"Influence" as a metric for use in user rank formulas and reports

[#1]

I would like to see a user's influence in a community added to the other metrics that can be used in ranking formulas and in the user reports.

While there is some degree of subjectivity here, I think a couple numeric ways of measuring a user's influence would be:

* Number of user's posts that have been directly responded to by other users

* Number of user's posts that have been quoted by other users (this would have slightly more weight than the above)

Influence can of course be either positive or negative and a simple measurement of these stats would not be a definite measure of influence but it could be a very useful guide and especially useful for incorporation into ranks.

Thoughts?

[#2]

Hey Jon. I'm the PM for Analytics here at Lithium and I can say with certainty that we will be implementing influence in different places coming up, including user reports. Let me know if you would have time to take this conversation offline. I'd love to get your thoughts.