From Ning. Any suggestions for improvements? I will pass them on

"One of the coolest things about the new Like Buttons is that they enrich and improve the Ning Engagement System, which is what powers Network Leaderboards.

As a refresher,Leaderboards are designed to answer the question, What (and Who) is hot right now? Leaderboards aren't quite the same thing as a points/ranking system (which is a separate, cool idea) because Leaderboards are more worried about "What have you done for me lately" than "What's your all-time reputation/contribution."

You can control how to define "lately" by counting activity back to the past day, week, or month.

Here are the actions that increase the content engagement score (from most valuable to least valuable):

• A Comment
• A Like (Facebook or Network)
• Any kind of Share

At its core, that's it other factors come into play, such as a member's behavior. For example, if the member has already commented on several other posts, or commented on the same post several times, his/her comments will not be as valuable that day. Factors like these ensure that the Engagement System reflects what's actually interesting to the greatest number of members.

One other change we made recently was to make sure that content can show up in Leaderboards, even if it hasn't gotten any comments or likes yet. This means that small networks with less activity won't have empty Leaderboards.

We'll continue to tweak and improve the Ning Engagement System over time one of the things we're interested in today is how much more Likes should weigh vs. Comments. We made a decision based on how we see Likes and Comments used on other sites (like Facebook and Youtube), but as we collect more data on the Ning Platform we can hone this to better reflect how you and your members use the feature."