Are Creators denied access to important member data?

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

This is more of an issue than anything else.

I wanted to gather some statistics about the members of my site, specifically I wanted to see how many members were BELOW the age of 18, how many were in the 19-30 range, the 31-40 range, etc. How many men and women. I realized it would be a slow, back-breaking process, but I was willing to tackle it to get the information I wanted.

But...I suddenly realized that if a member chooses NOT to display their age OR their sex on their profile page, then we NC's have NO access to that information!!!  Am I correct in that??

So my question is, how can I better serve my members if I have NO idea of the demographics of my site??

A site that is teenager-heavy would focus in one direction, but a site skewed towards older folks would shift the focus entirely!!

This seems like a very important bit of information that is being withheld from creators! If I was making money with this stuff, I'd be DEMANDING this option!!

[Janice Priestley]

I ask them their age category when they sign-up. Most seem to fill it in accurately

[Digital Janitor]

Hey Diane,

From what I can tell you can get all the registration question info if you go to...

My Network > Moderation (under the members section)

At the bottom of the list of members is a link to export data as a csv.

By doing so all the questions you ask are listed in there with the profile data.

Hope that helps.

[Evan]

Hey Diane!

Thanks for posting this. Are you looking at each profile one-by-one? I apologize if you've already tried this, but have you tried exporting your member data to a spreadsheet? Just head to the Members "Moderation" section, and follow this tutorial. That should contain the data you're looking for. If it doesn't, please let me know.

/Evan
Ning Product Manager

[Digital Janitor]

Thanks Evan, good to know that my solutions are more in tune with Ning then they were when I first started. I am sure your glad to see that as well, thanks for the confirmation. ;)

Have a great day!

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

THANKS!!! Obviously I WAS missing something!!!

That's the good thing about this forum! (I swear, I thought I looked everywhere!)

Thanks again!!

[Digital Janitor]

No worries Diane, glad I was able to help out!

God Bless

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

I just used this function and it's AMAZING! Thanks so much for pointing this out to me. I suppose it's because it's at the VERY BOTTOM of the page is why I didn't notice it.

Anyway, I found some very interesting information about my site this evening!

Everyone thinks Twilight is a "teeny bopper" thing for little girls under the age of 15! I found out differently!

The majority of my members are in their 20s and above!!

Nearly 30% are in their 20s.
21% are in their 30s
13% are in their 40s
and 6% of my members are 50 and above! (I HAVE 640 TOTAL MEMBERS)

Wow...

LOVE THIS FEATURE!

[Digital Janitor]

Glad we could help out.

[Frank]

Hi Evan,

For my site, I require members to be over 18 so I'm forced to ask my members their age TWICE, which is not only weird and annoying during the sign-up process but also uses up one of my precious 12 profile questions, which are already too limited.

If administrators were able to see the age of members as they sign up, then my moderators and I could age-screen potential applicants and streamline this process.

Any possibility of adding this feature? Or as an alternative, adding the ability to require all members to show their age to everyone?

Best,
Frank

[Evan]

Hey Frank!

Yup, it's in the plans. We'd like to allow NCs to choose what age range they want to allow.

/Evan
Ning Product Manager

[Frank]

Any timeline on that feature? Still waiting on the new roadmap...

[Evan]

Nope, not yet. Stay tuned!

/Evan
Ning Product Manager