mangler@cit-vax.UUCP (06/05/87)
Everybody knows that relatively few people contribute most of
the news articles. I decided to get some numbers on this.
Out of 18350 entries in our spool directory (about 15000 articles)
there were 5843 different From: addresses. Of these,
195000 readers posted nothing
3037 posted 1 article
1056 2 articles
500 3 articles
308 4 articles
215 5 articles
379 6 to 9 articles
348 ten or more articles
The top 691 posters (0.35% of the readers) accounted for half of the
articles, or an average of 13 each.
(Due to over-simplistic method, cross-postings were treated as
multiple articles).
It looks like about 1% of the readers are "regular" posters, and
everybody else either never posts, or only posts requests for info.
I don't have sufficient data to back this up, though, and I'm not
set up to collect data on a long-term basis like Brian Reid does.
It's been observed that the various new-user documents have limited
effect. This should not be surprising, since the grand majority of
the volume is not new posters, rather, it is the repeat posters.
The posters ultimately determine the character of Usenet. It may
behoove us to know something about their demographics.
Don Speck speck@vlsi.caltech.edu {seismo,rutgers,ames}!cit-vax!speckrobs@uottawa.UUCP (Robert Stanley Cognos Projec) (06/18/87)
In article <2952@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> mangler@cit-vax.UUCP writes: >Everybody knows that relatively few people contribute most of >the news articles.... What I find even more interesting is that these same few people appear to fill the same role in almost all on-line fora. The same signatures are to be found across most of the major networked services, such as CompuServe, Delphi, Genie, etc. I suspect (but from a very restricted personal sample) that these same people are major players down to the local BBS level. However, the BBS also attract the 'amateur' world, who are only computer users in the privacy of their own homes, and not as their major source of income. >It looks like about 1% of the readers are "regular" posters, and >everybody else either never posts, or only posts requests for info. By inspection this would appear to be so, but this is similar to other forms of social intercourse and technological gatekeeping. In all areas of human endeavour there are single voices which are heard as the definitive word. What is interesting in netland is that these voices are truly divorced from all social prejudices other than those they choose to reveal in their own words. The two obvious common characteristics of the members of this 1% are that they are professional users of computers, and that they devote a great deal of time to being on-line. >The posters ultimately determine the character of Usenet. It may >behoove us to know something about their demographics. The demography would be interesting, but more the social and physical environments than the geographical, which for perhaps the first time in human history has been transcended absolutely. Speaking for myself, a low-sleep, batchelor, computer addict (with a 20+ year habit), I wonder how many of these 1% voices share at least two of these properties? :=} Robert_S