent to the front page. The amount of time invested by the top 5 individuals is immense yet they do it without apparent compensation. In the future, high ranking profiles will wield significant influence over what is seen by the internet community. Think of them as individual public relations engines that will someday replace the large "mainstream" public relation companies but much more mobile.
…and if you found this useful; feel free to submit to www.Indianpad.com or give it a stumble.
2 comments:
nice review.
Here are some details on how karma is calculated on IndianPad.
Some things have changed over time but this is still quite accurate.
Link - http://www.indianpad.com/story/22122
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