What we're interested in is not the number of users, but the trends: whether the number is increasing or decreasing over time. Starting the axis at 0 would not be useful in this regard, as the trend would be almost completely obscured.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If the goal is to visualize growth trends, I don't think raw user counts are the correct value to track on the Y-axis at all. That's where my head was at when I said it doesn't make sense. Abusing the Y-axis to try and coax data out in this case is just a symptom of having the wrong measure.

Daily new users. Percent user growth.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 5 months ago

There is visible growth in posts and comments, which is good. However, I've also started seeing spam posts.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For something like that, you need a special graph, and I forget the name because no one uses it.

Y axis is "percent growth" and the X axis isn't at the bottom, it's in the middle.

Like, the only way I can describe it is a line graph because it technically is, but there's some name done it.

Capitalism doesn't like it tho, because there's "red numbers" and red numbers scare investors

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 1 points 5 months ago

At some point recognisability is also worth something. I can immediately read this graph, I understand it, it's good.

Occasionally it's used in a confusing way where people assume it starts at zero despite it not being the case, and sometimes intentionally so. But that's just the case here.