Decius wrote:
] Since 2002 we've been publishing the httpd log statistics for
] this site on an annual basis. This gives you some insight into
] traffic levels, popular pages, and the kinds of search results
] that bring people to MemeStreams.

Thanks. The awstats are always worth a look, but I found your year-to-year comparative analysis even more interesting.

I understood increased scalability to be a primary purpose of your ongoing efforts to reengineer the MemeStreams code base and web site. If the numbers are really leveling off, are further efforts in this area warranted?

The awstats do tell me something about the usage of the site, but it leaves out a significant data point. It's not something you will find in the httpd logs, but rather in the database itself. That is the level of activity on the part of registered users, not just in 'hits' and 'visits', but in terms of the memes themselves.

I would like to see per-month and per-user stats on the number of URLs memed and/or log entries made.

What is the status of the year in graphs for 2004?

noteworthy wrote:
] What is the status of the year in graphs for 2004?

As I type this I'm generating a run of the graphs on my laptop. I'm on the road right now, which caused a few problems. It took all of the 1st to download the data required over dial-up. I had to jump through a few unexpected hoops to get it to run under OSX. Et cetera.

Everything seems to be working fine. It should be up by tomorrow morning. Last year the Year in Graphs made its debut on the 20th, so we are still ahead of ourselves.

noteworthy wrote:
] I understood increased scalability to be a primary purpose of
] your ongoing efforts to reengineer the MemeStreams code base
] and web site. If the numbers are really leveling off, are
] further efforts in this area warranted?

Yes, of course. If I've led you to believe that changes are being made in order to ward off an impending self destruction due to over population I apologize. Thats not what we're doing at all.

Furthermore, I don't believe that we are growing fast enough. There are 27 million people out there who read weblogs according to Pew. I have about 30,000 of them, tops. There are probably slightly less then 1000 people who really read this site regularly. Obviously less then 50 who post frequently. It could be a whole lot bigger, but it will only happen if it gets better.

There are some scalability related fixes that need to be made, but most of the current effort has to do with three things:

1. Fixing a multitude of problems with the user interface that are either annoying, or confusing, or both.
2. Changing the database and code so that it is properly structured for growth both in terms of readership and in terms of features.
3. Adding some new features that everyone wants, such as pictures...

The only way this is going to actually happen is if we get some help. There is a lot of code to write a no one has time to write it. The process needs to consist of a lot of people writing small amounts of code rather then a small number of people writing a lot of code. Fortunately a few people have volunteered to help out...

] The awstats do tell me something about the usage of the site,
] but it leaves out a significant data point. It's not
] something you will find in the httpd logs, but rather in the
] database itself. That is the level of activity on the part of
] registered users, not just in 'hits' and 'visits', but in
] terms of the memes themselves.

You're absolutely right.

Two data points of interest:
1. 123 Authenticated users logged in during December. The majority of them visited a fair number of pages. Only 8 visited a total of one page.

2. As of right now there have been 16,842 memes posted to memestreams during its lifetime. 6,639 of them were recommended during 2004. (This information is easy to glean from the thread ID numbers.)

We've already created some code in the new codebase that will track users more carefully so that we can get an accurate count of READERS rather then unique IP addresses and hits.

Decius wrote:
] Yes, of course. If I've led you to believe that changes are
] being made in order to ward off an impending self destruction
] due to over population I apologize. Thats not what we're doing
] at all.

Course corrected, sir.

] 1. Fixing a multitude of problems with the user interface that
] are either annoying, or confusing, or both.

Is there a master list? Is it in bugzilla? What's the bugzilla URL again?

] 3. Adding some new features that everyone wants, such as
] pictures...

Are configurable "read more" page-break points on the list?

] As of right now there have been 16,842 memes posted to
] memestreams during its lifetime. 6,639 of them were
] recommended during 2004.

And of the ones in 2004, I recommended (not necessarily initiated) 1300 of them, altogether. You recommended ~ 1150. I win! (This analysis excludes in-thread replies that were not posted to a MemeStream, such as this reply.)

Seriously, though, there is much to consider in the observation that nearly 20% of the site's annual memes can be found on a single stream. I'd like to see that percentage dwindle to 1% or less -- and not because of my own inaction!

Decius wrote:
] Since 2002 we've been publishing the httpd log statistics for
] this site on an annual basis. This gives you some insight into
] traffic levels, popular pages, and the kinds of search results
] that bring people to MemeStreams.
]
] From the time we went online (in the fall of 2001) until
] September of 2003 we saw a fairly constant growth in the
] number of unique visitors using this site. This year that
] pattern has changed. The growth, as measured in terms of
] unique visitors, seems to have leveled off shy of 30,000
] people a month, and this year we settled into a static pattern
] typical of older websites, where more traffic is received in
] the winter months than in the summer months. As our site is
] current events focused we also get an occasional boost from
] popular news stories.
]
] However, while the same number of people are using MemeStreams
] as were using it a year ago, those people seem to be using it
] a lot more. In September of 2003 we got 27,825 unique
] visitors, who visited 101,041 pages on the site. In November
] of 2004 we got 27,496 unique visitors, but they visited
] 155,421 pages on the site.
]
] Truth be told, this is probably a more significant change. A
] lot of those 27 thousand people wash in from a search engine
] looking for something specific and never return. The vitality
] of this site is more dependent on the people who stick around
] a while and actually make use of it. Those people seem to be
] growing in numbers even as the overall total remains the same.
]
]
] The main page of the site was hit 259,011 times this year,
] which works out to about 708 times a day. Thats up from
] 148,826 last year (which is 408 times a day). Also, in 2003
] 29% of our traffic came from search engines and 33% came from
] bookmarks. This year 19% came from search engines and 57% came
] from bookmarks.
]
] 2003 saw the birth of the referrer spammer and they are not
] going away. The 5 "links from an external page" listed here
] were the only ones that made the top 20 who I'm absolutely
] sure aren't spammers. (Honestly, the Netnewswire link may be
] considered spam, as it is offered by that RSS reader, but its
] somewhat interesting data and not exactly the same thing as
] robots that hit your site over and over with no interest in
] fetching the content.)
]
] If you're interested, you can find the links to older annual
] statistics here:
] http://www.memestreams.net/allabout.html
]
] Happy New Year!

You have no life. YOu are so dull and disliked that this is what you had the time to do on New Years? YOu idiot. You need to fix some stuff on this site. Do a better job...or you are fired.