SMC Usage Statistics for September 2006

[Keith Outten]

I haven't posted our Site Statistics for awhile so here is the graph through September 2006.

[Erik Rudd]

Interesting stats. I wonder how many people posted how many posts? You know like an active use list and just how active they are.

[Aaron Koehl]

September 2006
Approximately 14,125 new posts by just under 2000 distinct members.

September 2005
Approximately 10,155 new posts posted by just over 800 distinct members.

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

Just a quick question, how many new moderators have you added?

It seems to me that with the Creek expanding into a river, you might want to lighten the load that the Mods have by spreading the load.

Just a thought.

Cheers!

[George Franklis]

September 2006
Approximately 14,125 new posts by just under 2000 distinct members.

September 2005
Approximately 10,155 new posts posted by just over 800 distinct members. Interesting how the membership increase is not proportional to the increase in the number of posts. Must be a lot of people who dont want to speak.

[Keith Outten]

Just a quick question, how many new moderators have you added?

It seems to me that with the Creek expanding into a river, you might want to lighten the load that the Mods have by spreading the load.

Just a thought.

Cheers!

Stu,

We do need to add additional Moderators, the workload has been a bit heavy lately and it is time to address the issue. Selecting Moderators is a tough job and it is difficult for new candidates to say yes knowing that their status here will change. The General Woodworking Forum has the most activity and Ken surely needs help, we try to assist Ken but with everyone's busy schedules lately it is tough to find the extra time.

.

[Rob Bodenschatz]

Just a quick question, how many new moderators have you added?


Has the campaign begun? If so, you have my vote, Stu.:D

[Art Mulder]

I haven't posted our Site Statistics for awhile so here is the graph through September 2006.

Keith,

Am I doing the math right?

There is a "Kbytes" column, and for September, it reads 74,214,632.

There are 1024 K in a MB, and 1024 MB in a GB, right?

If so, then that is 74GB of traffic in September.

That seems low to me. I thought we went way beyond that in bandwidth, due to all the pictures served up by SMC? Did I do something wrong in my calculations?

best,
...art

[Aaron Koehl]

Art, your calculations are right on.
On the contrary, those numbers are pretty darn big!

We've peaked at 98 GB, with annual average of about 85 GB/month.

We turned on compression last time we hit 95 GB (some time a year ago), which brought our bandwidth usage back down to 45-60 GB/month. Even with compression, our bandwidth usage has nearly doubled and we're back in that 80-90 GB monthly range.

[Nancy Laird]

Interesting how the membership increase is not proportional to the increase in the number of posts. Must be a lot of people who dont want to speak.

It's like any other organization--some people join things like this for the "privilege" of being able to say they are members, then don't participate. I've seen club after group after organization fall apart because some of the "members" don't want to play with the rest of them. When you have a core group of perhaps 10-20% of the membership rolls, people start getting tired really fast. I don't think that SMC is like that and certainly isn't in danger of falling apart, but there are TONS of "members" on this board who have never made a post. So...why did they join? Was there a time when this board was closed to reading unless one was registered as a member? I haven't been around but a couple of months, so I don't know. But if that was the case, and someone found the answer to a question, then just left, they are still listed as a member. There is always the factor of death, disability, leaving the profession for one reason or another.
While it would affect the "bragging rights" for numbers of members, it seems to me that removing some of the members who haven't posted at all, or nothing since a certain date, would be a prudent move. Maybe that's just me...cut the deadwood.

Seems that someone--anyone--could possibly contact some of these inactive members and either invite them back or warn them that they are in danger of being deactivated. A quick e-mail--simply stated and used as a form, would do the trick. If the e-mail was kicked by the server, that name would be chopped off the list. If it generates a response, maybe we get one more person to contribute and be part of the group.

All I know that this is THE most-helpful forum on the 'net, I've made some new friends, I've learned a lot, and I think I've even helped a couple of people. My computer at work has this forum up all day, and when I get home at night, it's my first stop in my surfing.

And that's my .02!!

Nancy

[Keith Outten]

Nancy,

SMC has never been closed to unregistered users or Guests. Everyone is welcome to view our Forums and it has always been this way. Should we ever need to conserve our bandwidth we will then stop Guests from viewing pictures.

Aaron can provide the stats on how many of our Members are active, the last time I asked him the numbers were surprising. Many of our Members are active Military and it is understandable they will be inactive from time to time even for extended periods as much as a year. We have refrained from purging accounts because we don't require anyone to post to maintain their Membership. Obviously we would like to have as many woodworkers participate as possible.

We often see Members who have been inactive pop up out of the blue and post a response to help someone out with a problem, when this happens it is clear that although they do not post often they visit every day. The number of registrations aren't the numbers we use to guage our growth, the table of Stats we post tells the real story.

Stu,

We have three new Moderators that have accepted an invitation to join our Staff. An announcement will be made shortly.

.