LUG Traffic WAY down?

J

jonperl

Logician
I've made no secret of my displeasure at the dismantling of what had a been a useful email list/digest for me, and it's conversion to the fractured and time-consuming web forum format. From my perhaps biased perspective, it seems that traffic on the LUG is WAY down from what it was on the old list. I'm seeing less then one new topic per day. Am I correct in my perception that the LUG is not functioning anywhere near the level that it was? Or am I just crazy?

Jonathan
 
jonperl said:
I'm seeing less then one new topic per day.
Click to expand...

Right now, there is only a one way link between the General Logic Discussion and the Yahoogroup. But there are many more forums on the LUG than that one.

Yesterday, for example, five new threads were started, but many, many more posts than that were made to existing threads. I believe I could find out how many via administrative tools, but I don't know offhand. I'd guess dozens.

That said, in general, in between Logic updates, there is usually a lull compared to the frenzied posting when there is an update. So I'd say that the current traffic is if anything higher, but not outlandishly so. It's just divided among more forums.

Orren
 
jonperl said:
I've made no secret of my displeasure at the dismantling of what had a been a useful email list/digest for me, and it's conversion to the fractured and time-consuming web forum format.
Click to expand...

Just to be clear on this, what do you mean by dismantling? Nobody was forced to leave the mailing list, we created the forum and suggested that, in particular, bearing in mind the steady decline in traffic over the last number of years on the mailing list, together withincreasing interest and traffic across a broad number of web fora, that it was the way to go. Immediately the new LUG forum had more traffic than the mailing list and that trend is becoming more and more apparent, but that is because people have been voting with their feet and posting here rather than on the mailing list.

jonperl said:
From my perhaps biased perspective, it seems that traffic on the LUG is WAY down from what it was on the old list.
Click to expand...

The figures I am looking at tell me the opposite, there is way more traffic here.

jonperl said:
I'm seeing less then one new topic per day.
Click to expand...

The first post in a topic represents a small proportion of traffic. We have, as I write, 185 threads in the general logic discussions forum, with 1234 posts - meaning an average of over 6 posts per thread. If you are viewing this from the mailing list, please remember that we only send the first post in a thread form two sub fora in the forum to the mailing list, in other words, on the mailing list, you are only seeing a tiny percentage of the traffic on the forum.

jonperl said:
Am I correct in my perception that the LUG is not functioning anywhere near the level that it was? Or am I just crazy?
Click to expand...

We still don't have the same volume of traffic that we had around 2001-2002, but it is growing on the forum. We are online for just over 6 weeks now, and have in that space of time many times the number of posts on the forum than have been made to the mailing list - the proportion is actually much higher if you discount the notification posts from the forum to the mailing list. They are forum, not mailing list traffic.

Orren Merton said:
Yesterday, for example, five new threads were started, but many, many more posts than that were made to existing threads.
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Precisely. in fact, by the time some posts announcing a thread has started are sent to the mailing list, answers are already being written on the forum.

Hope this clarifies things Jon 🙂

kind regards

Mark
 
OK, so there is more traffic, but I now have to spend a _lot_ more time if I want to quickly scan all the action -- as you say, the traffic is divided into multiple sub-forums, and then into individual threads. To see all the day's posts, I have to go through each and every thread, in all sub-fora. In the past, with my mailing list digest, I could scan through all posts of the day in about a minute, and read whatever interested me. I found a lot if useful information that I wasn't looking for that way, whereas now, I will not check threads that don't interest me and I'll never see those hidden gems of information.

I guess it's must my own issue then that the mailing list has largely been abandoned, either in favor of the forum or just abandoned period. It is plain to me that interacting with so many sub-fora and threads is not going to work for me the way the old format did, and that's my own problem. Such is "progress"...

Signed - Dinosaur
 
Jon, the easiest way to look for new posts is to use either the new posts button, which selects those threads where something has changed since you last visited the forum, or, the quick links -> today's posts tool. Both are very effective and efficient in sorting out new subjects from old.

kind regards

Mark
 
Markdvc said:
Jon, the easiest way to look for new posts is to use either the new posts button, which selects those threads where something has changed since you last visited the forum, or, the quick links -> today's posts tool. Both are very effective and efficient in sorting out new subjects from old.
Click to expand...

Thanks Mark - I'll give these a try.

Jonathan
 
Let me also add that you can subscibe to the RSS feed of the LUG. This means that the first post of all new threads will be sent to the RSS reader of your choice. You can choose Apple Mail as your RSS reader if you want, and get all new threads in any folder sent to your email client, for example.

See other threads in this forum for examples of other RSS readers, etc. Between clicking on the New Posts button and subscribing to the RSS feed, you can really race around either the whole LUG or just the specific forums that interest you.

Orren
 
Nevermind the fact that if you tried to keep up with deleting threads that didn't interest you, inevitably someone would respond to it, making it pop up again in your email! Here I can simply not read threads that I have no interest in. As evidenced by the fact that I've been on the LUG mailing list for years, yet hadn't even noticed we had a forum set up until today!

Even better, there's a place for different elements, so you don't have to get everything. I stopped reading the mailing list because I had to sort through every email that came in to see if any of it was interesting to me. Now it's a piece of cake.
 
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