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.

RE: 2004 Statistics for www.memestreams.net