How communities work, and the rules almost nobody configures
Every community runs its own chart, and that chart can follow different rules from the Global 100
A community on ChartFM works like a miniature site. It has a feed, discussions, members and, most importantly, its own weekly chart.
The community chart is built from its members' charts, the same way the Global 100 is built from everyone's charts. The difference is that the community owner can change the rules.
Three configurable rules
Three settings change the outcome considerably, and most communities never touch any of them.
Chart size
Sets how many positions the community's official chart has. The value sits between 10 and 100.
A chart of 10 positions in a small community is far more contested and shifts more every week. A chart of 100 in a community of fifteen people tends to have a dead tail, where the last positions are just one song one person placed.
How many positions from each member count
This is the most powerful setting and the least used. It caps how many positions from each member's chart enter the count.
If the cap is 10, only the first ten songs from each person's chart count, even if they published fifty. The rest is ignored.
The effect is to level the weight between members. Without a cap, someone publishing a chart of a hundred positions influences more of the community chart than someone publishing ten. With a cap, everyone enters with the same number of votes.
If your community has a chart that looks dominated by two or three very active people, this is probably the setting that is missing.
A custom points table
By default, the community chart uses the same scale as the rest of the site, 1000 down to 10.
But the owner can define a table of their own, position by position. In that case one consequence matters: a position left out of the table is discarded, not scored as zero. If the table holds ten values, each member's eleventh position simply does not count.
It is useful for a community that wants to imitate the format of a specific chart, with its own scoring.
The community chart does not affect the Global 100
This is worth stating plainly because it causes confusion. Community rules apply inside the community only.
The same chart you publish counts twice under different rules: on the Global 100 by the standard scale, and on the community chart by whatever the owner configured. You do not have to do anything differently, and there is no conflict.
Starting week
A community can also have a starting week, which is the first week eligible for its official chart.
This serves a community created mid year that does not want to drag in history from before it existed. Without it, members' older charts would feed community chart weeks from before the community was there.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need to publish a different chart for the community?
- No. The community chart reads the chart you already publish. Joining five communities does not mean building five charts.
- Who changes these settings?
- The community owner, in its settings.
- Do empty communities show up on the site?
- A community with no members does not enter the featured blocks on public pages. A page with little content hurts anyone arriving from outside, so it stays out of the showcase until there is activity.
- Does changing the points table recalculate the past?
- The chart is recalculated from members' charts, so changing the rule changes the displayed result. It is not a number frozen in the database.
