mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (03/27/86)
In article <3389@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP writes: >I do think we need a new measure of group utility. Previously that measure >has been total volume. I suggest we consider using total volume divided by >the number of DIFFERENT posters over a given time. This could be implemented >easily as part of the newslist data at seismo, and will give us a good ratio >of total interest, assuming you believe that 1 megabyte posted by 20 people >is more useful than 1 megabyte posted by three people. There are some groups >where this breaks down (especially *.sources* and net.jokes, I would guess) >but would be that total number of posters would be a good measure of the >total number of readers. Comments? I think this sort of statistic would be useful, but I think it might be more fruitful to look at avg. articles per poster instead of avg. size per poster. This # articles metric has the advantage that it doesn't penalize the sources groups or net.jokes, too. In general, I'm all for any kind of numbers gathering which can improve our understanding of how the various groups behave. C. Wingate