Us VS Them

[Freakzilla]

So we've had 10 X as many posts as them in the last 4 months ...

What a total embarrassment for the alleged "official" Dune forums.

I know Byron Merritt scored some points for apparently being semi-human at DragonCon, but I don't really care: I say he's still a complete asshole for doing everything in his power to ruin what should easily be the most active Dune forums on the interwebs.

Hey, I just said he was a nice guy. That doesn't mean what the HLP has done and the way they run their forum isn't wrong.

[Omphalos]

If we could get our search engine presence up to at least second place behind DN I think it would really be the final nail in their coffin - right now the main thing keeping them running is the fact that they are the most visible Dune forum on the net. Jacurutu IS the main internet Dune forum, but it's also one of the most difficult to stumble across now that we don't have piles of people at DN inviting people and linking.

Maybe I should set up another sock puppet over there for no purpose other than PM'ing people with jacurutu invitations.

A really good thing to do to raise our rankings is to put the Jacurutu URL in your sig file at other sites. Ill go do this tonight; put the Jacurutu URL in my sig at T(A)U and other sites I hang at.

[SandChigger]

Hey, I just said he was a nice guy. That doesn't mean what the HLP has done and the way they run their forum isn't wrong.

Just as you weren't going to start anything there, neither was he.

I'm a really nice guy in person, too, and I'm still a complete asshole.

[GamePlayer]

The last 4 months:

Jacurutu total posts = 12776
Jacurutu total posts per day = 121.68 (down 2 from last check)

DN total posts = 1205
DN total posts per day = 11.47 (up a fraction of a post per day)

So we've had 10 X as many posts as them in the last 4 months (last check we had 11 X as many).

Surprised? I though not.

Actually, I'm always surprised. Jacurutu isn't even what I'd call a high-traffic forum and for Dumbnovels to be an order of magnitude less active than this website is tragedy. If I'm ever desperate for some insomnia meds, I know Dumbnovels is the cure

[Freakzilla]

Is there any way we can track the number of individual guests we get?

[SandRider]

yeah,I wouldn't call this "high-traffic" either, just a core group of daily posters .

and if you factor out all my random bullshit, the post count goes down.

but no doubt, Jacurutu is kicking the living shit out of the "official site"

freak: I'd guess there would have to be some kind of add-on - don't know enough about
how this kind of board works - you can see the individual IPs when people are online,
registered or guests, I'd imagine someone has some code to log that.

one of the Civil War boards I still go to every now and then has a section across the bottom
of the index that shows "online today", a list of the members who logged in that day. This
board also has a feature I'd like to see, a great sorting method for threads - you can sort
most views, most posts, etc, for the board overall or in each forum ... I've often wondered
what the most viewed threads are here, and most replies, etc.

this board is not php tho, it's integrated into a much larger website.

[SandChigger]

Have you looked at some of the idiotic post(er)s over there lately?

Unbelievable.

[SandChigger]

Is there any way we can track the number of individual guests we get?

The most accurate way would be to have Ragabash run some analysis package on the server log files.

[SandRider]

Have you looked at some of the idiotic post(er)s over there lately?

Unbelievable.

no, but there's two threads here you could post some in for my amusement ....

[A Thing of Eternity]

Alright, just realized that 5 months have gone past since my last update instead of the usual 4, so I'd better get on this!

DN is 44 months old, and Jacurutu is 24 months old. Here are the totals:

DN Total:
Posts: 51157
Members: 1367

Jacurutu total:
Posts: 73500
Members: 285

Here are some averages (rough figures of course, and bear in mind that these are averaged over the entire life of each site):

DN = 38.75 Posts per Day (down 3.6 since my last comparison, down 15.62 since my first comparison which was 17 months ago)
Jacurutu = 102.08 Posts per Day (down 6.28 since last comparison, up 6.72 since first comparison) This drop can probably be partially attributed to the holiday season, which saw a big drop for us, as well as the loss of at least one major poster (GamePlayer) as well as another having been MIA for quite some time (SandRider).

Average posts per member:
DN = 37.42 (down 1.33 since last checkup)
Jacurutu = 257.89 (up 4.75 since last checkup)

Now, remember that since they are so much older than us that their averages are much more stable than ours.

The last 5 months:
Jacurutu total posts = 11734
Jacurutu total posts per day = 78.23 (down a whopping 43.45 from last check, likely due in part to what I said earlier, but it could just also be some genuine slowdown)
DN total posts = 1585
DN total posts per day = 10.57 (down 0.90 from last time)

So, both our sites took a hit, but they are winning in so far as average losses go. That said, we're still utterly destroying them for total activity.

We've had 7.4 X as many posts as them in the last 5 months (last check we had 10 X as many).

So, they are still slowing down, despite Freak's return to their site they continue to be less active every month. Also, this period marks our first ever significant slow down, which was much worse than theirs for this period. Forums have their ups and downs of course, so we can hope that this is a short lived drop in posts (DN has no such hope, as for 17 months, and likely much longer, they have seen consistant drops)

______

At Freak's request I'm going to attempt to look at how his return to DN has effected their activity.

He is responsible for 203 posts since he returned 3 months ago, a massive 13% of all posts in the last 5 months. Considering that he also started several long-ish arguments, and that the majority of his posts had at least 1 direct response (but most that I saw had more like 5 or 6), it's not unreasonable in my opinion to guess that he's directly generated at least 2 posts that would never have been made for each of his posts, which means (if I'm correct, feel free to dispute my assumptions here) that he is directly responsible for 40% of their posts in the last 5 months.

The last 5 months saw them loose about 10% of posts per day compared to the previous 4 months. Without Freak they may have lost as much as 50% of their posts compared to the last period.

[SandRider]

okay, but take out all my posts that don't have Dune-related content -
if you don't count Keith-bashing as Dune-content, I'm only contributing
ass-clown type stuff, and occasional radical communist propaganda ....

of course, looking at it that way, quite a bit of what's posted here is
not Dune-related - but I think that's more a reflection of the genuine
community we have here; as opposed to Over There, which is
mostly a circle jerk - or follows this pattern:

poster: hi. I loved Frank's Dune.
Merritt: welcome. this is the official home of all things Herbert !
poster: yeah, I'm not real crazy about the new books.
Merritt: notes, Frank's son, wheaties, thanksgiving dinners, notes, floppies, bestsellers ....
poster: can we see the Dune7 notes ?
Merritt: no.
poster: well then, how do we know Frank intended Daniel & Marty to be transexual robots ?
Merritt: you're banned.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Oh SR, you're a valuable contributer to many facets of Jacurutu!

Well, it's hard to say what % posts are off topic overall, but their off-topic sub forum contains 25% of their total posts, and our ghafla sub forum contains 30% of our total. Add in their cooking and fan fic sub forums (which are supposed to have Dune content but really have little) and they're closer to 30% as well.

In both cases, I think that's a pretty reasonable % of off topic posts. This is the first time I've looked at that at all, and I would have expected more around 50%-60% in all honesty.


I agree as well that that's just part of having a community and everyone caring about each other enough to rant about their personal lives and interests.

EDIT: does this thread count as Dune related?

[Ampoliros]

Of course, its very pertinent to the living history of Dune.

Which begs the question: If Frank had had a prescient vision of the future and seen both how KJA and SandRider have contributed to the Dune mythos, which do you think would trouble him more?

[Freakzilla]

Frank would probably be banned at DN and posting here.

[Serkanner]

Frank would probably be banned at DN and posting here.

Without a doubt and I am not even sure it makes me sad or not.

[reverendmotherQ.]

Jacurutu = 257.89 (up 4.75 since last checkup)

Damn it I better get a move on.

[Hunchback Jack]

I suspect another factor for the drop in posts was the release of Jessica to the Winds of Dune during the last posting period.

HBJ

[Schu]

Freak being on there will more than offset my not being on there. I really think that my being banned would have accounted for at least 40% of their posts going away until Freak went back.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Another 4 months have passed.

DN is 48 months old, and Jacurutu is 28 months old. Here are the totals:

DN Total:
Posts: 52028
Members: 1450

Jacurutu total:
Posts: 83295
Members: 339

Here are some averages (rough figures of course, and bear in mind that these are averaged over the entire life of each site):

DN = 36.13 Posts per Day (down 2.62 from last checkup, down 18.24 since first comp)
Jacurutu = 99.16 Posts per Day (down 2.92 from last, down 9.64 since first comp)

Average posts per member:

DN = 35.88 (down 1.54 since last checkup)
Jacurutu = 245.71 (down 12.18 since last checkup) Sounds bad, but this largely due to the burst of new membership we've had. (DN got 83 new members and we got 54. % wise that's a big diff - We had a 19% increase in membership, whereas DN only had a 6%)

Now, remember that since they are so much older than us that their averages are much more stable than ours. SO THE FOLLOWING ARE THE REAL NUMBERS

The last 4 months:

Jacurutu total posts = 9795 (up 4% per month)
Jacurutu total posts per day = 81.63 (UP 3.4, we beat that slump we had last period)
DN total posts = 871 (DOWN 31% per month)
DN total posts per day = 7.26 (down 3.3, they're happily continuing their decline)

Even though we were up 3 posts per day, and them down 3 posts per day, look at the % - we had 4% growth and they had 31% decline. Fuck YEAH.

We've had 11.25 X as many posts as them in the last 4 months (last check we had 7.4 X as many, and the time before that we had 10 X as many). This is the kind of numbers I like to see.
______
And, continued from last time:
At Freak's request I'm going to attempt to look at how his return to DN has effected their activity.
He is responsible for 73 posts in the last 4 months (in the 3 before that he had 202, so good job slowing it down Freak!), only 8% of all posts in the last 4 months. If he'd kept up at his initial pace he would have added 269 posts this period - which added to the total this time is roughly 100 posts less than what they did last period (adjusted because last was a 5 month period and this was 4). So their decline this month is not Freak's fault alone, they certainly did their part by dropping 8% of "would be" posts this period completely on top of what Freak dropped.

So Freak, feel proud. This proves that you were what kept their numbers up last period, by slowing down you were personally responsable for a 23% drop on their posting. That's huge.


I'd like to add that in my personal opinion, the last few months here have been the most on-topic I have seen in well over a year. We may have slowed down a little (compared to the early days, we're up from last time obviously) due to a lack of a new book to yell about, but we're FINALLY back to primarily discussing Dune.

[Hunchback Jack]

Great work, as always, ATOE.

We had a 19% increase in membership, whereas DN only had a 6%)

Wow, that's excellent. (Welcome again, everyone!)

We've had 11.25 X as many posts as them in the last 4 months (last check we had 7.4 X as many, and the time before that we had 10 X as many). This is the kind of numbers I like to see.

That's insane. And remember, we have one quarter of the membership.



HBJ

[Nekhrun]

How many of those DN posts were just Byron saying that he'd look into something and never got back to the question, or telling arnoldo that he had a "valid point"?

Now, how do we compare to Sietch Tabr?

[TheDukester]

The last 4 months:

Jacurutu total posts = 9795 (up 4% per month)
Jacurutu total posts per day = 81.63 (UP 3.4, we beat that slump we had last period)
DN total posts = 871 (DOWN 31% per month)
DN total posts per day = 7.26 (down 3.3, they're happily continuing their decline)

Wow. Just ... wow.

Every time we get these survey results, something really jumps out at me. This time it's the four-month figures. They had 871 posts in FOUR months?

Pa-thet-ic.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Thanks Hunchback, it's a labour of love.

EDIT: Adjusting for HBJ's comment about us having only 1/4 of their membership (23% actually), if we adjust for that figure, we have 45 X as many posts per member. So indeed, good call Hunchback. Holy crap.

[Freakzilla]

[Freakzilla]

How many of those DN posts were just Byron saying that he'd look into something and never got back to the question, or telling arnoldo that he had a "valid point"?

...and how many posts were deleted?

Now, how do we compare to Sietch Tabr?

Do we really need to bother?