Whats happening to the site? (Nothing at all)

reply to post by lnfideI

Originally posted by lnfideI

Maybe you could elaborate who needs a psychiatric health professional, since you have brought it into the conversation.

Originally posted by lnfideI
I am confused to how this thread got so sideways.

Actually, you brought up the subject of mental-health-related posting....

Originally posted by lnfideI
..............I avoid anyone over 200 posts a day on this site,as I think they may be headcases.
But that's just me.
"shrugs"

....Then you insulted crypticsouthpaw.....

Originally posted by lnfideI

He was trying to give us a first hand demo as to why readership is tanking.

Thanks Southpaw,lesson understood.

....Then you claimed that your Granny was an Alien.....

Originally posted by lnfideI

I am going to try to prove to you all that my granny was an alien.

....How did you expect this thread to go any other way?

reply to post by lnfideI


Infidel.

God gave me many blessings. Comprehending anything to do with statistics or numbers, is not one of them. My thought processes just don't work in a linear fashion. So, to attempt to have any input on actual discussions of statistical data would be inept on my part. It's not that I wouldn't like to be able to join in...I'm incapable.

Your thread covers a lot of emotional issues, some more-so than others, depending on who is reading them.

I know for myself, as an avid reader, and sometimes avid poster. I do see trends here. Depending on if school is out for vacation periods. Example: Over the Christmas vacation time, I saw a very big influx of new members. That makes total sense, they have idle time on their hands. They join, or post, to fill that time with something they enjoy.

The posting is hot and heavy during those time...tons more threads, dramatic rise in numbers online at the same time.

As soon as vacations are over...things go back to *normal* as they were before. I think we sometimes get used to the *rush* of those busier times, and miss them when they slack off. Then *normal* appears slow. It's happened to me many times, until I figured out the trends here.

Others have already addressed the end of 2012 coinciding with end of intense Political lead-up to the elections. That was a whirl-wind of posting activity, in just about every forum.

I know as a long time lurker. It took Fukushima, to finally make me actually make a membership to join. Sometimes we often see a huge spike in new members after a disaster. That's just the way it is around here. Lurkers see something that touches them deep enough, or makes them angry enough...they are driven to take the plunge.

During the slow times, I know I don't post as often. I I don't feel the need to throw my 2cents into a pot. There are also a fewer pots to throw my 2cents into when new threads are not being fueled by highly charged events.

Guess this is just my own personal take on things. Based on my own personal experience and observations.

Des

reply to post by Destinyone



Even though you side stepped every one of my points Des, what you have said makes a person reflect on themselves. That's not bad thing. Thank you. Your smart to step around that, I will learn something from that as well.

Note to add about the stats from my OP.

That initial graph, is obvious a mistake or glitch of some form, as when I click into it, I can not see any other graphs, including the one clicked that even remotely shows any form of drop off. When a person opens up the full history,from like years and years ago, you can see it is up/down but long the same curve.

This site is important to every one who has posted here, or they wouldn't of bothered. Even the dorks that attack the site with DDoS have a conviction that the site is important,or they would not attack it.

Choice, Prime and No1, keep up the good work.

reply to post by lnfideI


I'm sorry you chose to view my honest answer, as side stepping. It was not.

Des

Don't be sorry, no need to be. It was viewed in a positive way, and I know it was honest.

I wish I could step around things more online, seems I am always in the middle of the muck.

I am never misunderstood IRL, but on these types of forums,almost 100% of the time.

Its ok, I appreciate it/you.

Originally posted by Destinyone
reply to post by lnfideI

 

I'm sorry you chose to view my honest answer, as side stepping. It was not.

Des

Some points.

Just because it says "Super Moderator" next to my name it doesn't mean I can't have a conversation.

Explanations are just those, if I was pointing my posts at a particular person I'd name them in it.

Replies to points are just that. Replies.

If someone chooses to take that personally, there is very little that I - or anyone else for that matter - can do about it.

Now to the point in question.

Infidel raised an issue - the owner of the site answered it. Other issues got raised. I answered those as frankly as I could. Thats the nature of the board.

When the site owner makes a statement about how he sees the sites position today, as opposed to previously, and explains why he thinks that - is anyone actually better placed to comment? Really?

When the site owner makes a statement about how he sees the sites position today, as opposed to previously, and explains why he thinks that - is anyone actually better placed to comment? Really?

Yes. It must be those tags he has been dropping from Comcast as he explained it. He probably has been dropping those tags 1 a day for the last four or so weeks, just to keep the down slope from looking so abrupt.

Yes, that,s it. Now you better come back here and thank me for figuring it all out.

Originally posted by lnfideI
reply to post by schuyler

 

Thanks for the op ed. The sit-rep, the low down, the gospel.

The site is getting a fair amount of new sign ups, so that helps, but it appears we are losing long time old hands.

I am 100% sure it willall be OK, lets look at at in 4-6 weeks ok.

My "op ed", as you put it, is based on solid personal experience and analysis, not superficial gawking at statistics. The statistics on this site are misleading in a number of ways. I provided my insight on running systems like this because I have ACTUALLY DONE IT, been in charge of it, (been paid for it), and grappled with the very issues under discussion. If you have also done this yourself, then I defer to your expertise, though you have not shown it. However, if you're just looking at a series of statistics and speculating, then I stand by my analysis as superior and more insightful than yours. Most of the posts here are not dealing with the issue, but amount to abject speculation that makes no sense whatsoever.

Now, I'm not an ATS apologist. Indeed, S.O. and I have run into this before. Most of the statistics on ATS err on the high side. Here are some statistics I posted several weeks ago--just about Christmas time, IIRC. I really don't want to take the time to update them because it's a lot of work. It will take two posts.

Please note that my overall conclusion is more in line with yours, that ATS isn't as big as it thinks it is.

Here are some site statistics. At first they look impressive. 275,447 members? Wow! Of this number 55% (152,026) have bothered to post at all, 123,121 members have NEVER posted, and 115,739 members have posted fewer than 20 times, meaning they have never started a thread and cannot participate fully with the site. They are basically members who have showed up, made a few posts, and moved on.

Now we get into members who have obviously made more of a commitment to the site, which is not quite 13% of the total membership who have made more than 20 posts. 7% of the membership has posted from 20-100 posts. 3.9% of the membership has posted 100-500 posts, so at least they are showing some activity, but from here on out it diminishes rapidly. .9% (that’s less than 1%) have posted between 500-1000 posts, and the same percentage has posted between 1,000 and 5,000 posts. From 5,000 to 10,000 posts is .08% (not quite a hundredth of a percent) and over 10,000 is .04% (not quite a half of a hundredth of a percent) Interestingly, members with over 10,000 posts have created over 13% of all posts on the site.

Of course these statistics do not show everything. A new member may be extremely active, but by virtue of not having been here long has less than 500 posts. That should rectify itself fairly quickly. Also, we do not have an easy “How many members have posted within X days” statistic, which would give you an idea of the drop out rate. We CAN tell you how many members have bothered to swing by this month of December, about 13,000 or so. Who knows what they did while here? We can’t tell that. You can tell the number by sorting members by date of last visit.

And as we go back through the months this also diminishes rapidly. How many have shown up since November 1st? About 16,000. October 1st? About 19,000. Are these all active posting members hotly interested in the Mayan calendar debate, or are they drive-bys who did nothing? We can’t tell, but we CAN tell that during the last quarter of the year about 19,000 members have stopped by, not quite 7% of the total membership. If the overall statistics remain true, a little over half have bothered to post at all. 256,000 members haven’t even been on the site in the last three months.

And it gets worse. Since July 1 about 27,000 members, roughly 10%, have stopped by. Is it fair to say the other 90% won’t be back? No? Surely you are not going to claim they are “active users participating in debate” are you? 41,000 have been on the site in the last year, 15%

Now does this demean or diminish those people who have posted, or have only posted a bit? Of course not. THAT’S not the point, so those of you who have taken instant umbrage need to fall back and get a grip here. The point is that people are over-stating the case and using raw statistics to try to justify it. You want to show a misuse of statistics? That’s a misuse of statistics. When you actually look at the numbers, 6% of the membership have posted over 100 posts, and a relatively small number of people participated in this 12-21-12 debate. It certainly does not represent a vast number of people “working together.”

Part 2

Total member accounts: 275,447
Members who have posted: 152,026
Percentage of members who have posted: 55 %

Number of members with 20 or fewer posts: 42% 115,739
Number of members with 20 to 100 posts: 7% 19,392
Number of members with 100 to 500 posts: 3.9% 10,766
Number of members with 500 to 1,000 posts: .9% 2,570
Number of members with 1,000 to 5,000 posts: .9% 2,514
Number of members with 5,000 to 10,000 posts: .08% 231
Number of members with more than 10,000 posts:.04% 118
Quantity of posts by members with more than 10,000 posts: 13% 2,023,599

Number of members have created extended profiles: 49,146
Number of members who are podcasting: 282
Number of members who have tagged threads: 8,165
Number of members who have flagged threads: 52,735
Total Posts 15,459,865


So what do we have here? Hype and exaggeration. The site claims to have 275,000 members. Not quite half have NEVER POSTED. Doesn’t that tell you something? Doesn’t that give you pause? Do they just want to see the avatars and avoid some ads? Not only that, when you analyze the statistics, it turns out the vast majority of members haven’t been on ATS in over a year. In fact, only 15% have been. You can tell this by paging through the member stats by last visit. That takes a lot more work than glancing at the front page. In fact, it’s tedious, but it tells you a lot. It’s called “research.”

That means 85% of the membership hasn’t been here in a year. Why, then, does ATS still claim them as members? What ATS has done is not culled the membership, it appears, ever in its entire history. Basically 1% of the membership is doing 99% of the work. It sounds like they are claiming all the dead voters in Chicago.

On the surface there’s nothing wrong with that. So a few thousand people are providing most of the content. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, really. It’s just that the site, along with a few members who don’t scrutinize what is happening, exaggerates itself into absurdity. It hypes itself up to the point that it claims it’s 99% larger than it really is.

That’s deceptive. I object to it, and I am astounded that you don’t. if ATS were being realistic about this, they would say, “ATS has an active user base of approximately 40,000 members.” That counts anyone who has been here within a total year. You can say that’s an exaggeration, too, if you want, but I think most people would consider it reasonable to count anyone who has been here within the year. And 40,000 members is impressive. There’s really no need to pad the counts.

Now I don’t think these statistics are INTENTIONALLY deceptive. What I suspect has happened is that they put on a few automatic counters and let them run, not really analyzing what those counters were counting. It’s like web site counters that count page hits and say that’s how many visitors they had. If you count every time someone shows up during the day as a ‘discrete visit’ you’ve just inflated your statistics exponentially. If you count a web bot as a visitor, you just exaggerated your statistics. And if you actually believe you had a million lurkers on here in the last few days, you’re delusional.

What I am suggesting here is that ATS be reasonable in its assessment and that users don’t get all starry-eyed when they look at the stats. I think that is a reasonable stance to take.

Originally posted by Hefficide
reply to post by ObservingYou

 

That is absolutely ridiculous.

You forgot the three P's.

Point, paragraph, proof - I could provide all - but not without breaching the TnC's

Originally posted by neformore
reply to post by ObservingYou

 

Originally posted by ObservingYou
From what I can understand, posting LONG, INFORMATIVE AND TRUTHFUL threads, are a sure way to see you on the infamous banned list.

We know ATS love's it's drama first and foremost.

Absurd notion and completely untrue.

What gets people banned from ATS is when they start such threads, then think they are some kind of global superstar/spiritual guru/only portent of the truth/best thing since sliced bread and decide they are above the T&C of the site and then go off the deep end when things don't quite work out that way, make all kinds of pointless threats about how great they are, how they'll be missed, maybe they should go elsewhere, you'll never get by without me etc etc etc and basically stupid themselves into a ban when they turn abusive towards the staff (we've had all kinds of crap ramped up on occasion to threats of legal action, cyber stalking and even actual death threats) - even after there has been a cooling off period (because everyone has off days), time to think and numerous attempts by staff members at getting them calmed down and back on track.

Oddly, those people also tend to come back, with different screen names, make hate sites/posts on other forums and make allegations against ATS staff - or, more usually, all three.

And that's the nature of the internet.

Anyone can avoid getting banned from ATS by simply sticking to the T&C and - frankly - anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

People simply need to be responsible for their own actions and posts and understand that ATS is a discussion forum on the internet, and not life and death.

edit on 14/4/13 by neformore because: (no reason given)