Past 8000 posts

Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, July 4th, 2011 - 27 comments
Categories: admin, The Standard - Tags:

Well, our hard working authors have pumped more than 8000 posts into The Standard since August 2007. A thousand of those have been done in the last 150 days (we passed it on Saturday) since Feb 2nd.

This is a pretty awesome performance considering that the prolific Marty G put down his overworked fingers on April 2nd and my posting got somewhat constrained by becoming a cyborg drug addict :twisted:. The posting slack has largely been taken up with the varied guest posts and some increases in posts from other authors.

We were at 292 thousand comments on Saturday (and rapidly heading to 300k comments). We averaged 52 comments per post over this last thousand posts, compared with 48 comments per post in the previous thousand posts (and 37 per post in the thousand before that). I and the editors don’t think that the quality of the comments has been going down as we head towards an election (others may disagree – but that is usually political). I am a bit irritated* about people using this site for long cut-n-paste comments.

Stats between sites are pretty fraught to manipulation and misinterpretation. But it looks like the site is slowing pulling ahead of Kiwiblog at present at least in terms of page views and probably comments. 

Certainly we seem to have some extraordinarily long read times on posts as people scan their way through the comments – probably only exceeded by Public Address with their fewer posts and larger numbers of long comments per post. Some of our posts are starting to get rather too many comments to easily see. I’m starting to think about ways to make it easier to see comments that are new since your last look, and to allows you to collapse comment threads that you’re not interested in continuing to read. But those things aren’t that high a priority right now.

The increase in comments is despite (and probably because of) my current banning practice of commentators with particularly obnoxious long-term non-engaged behaviors. They get banned until after the election. It has improved the level of engagement between commentators considerably IMHO.

We’re pretty consistent at have a high number of new readers and more importantly with a very high proportion of new readers becoming repeat readers. Quite a few of the lurkers eventually wind up writing comments when they see a topic that interests them. I am particularly pleased with the numbers of women who are commenting these days (but we still need more active women authors!).

The systems now have oodles of capacity across two primary servers, one in NZ for the Oceania region and the other in the US for the rest of the world (mostly the bots). Which bearing in mind recent massive increases (and fluctuations) in page views by both people and the bots and the impending election, has been required.

* Irritated = I will probably do something particularly nasty and quite automatic about that sooner rather than later if I don’t see some rapid improvement.

27 comments on “Past 8000 posts ”

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  1. travellerev 1
    4 July 2011 at 1:44 pm

    Congrats Iprent and the other Standardistas! I think Jenny is a good choice to be invited as a poster amongst you.

    • Jenny 1.1
      5 July 2011 at 6:21 pm

      Thank you for your kind vote of confidence travellerev.

      And yes, congrats to The Standard.

  2. Tiger Mountain 2
    4 July 2011 at 2:01 pm

    Yes well done all, the cumulative effect of the different posts is important. Multiple authors. And regular commenters (whilst somewhat a known quantity) are increasingly having a more genuine ebb and flow of interaction.

    I looked at Kiwiblog for the first time in months today, chronic one man bandism, plus there was a whole bunch of cutesy holiday pom pics. Good grief, I think we should appreciate the South Pacific more than some of us do if a Haddock omlette is a culinary highlight!

  3. mickysavage 3
    4 July 2011 at 2:03 pm

    Congrats Lprent and co.
     
    I sometimes wish the standard did not exist  My productivity would be so much higher.  BUT I would be so much worse informed …
     
    Kia kaha.

    • Lanthanide 3.1
      4 July 2011 at 2:09 pm

      Agreed.

    • lprent 3.2
      4 July 2011 at 11:23 pm

      I’d give you sympathy, but I seem to have some moderating to do.

      BTW: This is bit disturbing looking at the stats from the start of the systems. 

      1. lprent (7,442)
      2. Felix (7,136)
      3. Colonial Viper (7,078)
      4. Draco T Bastard (6,925)
      5. Pascal’s bookie (6,140)
      6. r0b (5,109)
      7. burt (4,255)
      8. Lanthanide (3,712)
      9. Ianmac (3,514)
      10. Lew (3,423)
      11. mickysavage (3,400)


      How is that I am still at the top of the posted comments? And there are another 650 odd when I was posting comments as AncientGeek. (I gave the top 11 so you could see that Lanth is actually ahead of thee). Umm…

      • 8,007 posts were posted.
      • 13 pages were created.
      • 3,052 tags were created.
      • 292,789 comments were posted.
      • 5,133 different nicknames were represented in the comments.
      • 241 links were added.
      • 227 post categories were needed.
      • 9 link categories were needed.
      • 100,933 spam blocked.


      I have written 2.54% of all of the comments in the system. No wonder my coding time has been constrained for the last couple of years..

      😈

  4. ianmac 4
    4 July 2011 at 2:15 pm

    The Standard is my first call of each day. Great way to keep in touch with events when you live away from the main centres. Congratulations.

  5. pollywog 5
    4 July 2011 at 2:24 pm

    Yeah cheers for the distraction.

    Still reckon you should get some ‘standardista’ shirts printed up though eh…

    • lprent 5.1
      4 July 2011 at 11:25 pm

      I believe that is being discussed. From my comment above you can see that we are rapidly approaching comment 300k.

  6. Darien Fenton 6
    4 July 2011 at 2:41 pm

    Congratulations to the Standardists.

  7. vto 7
    4 July 2011 at 2:55 pm

    Yep well done. Great place to test the meagre brainwaves that occasionally waft through between the ears …

    • lprent 7.1
      4 July 2011 at 11:29 pm

      Yep, certainly keeps my wits sharp. Moreover I have to use the word skills rather than the coding skills. Helps to ensure that they don’t atrophy.

  8. kriswgtn 8
    4 July 2011 at 6:00 pm

    I come here as soon as I wake up- and when I can during the day

    Before coming here I was thinking I was the only one who didn’t like NActs

    You guys rock

    I have educated alot of my friends who now come and read-they may not post but they take what they read and debate it @ the pub

  9. Jum 9
    4 July 2011 at 11:01 pm

    I’m very proud of you guys.

  10. marty mars 10
    5 July 2011 at 12:18 am

    yes my congratulations too – there isn’t a better site on the net – quality all the way. This site is essential reading for me so thanks to all.

  11. felix 11
    5 July 2011 at 12:25 am

    Jolly good show all around.

  12. Bob 12
    5 July 2011 at 8:52 am

    Solidarity all the way Standardistas…… I may suffer from a form of Standardista Addiction …. cheers

  13. the pink postman 13
    5 July 2011 at 3:55 pm

    Well done ! The information is the best and the debates top notch.
    I often wonder how many of the subscribers I know and I wonder if the few I think I know are really correct. once again well done long may the Standard survive

    • MrSmith 13.2
      5 July 2011 at 6:36 pm

      Postman you have known them all, as you have meet them before, the story tellers and the liars, the jokes and the hypocrites, it’s a pleasure to hear what someone with your wisdom has to say, peoples behavior hasn’t changed that much, it’s only the stage that’s changed.