Sparklines for members of online communities

To quote the sparkline.org site: "Sparklines are "intense, simple, wordlike graphics" so named by Edward Tufte. " Sparkline trends can be immediately understood with only a glance. Online communities pivot around two things: the quality of the contributions and the quality of the people contributing. Sites so far have mostly focused on the quality of the contributions - content gets 'upvoted' and becomes more popular as more members view/comment on it. However the quality of the people contributing has largely been neglected. How often do you read a contribution or comment and wonder about the credibility of the person commenting? Are they a community leader? A newbie? The silent but profound type? A sparkline next to a member's name can immediately provide you with this sort of knowledge.

Put time on the X-axis. Put 'popularity' on the Y-axis; popularity being defined by the current community standard - voting, hits etc. Each dot is a single contribution/comment, on the x-axis at the time it was first posted. Here are some example graphs.

Much more informative than the ubiquitous photo next to a user name. I'd love to see this in action with real data. If anyone has a community site and wants to try it out, I'd be happy to work with them on the graphics/presentation.