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Possibly of interest -- or not.
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Possibly of interest -- or not. |
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Ratleader
since 2003-01-23
Posts 7026Visiting Earth on a Guest Pass 
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Just wondering if anyone might have a notion about this chart, and what it might mean for PiP.... I tossed it together out of curiosity -- to show the average number of responses that a poem gets in our Open forums, from the first to the presently active forum.  |
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| © Copyright 2006 Ed Ratledge - All Rights Reserved | |||
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serenity blaze Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738 |
I have some interest. What on earth prompted you to chart such a thing? Did you correspond it with individual biorhythms? I'm also curious--it looks amazingly similar to a mood chart I had to do for my internist--who is valiantly attempting to chart my moods even as I may possibly suffer from three differing medical conditions--menopause, anxiety disorder, and post traumatic stress. Hmmm. I think we need more individualization in order to determine the causitive factors. I mean, this could mean that Neptune is retrograde and mercury conflicts Uranus too.  |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
Hopefully it means that after 10 years the novelty of one line fluff responses is wearing thin, and that people are getting tired of vacuous comments. Maybe they are looking for more intelligent commentary. Also there are only so many people on the net who like "Open" type forums, and there are many more such now than there were even 6 years ago. So possibly the available pool of fluffy posters is being spread over a greater number of outlets. Then again it could be the Uranus Pluto thingy that Karen mentioned. M PS As for what it means for PIP, all I can say is that a smaller number of Open responses, possibly means lets hits? less members? less activity? less viability? - time to change tack a little Ron?  |
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Ratleader
since 2003-01-23
Posts 7026Visiting Earth on a Guest Pass |
1) Do you really? 2) I did it to possibly cheer up a friend – more than one actually – who have seemed down about the number of responses their work is getting lately. The decision to show it here came later, after I started looking at the implications. 3) No, but I could, given the time and some personal information I don’t really want – Excel’s great for that. This one took a total of maybe five minutes to generate including the time it took to get the idea in the first place, plus another five later to make it neat enough to post. Simple stuff. 4) Not being familiar with your moods, I can’t comment, except to say I can sympathize because I have experienced all three of those conditions, having suffered from each – though one of them as a mere recipient, which is bad enough. 5) I have done such things, just playing around, but I don’t do it now, because I learned things from it that I really didn’t want to know. 6) I would try a pastelled orange, and definitely a blue with some life in it -- snide is definitely not your best color. ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸ ¸¸ºº> ~~~(¸¸ER¸¸ºº> |
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Ratleader
since 2003-01-23
Posts 7026Visiting Earth on a Guest Pass |
Yo Moon -- I'd like that too! Thanks for taking an interest. I do have some ideas about what it may show (some of which directly conflict with each other), but I already know what they are....I'm definitely interested in what others might think the implications may be. ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸ ¸¸ºº> ~~~(¸¸ER¸¸ºº> ______________Ratleader______________ |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
Rat I added a PS - sorry about that we crossposted I think. Yo to you too M |
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serenity blaze Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738 |
I'm sorry if it appeared that I was laughing at you Ed. I just haven't seen this done since I did a stint in marketing, and honestly there just isn't enough information here. I'm sure Ron could help though. There are other things that need to be factored in. The size of the Pip population went up--as number of replies per post went down. Could that mean that there is a more varied membership at Pip? I can't tell by your chart I'm afraid. Also, you may have noticed that activity goes up and down according to certain seasons and holidays. Summer brings in more teens--usually MID SUMMER though, (I think--again, check with Ron) and Valentine's is so busy Ron has, on a couple of occasions had trouble keeping the site up because of the amount of "hits". There are also more poetry forums out there now, or maybe I am just just aware of more now. And I do believe the average computer per household has gone up as well, so I could surmise that since computer use has gone up, so has computer knowledge that has enabled more people to form their own sites (rumor has it that even I have one--I dunno, I only check in their occassionally--it's actually my sister's baby, I just named the place). speaking of better technology, businesses have also utilized programs that disable their workers from browsing the internet as freely during office hours. (I don't know enough about this to speak better of it, but I'm sure Ron knows.) Also, the size of this site has grown itself. One spoonful of jelly on a cracker looks like a lot, but if you try to spread on bread for a sandwich you might find yourself with a lot more bread. In short, you have made a very nice graph Ed, but it doesn't really tell us much. I'd be interested to hear if "hits" on the site have gone down. But all of this, it seems to me, is Ron's personal business, and on a good day, if he had nothing better to do, it might amuse him to entertain us by giving us the inside info on Passions in Poetry actually works. But I wouldn't count on it. I'm just glad it is here. But I appreciate your taking the time to bring it up--you made me remember yet another life, when I entertained the possibility of going into advertising. You also reminded me why I didn't. (That's no offense to you, either. I just didn't particularly like the psychology of a business that studies people and discovers ways to make them feel bad about their life.) Nod. Your average commercial makes you feel like you are lacking something. Which reminds me of something I've been meaning to ask, which is kind of akin to this thread--there is a product out there called "Head On" and the commercial does nothing but say the name of the product about a kjillion times, and the direction "apply directly to forehead." The ads for this product makes no claim it will actually do anything. They just want you to buy it and apply it to your forehead. And that's it.  "Head ON (apply directly to your forehead)" It doesn't promise removal of anything, or enhancement of anything, nada. That's it. What would make your chart interesting though, is if you had a listing of which members were actively posting during your spikes. Maybe that could be a clue too. In the meantime though, I ain't gonna sweat it. Everything cycles and changes. So does Pip. coffee, now. And I trust I'll see you around the forums. I think you've done a great job archiving,m'self. I had forgotten how much fun the haven was at one time. So thanks for that too. |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
quote: Not if Ron has anything to do with it. M (Oh I'm sooo funny.) |
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Ratleader
since 2003-01-23
Posts 7026Visiting Earth on a Guest Pass |
Laughin's good, and I did too, at your remarks -- no worries, eh? Actually I've dubbed it the Ratleader Effect, since the average seems to have been pushing 11 replies per poem in the forum that was active when I joined, and it's been sliding downhill ever since! In the current forum, it's running 6.3...sheesh....of course that's affected by the very fact that the forum IS active, but with almost 1200 poems in the forum already, it would take more than 4000 responses today to get the average back to where it was in Open 25. I can't help thinking about the nature of the PiP experience, and how these numbers might relate to this Family Of Friends. ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸ ¸¸ºº> ~~~(¸¸ER¸¸ºº> ______________Ratleader______________ |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
quote: I don't trust myself to comment on that!!! As people in CA know, I have a nasty failure towards sarcasm. Bless. M |
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Ratleader
since 2003-01-23
Posts 7026Visiting Earth on a Guest Pass |
quote: ....which leaves no need to! As for me, I find words like "display" and "relate" creeping in at the edges, among others, if you understand....which, being a bit of a cynic like me, you do! ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸ ¸¸ºº> ~~~(¸¸ER¸¸ºº> ______________Ratleader______________ |
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Ron
Administrator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-05-19
Posts 8669Michigan, US |
I think Karen is right; there isn't enough data to reach any useful conclusions. Additionally, as presented, I think the data is also misleading. I suspect if outliers were removed, as is common in statistical studies of this nature, the line would probably flatten considerably. Indeed, I think an exploration of those outliers would perhaps reveal some important clues about cause and effect. If I wanted to, I'm confident I could reverse the trend in Ed's chart with a single move. All I would have to do is close down Registrations again. In February, 2004, I closed forum registrations to new Members because I felt we didn't have enough staff available to effectively deal with the problems new Members were bringing with them, and I would not sacrifice quality in the name of quantity. Over the remainder of 2004 and most of 2005, I would open the flood gates only sporadically and as soon as it seemed our Moderators were stressing, I would close them again. During the 21 months from February 2004 through October 2005, we allowed only 303 people to join as new Members. Why is this pertinent? Because new Members are in large part responsible for one side of the outliers represented in Ed's chart. Almost half of all new Members come in, post a slew of poems, then depart without ever discovering that participation is the key to success in any forum. They leave very few comments in their wake and, because they posted a bunch of poems back to back, their own poetry similarly receives far fewer comments. They create a lot of outliers that skew the graph. For most of two years, the line in Ed's graph was relatively flat because the outliers weren't allowed to join. In November, 2005, however, a lot of software was revamped, including a whole new Registration system, and we again opened the doors to new Members. In the past ten months, 1201 new Members have joined, once again creating a lot of new outliers. It's not surprising the line dipped so much as it is that it didn't dip a lot more. I haven't looked in a long time, but our "active" roster (those actually posting in any given month) typically runs between 300 to 500 people -- so 120 new people a month is a pretty large percentage. Of course, even there, virtually NONE of my data could ever be forced to correspond with Ed's. How many of 1201 new Members posted in Teen or Dark and never even visited an Open forum to skew the numbers? I don't know. I no longer track a lot of data (even though I'm a compulsive counter), but what I do track is organized by dates, not by Open Forum numbers. quote: I think I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that, T.  * 2006, of course, represents only the first nine months of the year. Our stats, by the way, are open to the public; just click on the graphical icon at the bottom of any page. *** Off topic *** quote: People already feel bad about their lives, Karen. You know that. The 5 P's of good marketing starts with Product, which should ideally be the solution to a problem rather than the invention of a problem. Like everything else invented by man, marketing can and will be subverted, but that should be blamed on the people not the discipline. Writers are marketers. As is any woman who uses lipstick or eye liner. |
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Ratleader
since 2003-01-23
Posts 7026Visiting Earth on a Guest Pass |
Yup, that was one of the biggest notions I had about it, though in this case the outlier is part of the dynamic that's being measured, because it affects the "culture" of the site as a whole. Since a newcomer is more likely to want to "display" their work than to "relate" to others in the group, that's a big factor, and your chart demonstrates it quite well. Something else to consider is the sheer size of our membership. With so many new people, the "old guard" who read and enjoy many poems, are spread thinner by the sheer volume of poems that are going up. Despite any good intentions, they may find they simply can't get to everything they want -- I know it's definitely that way for me. ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸ ¸¸ºº> ~~~(¸¸ER¸¸ºº> ______________Ratleader______________ |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
quote: How did I just know that was coming! |
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