mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (11/08/85)
> The large volume of net.*.mac should show how valuable these groups >are to a relatively large part of the net. I don't think that an >insignificant number of people could generate this many postings to >net.*.mac. You'ld be suprised. The following chart gives an example of what happens when you subtract the Top 25 Users from the Top 25 Groups. These numbers are derived from seismo's stats, and thus ignore contribution of less than 5% to a group. Old No. of %Chg. Rank Rank Kbytes in size Group 1 3 376.8 18.2% net.politics 2 1 352.9 59.8% net.sources.mac 3 5 303.6 4.6% net.flame 4 4 255.2 27.9% net.micro.mac 5 8 255.1 5.0% net.music 6 7 224.2 17.8% net.movies 7 12 220.9 0.0% net.women 8 2 220.8 36.0% net.sources 9 11 208.8 7.2% net.sf-lovers 10 13 207.5 5.3% net.micro.atari 11 17 194.3 6.7% net.unix-wizards 12 14 186.4 14.9% net.religion 13 18 174.0 11.8% net.abortion 14 19 169.7 4.6% net.micro.pc 15 9 168.1 36.7% net.politics.theory 16 20 164.5 6.0% net.lang.c 17 21 159.5 5.5% net.micro 18 15 150.8 30.3% net.audio 19 23 141.5 0.0% net.singles 20 24 133.1 4.4% net.cooks 21 22 132.0 12.5% net.religion.christian 22 25 124.6 7.7% net.unix 23 16 112.9 47.1% net.origins 24 6 106.2 62.4% net.philosophy 25 10 38.2 83.2% net.sources.games Let me draw your attention to a number of entries. First, note that with 60% of its traffic removed, Net.sources.mac is STILL huge; in fact, it would have placed 5th in the unmodified list! A few people ARE generating that much traffic. Also, note how many of the large groups have relatively small changes; this tends to indicate a lot of posters, and thus a high demand for the group. What's really interesting, though, are the big droppers. net.philosophy and net.sources.games really stand out, followed by net.origins and net.politics.theory. Ignoring games sources for the moment, it think it's fair to ask whether the other three should not become mailing lists. Not that the changes in some of the groups would actually be greater if some of the Top 25 posters went away, due to the "power of the point-by-point reply" in including text and demanding postings. Certainly net.philosophy, for one, would decrease further. Charley Wingate
drg@rlvd.UUCP (Duncan Gibson) (11/12/85)
I think that it would be interesting to find out what the average net user actually does. I mean, is the average net.(has it gone yet?).bizarre poster an undergraduate student who regards the net as a plaything? What are the top 25 submitters, hardware designers, politicians, etc? Similarly, what sort of reader subscribes to each group? [Once I work out how to specify, and then verify my software, I may make the metamorphosis into a Software Engineer (gasp :-) ] -- UUCP: ..!ukc!rlvd![rlvc!]drg ARPA: drg%rl.vc@ucl.cs JANET: drg@rl.vc