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Farelf

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... i wonder how many other people, like me, there are who don't even bother posting a question at a place like this...
Good point, O/T in that topic but interesting in terms of the focus of effort 'here' - I guess we assume those who just look and find their answers are in the great majority, which is why so much work has been done on FAQs, the Wiki, providing several layers of search engine facility, etc.. Currently there are 8036 members, 89% of whom have made 5 posts or less. Hmm ... only 44% have made no posts at all - I would have thought there would be many more than that but, since the forums can be browsed without registration, I guess many do not bother with registration until they actually want to post.

31% of all registered members make only one post or two, which is about as long as it takes to refer them to the FAQ/Wiki/existing data for resolution (every post is answered). Looking at that another way, of the (currently) 67916 posts recorded, 3474 of them (5%) fall into the '1-2 post member' category. (No, I don't know why the consecutive post numbers don't quite match the total posts statistic - and we were seeing post serials over 10000 a short while ago and deletions are very, very rare - but I'm sure there is a simple explanation.) Undoubtedly there are some responses that could be resolved in fewer (1 or 2) posts but some are elaborated on the 'teach a man to fish' principle and for the benefit of those browsing/lurking for their own needs/information or to simply scout out the 'lay of the land' (or 'lie of the land' for those less literate and/or too readily titillated).

So, it looks like 'most' members need information at some time, not many have posts which are quickly dismissed/answered (and not all posts seek information anyway) and we still have no idea how often or how many members and other seekers find what they need without posting. The nearest approach to a handle on that might be the number of guests browsing at any given time and my guestimate on that would be 5 times the number of members logged in at any given time.

A ton of generally inconsequential analysis followed by a naked fabrication ('informed estimate') to serve an unstated and indubitably unsound hypothesis. Some might suspect I do this sort of stuff for a living :blink: .

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The place I look for information is how many times a post has been viewed. (which is not entirely accurate since a member might go back to look at a particular FAQ for several reasons)

For instance, only 19000 plus people have looked at "How to Ask a Question..." while 44000 have looked at "Why Am I Blocked?" and over 100,000 have looked at the FAQ. Only 45 viewed the recent announcement about email issues, but OTOH, there was only one post after the announcement was posted so possibly 44 people found the answer (actually 43 because I looked at it to see if I would have been helped). If there are 8000 plus members, than maybe 92,000 people have viewed the FAQ and found the answer.

IMHO, we have done a great job since IMHO, many people come here for information and never have to post at all.

Miss Betsy

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Just some facts

SELECT posts,COUNT(id) AS minimumPosts FROM <prefix>_members group by posts order by posts asc limit 11
posts 	minimumPosts
0 	3576
1 	1555
2 	959
3 	532
4 	321
5 	230
6 	134
7 	116
8 	93
9 	62
10 	49

'front' page stats reads as --> 17 guests, 2 members 0 anonymous members

difference between above and below, different time limits on 'valid' data - recognized "on-line" vs $SESSION time-out

SELECT member_name,member_id,member_group,location FROM <prefix>_sessions
member_name 	member_id 	member_group 	location
Google 	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	idx,,
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
Yahoo 	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
Google 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st,,
	0 	2 	idx,,
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st,,
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	idx,,
	0 	2 	st,,
	0 	2 	st
dra007 	777 	10 	idx,,
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
Google 	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
corvette6769 	2677 	3 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	calendar,,
	0 	2 	idx,,
MSN 	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
Miss Betsy 	174 	9 	Search,,show
MSN 	0 	2 	st
MSN 	0 	2 	st
Yahoo 	0 	2 	st
agsteele 	148 	10 	idx,,
MSN 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
Google 	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st,,
	0 	2 	st,,
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	idx,,
Wazoo 	18 	4 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st
	0 	2 	st

The above would include a bot or two that hasn't been explicitly identified (to this app) .. but in general shows activity not 'recorded' on the stats section on the front page,

Just noted someone really pushing the limit on technology <g>

Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MSIE 2.0; Windows 95) .... though probably not as bad as me messing around with a Mac SE yesterday <G>

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...Just noted someone really pushing the limit on technology <g>

Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MSIE 2.0; Windows 95) ....

:D Just like my old IBM Aptiva - though that hasn't been online since about November 2004 IIRC (and as far as I know) - only lofi pages really viewable with that setup. If I get around to it before it dies, I might just figure out how to connect it to the internet again just for old times' sake. Sadly I just now handed in my Cassopeia palmtop (Win CE, Pocket IE with 14.4k PCMIA modem) which might otherwise have given you a memorable log entry though finding a dial-up account would represent the same challenge as for the Aptiva - can't be that hard though.
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If there are 8000 plus members, than maybe 92,000 people have viewed the FAQ and found the answer.
Nice dream, but more like 10 ? people viewing the FAQ 1,000's of times each and a bunch of others viewing it one or more times. I know when I was actively working with the FAQ I could easily have 100's of views in a single day. And IF the bots add to the view count, which probably only Wazoo would know that answer, that would dramaticly reduce the number of user views
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Yes, I realize that there is the possibility - particularly with the FAQ - that those views represent multiple views by the same person or not by someone for the purpose of finding information.

And if the visiting bots are counted, then there is a possibility that there are very few actual people reading them.

Still, the numbers for different topics are different so they do show at least that some real people have looked at them - even if not thousands. And, I think it does show that there are people who do find what they are looking for without posting. It seems as though, aside from posts from people who are either impatient or really do not understand - for whatever reason, we don't repeat the same posts over and over. Sometimes there will be a new slant or problem, but after several posts, we don't get very many more. How many times have we had a wireless router post since the long topic that problem solved someone's problem? There were a couple in a row and then very little. We've had a couple where posters suspect that might be a problem, but it generally doesn't go much further.

Miss Betsy

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Throwing some data to the bot scenario;

SELECT member_name,member_id,browser FROM &lt;prefix&gt;_sessions
member_name 	member_id 	browser
Google 	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1;+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DotBot/1.1;[url="http://www.dotnetdotcom.org/"]http://www.dotnetdotcom.org/[/url],
crawler[at]dotnetdotcom.org)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;SV1) ;
 .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648;.NET CLR 3.5.21022; InfoPath.1)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Opera/9.62 (Windows NT 5.1; U; es-ES) Presto/2.1.1
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Exabot/3.0;+http://www.exabot.com/go/robot)
	0 	Baiduspider+(+http://help.baidu.jp/system/05.html)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT5.0)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5;en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Google 	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1;+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Ask Jeeves 	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Ask Jeeves/Teoma;+http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml)
dra007 	777 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0;SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0;
.NET CLR 3.0.04506; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
	0 	Wget/1.9.1
	0 	R6_CommentReader(www.radian6.com/crawler)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Opera/9.63 (Windows NT 6.1; U; en) Presto/2.1.1
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.2)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Yeti/1.0 (NHN Corp.;http://help.naver.com/robots/)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 6.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50215; SL Commerce Client v1.0;Tablet PC 2.0
Google 	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1;+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 4.0;FunWebProducts-MyWay)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT5.1;1813)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 4.0;FunWebProducts-MyWay)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;SV1; TCO_20090128110901; .NET CLR 1.1.4322;
 .NETCLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR3.5.21022; InfoPath.2)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; America OnlineBrowser 1.1; Windows NT 5.1; SpamBlockerUtility4.6.1)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
SpamCopAdmin 138 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080219
 Firefox/2.0.0.12Navigator/9.0.0.6
Yahoo 	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! SlurpChina; [url="http://misc.yahoo.com.cn/help.html)"]http://misc.yahoo.com.cn/help.html)[/url]
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT5.1;1813)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT5.1;1813)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR3.0.04506.30;
 .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648;OfficeLiveConnector.1.3; OfficeLivePatch.0.0)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0;SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0;
.NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618;InfoPath.2)
Yahoo 	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp;http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT5.1;1813)
Ask Jeeves 	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Ask Jeeves/Teoma;+http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080207 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy)
Firefox/2.0.0.12
Google 	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1;+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
	0 	Java/1.6.0
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 2.0.50727)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727;
InfoPath.1;
 .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; fi;rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR3.0.4506.2152;
 .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Wazoo 	18 	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008121621 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy)
Firefox/3.0.5
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;GTB5; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0;SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0;
NET CLR 3.0.04506; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR3.5.21022)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
MSN 	0 	msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; kn; rv:1.9.0.4)Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4, Ant.com Toolbar
1.2
	0 	Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_6;en-us) AppleWebKit/525.27.1 (KHTML,
 like Gecko)Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.27.1
	0 	Sogou webspider/4.0(+http://www.sogou.com/docs/help/webmasters.htm#07)
	0 	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;SV1) ;
 .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NETCLR 3.0.04506.30; Zune 3.0; InfoPath.2)

Most/Good spiders/bots/crawlers identify themselves as such .... the others are assumed to be 'normal' browsing Guests

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