Spike in the middle was a spammer that went wild. He was contained and sent packing. However the rest should be apparent. I was off in the prediction as to when the spam would overwhelm it: there is a small, small group of hardcore posters that are hanging on. Half of this month's posts (not included in the above since is not a complete month) are from ten posters. That includes out of the spam and obvious troll posts too. Oops. That includes the Bguther. N/M. One of the top trollers is one of the top posters.
They may hold on for another year, a small refugium of close knit posters, but I'd not bet on it. The decline gets worse with every year and certain seasons seem to sap more and the posting levels don't really recover. At some point, a threshold will be crossed and SHWI will be completely lost to spam.
Ah well. Nothing lasts forever.
They may hold on for another year, a small refugium of close knit posters, but I'd not bet on it. The decline gets worse with every year and certain seasons seem to sap more and the posting levels don't really recover. At some point, a threshold will be crossed and SHWI will be completely lost to spam.
Ah well. Nothing lasts forever.
*raises glass*
ReplyDeleteSic transit gloria.
Fondly remembered, in a manner analogous to one's first apartment. It was comfortable and nice, for its time, but there was no dishwasher and being on the fourth floor with no elevator got old after a while. And especially the noisy neighbors who never stopped fighting and never took out the trash.
ReplyDelete-Dennis Brennan
How did you create that graph?
ReplyDeleteI went to google groups and harvested the post count from their archive:
ReplyDeletehttp://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/about
You can do the same for any news group. For rec.arts.sf.writen, it seems to be very sable and healhy:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/about
I pulled the data into excel and graphed.
Interesting asymmetry -- the increase is a bit faster than the decline.
ReplyDeleteI'd speculate about that and other details, but it's a bit too sad.
Doug M.
Spam and wingnuts, Doug. Spam and wingnuts.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, it is sad.
It was Carlos Yu who ruined the group. When he wasn't hurling insults at other posters, he was stalking them IRL.
ReplyDeleteI think that you will find that I disagree with that assessment. Carlos had little to do with it. Anon ad hominems are pretty stupid, btw. Grow a pair for gawd's sake.
ReplyDelete