viewing behavior

[GrizzlyAdams]

Over in the Bridge Hammock thread TeeDee noted the large number of views, second only to the number of views on the ring buckles thread. Both of these do have lots of views, but they also have lots of postings as well.

Being the curious sort, and liking an excuse to do a little Perl programming, I grabbed the source of the page you get selecting "Today's Posts" and had a look. It has embedded in it the titles of various threads shown, the number of "Replies" (postings-1) and the number of views. I can't seem to get more than 20 threads listed on a page at a time, and so that's all the threads I'll bother to analyze.

<unixese>
ran that through grep twice---once to get the thread titles, the other to get the lines with the replies and views. Was easier to do in 10 seconds on the command line rather than struggle out a regular expression that could get both kinds of lines in one shot. Wrote a Perl script to read both files, run pattern matches on their contents to strip off the interesting bits, created for each listed thread a string that lists the average number of views per posting, followed by the thread name, and sorted the strings in descending order.
</unixese>

Here's the result

avg
views thread name
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
38.49 Ring Buckle Supports
35.20 JRB Tarp Tent Pre-purchase List?
27.40 material questions
24.75 Ridgeline on a Claytor
24.57 What Clothes Do You Wear to Sleep in a Hammock?
23.92 Jet Boil 49.99 -10%
22.86 Frameless backpacks - do they work for hangers?
21.97 Bridge Hammock
21.66 Hammock Forums T-Shirts
20.00 Need help with a picture.
19.71 My new jungle hammock as a start
19.64 Hammock Camping with a Dog?
17.67 rated for 350lbs
17.26 hammock fans
16.02 How did those cleats work out?
15.62 parachute material
13.33 Hammock Hiking and Bears
11.71 Desert Camo HH Clone
10.62 wtb CINCH BUCKLES
10.00 convert old mummy bag into under quilt?

Of course there are lots of other variables involved, such as lifetime of the thread and so on. Still, despite the very high variation in the number of views enjoyed by a thread, there is comparatively less variation on the average #views per posting.

When I look and see how many users are active on the forum at a time, the number is generally in the range [1-20]. I can't tell how many unique viewers there are in a day (maybe the site gives the moderators more information). But my anectodal evidence, and a snapshot of average views per post are consistent with

a) a small number of 10's of distinct people viewing the site each day
b) most people viewing most new posts.

I generally read most posts. Every now and then there will be thread I don't track. For the most part I'll scan what's there.

how about the other 20.97 of you?

Grizz

[NCPatrick]

Hmmm... maybe all that joking with Shadowmoss about recording her last 100 keystrokes was warranted...

I know there's a core group that hangs out here daily, mostly the same folks you'd see at any particular group hangout, which is why it's so much fun to go to those things and meet these folks face-to-face.

On another note, maybe attroll could sign you up to do some site reports (if there is such an animal).

btw, I love Perl too, but not enough to go looking for work to do with it...

[GrizzlyAdams]

btw, I love Perl too, but not enough to go looking for work to do with it...

well shoot, then you know we're talking about (lemme count) 26 lines of code here. 10 minutes of fun.

here's the fun

die $! unless open(REPLIES,"replies.txt");
die $! unless open(NAME,"thread-title.txt");

while(<REPLIES>) {
 $line = $_;
 if( $line =~ m/Replies: (\d+)/ ) {
        $posts = $1+1;
 }
 if( $line =~ m/Views: (.+)\"/ ) {
        $views = $1;
        $views =~ s/\,//;
 }

 $thread = <NAME>;
 if( $thread =~m/\>(.+)\</ ) {
        $title = $1;
 } 
 $thread[$i++] = sprintf "%5.2f\t%s\n", $views/$posts, $title;
}

@sorted = sort {$b <=> $a} (@thread);
foreach $s (@sorted) {
 print $s;
}

fun's over. I gotta go work on bridge hammock version 0.1

Grizz

[NCPatrick]

Sign him up, attroll!

[angrysparrow]

But my anectodal evidence, and a snapshot of average views per post are consistent with

a) a small number of 10's of distinct people viewing the site each day
b) most people viewing most new posts.

I generally read most posts. Every now and then there will be thread I don't track. For the most part I'll scan what's there.

how about the other 20.97 of you?

I did a similar exercise to your's a few weeks ago Griz, and came to much the same conclusion. I believe there is a small core of habitual readers here that each read through the posts a few times a day each, with only a few others who check in occasionally and read a few posts. If that is the case, I believe there must be a few very dedicated readers who keep their online status 'invisible' through the CP option.

One thing that might skew the results a little is the RSS feed. I'm not sure that hits to that feed actually translate to page views on a particular thread. Even so, I'd guess that the number of people, besides myself, who access the site via RSS is very limited.

[Cannibal]

I believe there is a small core of habitual readers here that each read through the posts a few times a day each, with only a few others who check in occasionally and read a few posts. If that is the case, I believe there must be a few very dedicated readers who keep their online status 'invisible' through the CP option.

I probably fall into that category, but not due to any "invisibility" powers (although that would be coooool ). I usually have the forums open on my desktop all day, but not logged in. I guess that registers as "guest" in the "Who's Online" page. I just bounce over and refresh the Today's Posts from time to time. Especially when it gets juicy!

[Ewker]

I never sign out so it looks like I am here when I'm not. I read what threads I want. I then click mark forums read under the quick links drop down menu

[slowhike]

as i walk from my hammock to the kitchen each morn, i turn on the computer.
after i heat water for mocha & make a trip to the bathroom, i check in & read any unread posts while having my morning mocha.

i check back in several times through the day, particularly after work & not long before time to retire to the hammock again.

i've at least scanned every post since this site started, & i try to read most posts to the point of partial if not full comprehension<g>
but of course some posts are going to be of more interest to some than others.

and i have to admit, most of the greek... i mean math filled posts, i scanned very lightly ...tim

[headchange4u]

I sit in front of a computer most of the day at work, so I am constantly checking this and other choice sites for new replies. I do read almost every post on this site, even though it may not be a thread I am totally interested in.

[eflat7]

I sit in front of a computer most of the day at work, so I am constantly checking this and other choice sites for new replies. I do read almost every post on this site, even though it may not be a thread I am totally interested in.

I second that.