Sniper's Unofficial 2+2 Post Count Analysis

[El Diablo]

Shadowrun,

See this thread.

Thanks

[Sniper]

April comments:

1. UBB7 upgrade and rollback had a impact, but overall posting traffic increased. No adjustments have been made to the post counts to account for forum downtime.

2. POG (#1) and BBV4Life (#2) explode this month, up +67% and +54% respectively. While BBV4Life had been on a positive trend; POG had been running with hot and cold days, but to almost the end of this month POG maintained consistantly strong traffic. We'll see if POG can keep running hot, but my money is on BBV4L taking the #1 spot in May.

3. BBV (#4) traffic drops 27%, possibly as a result of BBV4L posters now getting their posts in the right forum [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

4. TLDR (#22) and Politics (#12) continue their growth trends, both up +13%. For Politics, this included a brief period where posting was turned off. ATF (#27) continues to run strong, thanks to the political discussion this month, passing the 100 p/d barrier.

5. Health and Fitness (#24) was added after a successful run in the playground as The Gym, and continues running over the 100 p/d mark. Well done Kyleb.

6. The Beginners (#35) merge with General, and Finance (#28) merge with MMB, both resulted in reduced combined traffic, down -34% and -19% respectively.

7. In the Strategy forums, overall Limit traffic drops -17%, while NL traffic drops -3%. Bucking the trend uNL (#6) and FRNL (#10), up +12% and +13% respectively. STT (#7) has a strong month, up +21%, while both MTT forums drop.

8. 1st set of foreign language forums are added, starting with German forums.

9. 4th Qtr '05 and 1st Qtr '06, have been added to the chart this month.

10. If you haven't listened to Dr. Al's 4/10 podcast with Mason on Holdem Radio, well worth the time... link. Among much interesting discussion, Mason talks a bit about site trafic, and projects a doubling/tripling of 2+2 traffic over the next 6-8 months.

[Sniper]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought it was obvious I figured out how you did it, but anyways thats still pretty shady. THE FINANCE FORUM had its highest post count month ever, period. Combining two forums posts to make it look like it didn't is shady.

[/ QUOTE ]

The chart reflects movement of posts... OOT has been the primary beneficiary of Playground posts when those posts get moved. Nothing shady, just entirely consistant with the methodology used to track posts.

I guess you feel good about reverse splits too, cause the price is now higher [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]


[ QUOTE ]
By that thought process to get a true idea of OOT's post counts we should combine post counts from OOT, EDF, The Lounge, Sporting Events, POG, Politics, Health and Fitness, Student Life, Video Games, Laughs or Links, and SMP thus making it the largest forum on 2+2 by a ridiculously wide margin.

[/ QUOTE ]

You do know the difference between a split and a merge?


[ QUOTE ]
Also, Finance's number this month are still up 40-50% over the number's that finance put up pre-MMB split.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, Finance/MMB traffic had a very nice runup from an avg of 37 p/d in 4Q05, to 151 p/d in Feb '07, up over +300% in 14 months. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Maybe if you stop focusing on pissing off MMB posters, we can get back to working on bringing that traffic back...

[daryn]

it's just pretty unreasonable to think that merged forums would sustain the same traffic as their separate parts. very unreasonable.

for instance general merged with beginner right? but do you really think all the posts that went in general will now just go to beginner? hell, i bet most people on the forum have no idea those forums even merged, they probably just figured general was eliminated and now they look for other places to make their posts, or don't make them at all.

[Neil S]

On POG, POG I think is going to show a definite slowdown as the server keeps running so inconsistently. The traffic went way up because people are playing turbos again with gusto, but it gets hard to run those when the server will blink off as it has been lately.

But yeah, if the rumors are true that some BBV4LIFE people are just spamming to pass POG, then they'll pass us anyway, heh.

[Sniper]

[ QUOTE ]
it's just pretty unreasonable to think that merged forums would sustain the same traffic as their separate parts. very unreasonable.

[/ QUOTE ]

Daryn, Of course, that's the point. The flip side of that, is also the primary driver behind new forum creation... new topical forums create more traffic.

[daryn]

more posts aren't necessarily better than less posts though, if it's the same people making the posts. by your logic basically all forum mergers are a bad idea. your dream scenario would be to create thousands of subforums so that people have to click 10,000 times to post all the things they want to talk about.

[.Alex.]

Again, I don't understand the outrage with Sniper. Sure, combining the two forums' stats from previous months isn't completely fair, but ignoring it would be just as bad. If POG got merged back into OOT, OOT posts would skyrocket. It would be silly not to incorporate what POG did on its own when judging the value of the new OOT.

In fact, I think Sniper's method is better than the alternative because this
[ QUOTE ]
it's just pretty unreasonable to think that merged forums would sustain the same traffic as their separate parts. very unreasonable.

[/ QUOTE ]
is at least debatable, as it was a major point of discussion during the creation of new forums a year ago. Certainly, daryn, if this message board expanded to 10,000 forums, there would be fewer overall posts than the current model, no?

[tuq]

Alex,

You may not be able to get a whiff of this undercurrent, but certain mods and ex-mods - their names may or may not rhyme with "Seven", "cabn", "erin", and "NEbenhoe" - are pretty jealous of Sniper in general and try to knock him down a peg whenever they can. Occasionally this manifests itself in their posts. HTH.

[.Alex.]

tuq,

I have no idea what you're talking about (as far as I know, all mods are respected representatives of the site who have no petty issues with any other mods or posters), but I will point out that "erin" does not rhyme with any mod that I am aware of.