brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (05/19/88)
Dividing the newsgroups up into the 238 groups from before newsgroup reorganization and the 97 groups created after reorganization, I got the following statistics. (Groups taken from order in watmath's active file.) Modified New group figures come from 86 groups, after removing ALT groups and very recent newcomers from the list: Old group average readership: 9,500 New group average readership: 4,900 Modified New group average : 4,700 (alt groups are popular!) Old group average propagation: 93% New group average propagation: 73% New without ALT and very new: 75% Old group average volume: 189 msgs/month 433 K/month New group average volume: 79 msgs/month 177 K/month Modified New avg volume: 72 msgs/month 162 K/month It is uncertain what conclusions to draw. It seems that newer groups just aren't making it around the net very easily, causing a sort of fringe death. The lower readership figure for new groups is partly due to the lower propagation. The higher volume in K in old groups is due to the presence of most source and many binary groups in this class. That the real cost of the net is the time people spend reading articles they don't want to see does not seem to be a popular sentiment. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473