[bionet.molbio.genbank] bionet/biosci popularity

kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) (03/21/90)

More information on the readership of the bionet.* newsgroups on
USENET.  This does NOT include all of our users who receive BIOSCI
messages via e-mail on the Internet, BITNET, EARN, JANET, etc.
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From Eliot Lear at GenBank to Roy Smith and I regarding the USENET
distribution of GenBank data:

> > I've sent out a sendsys message

Response from Roy Smith:

> It got here this morning.  Just off the top of my head, I'll guess 100
> sites get bionet.  What's your guess?
> 

In August of 1988 we found that 242 USENET sites were getting the
groups!  Eliot just told me that he now has well over 600 responses
from sites since sending out his sendsys message just last night and
we will be continuing to collect data for several more days.  What I
would be more interested in, though, is how many people actually read
them, instead of how many computers receive them.  All we can say for
sure is that each of these sites had at least one person who was
interested enough to request them, but the actual postings are
available to everyone on the machine.  This we can't easily measure.
The thought has crossed my mind (in a moment of insanity) to ask
everyone who sees a particular posting to reply to me (PLEASE
DON'T!!)!  If this doesn't make the level of interest apparent to all
I'm not sure what will!

8-)!!!

				Sincerely,

				Dave Kristofferson
				GenBank On-line Service Manager

				kristoff@genbank.bio.net