From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds) Subject: Jan93 Readership Report Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 22:41:04 GMT
Forgot to do this last month, but here are the figures from the January
1993 network statistics on newsgroups. c.o.l showed up as nr 161 on the
popularity lists: approximately 42000 people reportedly read it.
c.o.l.announce is number 504 with a readership of 24000 - the main
problem seems to be limited propagation (53%) right now.
Linux was also on the top 40 lists in both traffic volume (21st) and
per-reader-cost (40th) - something I wouldn't mind if it would change.
The S/N ratio has gone steadily down, most irritatingly due to people
flaming each other over asking FAQ's and/or general bandwidth wasting or
due to non-linux inflamed threads concerning Diamond video cards or
similar.
I've also had a few mails complaining about unhelpful responses to
posts: I think the linux community is generally helpful, but a few
non-friendly posts can give a bad picture of the people reading this
group. If you feel like flaming a newbie for posting a FAQ - don't:
it's usually better to politely answer it and point out that the FAQ
does contain the answer, or simply ignore it (ignoring it also saves
valuable time that can better be used to read alt.tasteless or *shudder*
for real life).
Linus
=====
This is a partial set of data from the USENET readership report for Jan 93.
Explanations of the figures (and full data) can be found in news.lists.
+-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide.
| +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population
| | +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all
| | | +-- Recent traffic (messages per month)
| | | | +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month)
| | | | | +-- Crossposting percentage
| | | | | | +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr
| | | | | | | +-- Share: % of newsrders
| | | | | | | | who read this group.
V V V V V V V V
1 220000 5781 91% 16 244.2 100% 0.00 12.1% news.announce.newusers
2 140000 3863 68% 2267 5182.5 32% 0.05 8.1% alt.sex
3 140000 3779 87% 4 199.5 75% 0.00 7.9% news.answers
4 140000 3766 85% 1183 2413.4 17% 0.03 7.9% misc.jobs.offered
5 140000 3704 84% 79 149.7 0% 0.00 7.7% rec.humor.funny
...
9 110000 3068 89% 983 1773.1 12% 0.03 6.4% comp.windows.x
...
13 94000 2507 89% 1225 2229.2 22% 0.04 5.2% comp.lang.c
...
21 80000 2125 89% 866 1482.7 14% 0.03 4.4% comp.unix.questions
...
101 48000 1295 86% 245 399.7 34% 0.01 2.7% comp.unix.programmer
...
116 47000 1248 86% 157 218.3 20% 0.01 2.6% comp.unix.misc
...
123 46000 1231 81% 1088 3085.5 10% 0.10 2.6% comp.unix.bsd
...
161 42000 1112 77% 3606 5948.9 2% 0.20 2.3% comp.os.linux
...
217 36000 971 82% 63 107.5 17% 0.00 2.0% comp.os.mach
...
328 30000 790 83% 35 82.7 6% 0.00 1.7% comp.std.unix
...
339 29000 781 71% 16 26.0 27% 0.00 1.6% comp.unix.sys5.r4
...
346 29000 775 72% 495 1017.9 65% 0.05 1.6% comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
...
395 27000 717 85% 271 1102.5 1% 0.06 1.5% comp.os.minix
...
504 24000 635 53% 102 551.2 34% 0.02 1.3% comp.os.linux.announce
...
513 23000 625 76% 212 457.7 9% 0.03 1.3% gnu.gcc.help
...
565 22000 580 80% 553 1962.6 6% 0.13 1.2% comp.os.coherent
...
620 20000 540 76% 181 1040.1 1% 0.07 1.1% gnu.gcc.bug
...
710 19000 498 54% 203 400.7 13% 0.02 1.0% comp.windows.x.i386unix
...
1163 10000 274 43% 17 20.9 25% 0.00 0.6% alt.os.linux
...
1299 8500 228 30% 2 1.9 50% 0.00 0.5% comp.unix.i386
...
1876 1800 48 11% 16 22.3 0% 0.00 0.1% de.comm.uucp