30,000 Members Strong

[TheMask]

Sounds to me like it´s time to establsih a new website with a better counter - the counts on Distrowatch don´t seem to be very precise. Besides that, who knows the exact amount of OUR members? Not only should we have a counter for the new Release (VOTE if you wish: OpenSuse Release Counter - a good idea? - openSUSE Forums), but even a counter telling everyone how many people actually using this site! Whoa am I exited...

[Akoellh]

Now let me play the "Party Pooper" here:

In the same way as distrowatch isn't accurate, the number of member is also not accurate for the size/quality/whatever considering a forum.

How many _really active_ members does this forum have?

Wxperience shows, even fora a lot "bigger" don't have more active users which contribute more than only a few posts.

It always boils down to a few dozens perhaps.

[Akoellh]

Just to give you an idea:

openSUSE Forums - Members List

[TheMask]

Nope, can´t see the party pooper. YOu just clarified things. Thanks!

> 'openSUSE Forums - Members List'
> (http://forums.opensuse.org/members/l...t=posts&pp=100)

that list would be more interesting if it contained the last posting
date of each member....but, i guess if it were so it might be a less
impressive "35,000 Members Strong"....huh?

anyway, think about it: if all 35k were here every minute of every day
it would still be a VERY small group..[i just checked, skype currently
has 16+ million online, who knows how many are on facebook, twitter,
aol, msn etc etc etc....this is SMALL! but, growing hopefully..]

--
palladium
Have a lot of fun..

[joakim_ganse]

To measure things is tricky.

What do you want to measure ? users ? contributors ? and why.
Is bigger, more spread and more contributors always better ?

Take Slackware as an example it has more or less one developer that is 1! and I think it is one of the most respected distros out there.

Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that the Opensuse forums get attention and that the memberlist is growing, just don't read too much into numbers, any numbers.

It gets like statistics, you now, lies, **** lies and statistics.

[TheMask]

It gets like statistics, you now, lies, **** lies and statistics.

Perfect point. Statistics lie - and that is, of course, even true for Distrowatch.

[Akoellh]

Another common phenomenon is the fact, that the faster a forum/community is growing, the smaller the percentage of actually "highly active" users.

Also quite logical, because such users normally "develop" with time, so young fora with a lot of users have few highly active users.

If you take out users with less than 10 postings, there are 1300 of 35000 left. if you make the cut at 50, you'll end up with less than 900 users, if you take the "top 350" (1%), they have 66 or more postings.

Quite a drop, isn't it?

[hendersj]

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:56:03 +0000, TheMask wrote:

> Sounds to me like it´s time to establsih a new website with a better
> counter - the counts on Distrowatch don´t seem to be very precise.

They are precise for what they measure - but many people don't understand
what they measure.

There is the Linux Counter project as well, but I think that's just a
linux installation counter.

Jim

--
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Moderator

[Tshaw91]

Hi all

And another one member from France !! My name is Florent. OpenSuse is the second GNU/Linux software that I test and this is very pleasant but as a 8 years Windows user I have a little bridge to travel in order to be as efficient on OpenSuse as I was on Windows =)

Please excuse my low level in English ^^

See you soon on this forum ! ++