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CRPF Statistics: 2008 through 2016

Started by TelePlay, January 25, 2017, 03:54:11 AM

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TelePlay

Was looking at one part of the forum statistics and thought it would be interesting in graphing these 5 categories showing the forum's growth over it first 8 years, the first of which was but 3 months long. The red line in each graph is a linear trend line.

The only bad graph here is new members added in a year. The large spike shows the effect of Bots in auto registration mode, something Dennis put a stop to and once the Bots were taken care of, new members per year dropped back down to a steady level. As of this point, there are 1,843 members (an average of about 21 new members per month over 87 months).

The graphs are interesting and show the development of the forum over time. While the New Topics and New Posts are similar and expectedly leveling off (for obvious reasons), the number of Page Views continues to climb - lot of people looking for information already posted on the forum. The Most Online is hard to explain. In just one year, 2011, there was extreme interest.

I know Dennis did some things to get rid of the Bot problem. Whatever he did, it helped.

AE_Collector

That all time high record of 285 people on line at the same time on February 19, 2011 has always puzzled me. We have never remotely come close to that in the following 6 years. Since 2011 was when the number of applications for membership was heading up sharply, could the forum software possibly have been counting "people" applying for membership in the number on line even though they weren't yet a registered member. The number of applications per day continued to climb even though the record of 285 had already been set but maybe a software upgrade at that point in time changed the way this was calculated.

Terry

TelePlay

Yes, I don't know if that is all online (guests and members) or only members.

The 9 million views was interesting so I looked at last year month by month and it is indeed, 9 million views total in a year. Again, all online (guests and members) or only members. Which ever it is, that's about 24,000 page views per day 365 days a year. That's a staggering high number for 1,800 members to rack up so it must be all viewing, members and guests.

That 285 online was followed (March 2011) by 52 and then it jumped to 230 in April 2011. Since then, 150 has been the highest. Right now there are 2 members logged in and 103 guests, with the most online today being 113 so that would seem to indicate "online" means guests and members total.

So, if the average views per day is a bit over 13,000, that has to be members and guests viewing pages, and some of the "guests" may still be Bots. What Dennis did was fix the "new member application/approval" process to get the Bots out.

In the end, the 9 million page views goes to the importance of the Forum and the help/advice placed in posts from day one, still being searched for and looked at by people today and informative as long as the images haven't been Picasa'd or the eBay links without supporting uploaded image gone long dead.

Dennis Markham

#3
The analytics is interesting, John.  Thanks for putting it together.

What was done that helped reduce or eliminate the bots was add more that one has to do in order to register.  That includes answering questions (there are three I believe).  There was captcha before so that alone was not keeping out the computers.

Still in place is also the requirement that an interested member must send the Administrator (me) an e-mail stating their interest in the forum.  However brief or for whatever reason.  The problem with this is that there are many people awaiting moderation who disregard or never read the requirement.  It's stated in the "Agreement" information that must be clicked in order to Register.  Yet, people still just click "I Agree" and don't read the fine print despite the fact that the fine print is large and in red letters.  I have received e-mail from some that are irritated that they've been waiting X-amount of time without moderation.  For example....I've been waiting forever...what's the hold-up?"..Something to that effect.   I consider that an e-mail and will then moderate their registration.  They will back down a bit once I've pointed out the registration instructions.

I am sure,  by looking at many of the usernames awaiting moderation that they are real people.  However I have been reluctant to just put an automatic moderation in effect.  When the bots were joining the names had no connection with Telephony.  I have discussed this with a Moderator or two and just haven't come to the conclusion to automatically accept registrations.  When the flood gates open, it takes a lot to close them again.

~Dennis