From: Eivind Eklund <eeklund@...>
Date: 2004-10-02T01:07:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Community size

On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 23:41:05 +0900, Mikael Brockman <mikael@phubuh.org> wrote:
> Dave Thomas <dave@pragprog.com> writes:
> > Does anyone have any metrics that I could use for this, or any ideas
> > for finding these kinds of figures?
> 
> I'm running a script to tally the posts/year on ruby-talk.  That's a
> rough indicator, I guess.  It might be an hour or so until it's done,
> though.

I think that's a bad metric, because the mailing list has reached
"saturation" a long time ago - where the effort of tracking it is
limiting the size.

 You might be able to get some metrics based on the number of mention
in Google, perhaps.

"Ruby language" is presently at 1.1 million vs 300 thousand for
"smalltalk language".

Another metric might be download counts - both from the main site and
from any packagers.  For instance, the download counts from the
FreeBSD mirrors might be available - and the proportion of Ruby DLs
compared to the rest of the ports collection could be measured.

Or you could look at page views for RAA, if available.

Magazine articles and books have been mentioned, but these might be
hard to gather.

Eivind.