From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2000-02-20T00:31:11-06:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:01526] Re: RFD: comp.lang.ruby

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to news.groups as well.

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:

> Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com> writes:
> 
> > Probably around 5 messages/day will get you into the upper half of
> > busiest comp.* groups.  You can go much lower and have a meaningful
> > exchange of information.
> 
> Hm.  That's not really been my experience in comp.*, except for moderated
> groups.  I agree that 10 messages a day even may be a touch high, although
> I also think that newsgroups tend to drop a bit in traffic after the
> initial enthusiasm so 10 a day is probably a good target to aim at at
> first so that when the traffic drops it's still viable.  But if you go
> much lower than 5 messages a day in most comp.* groups, I think you risk
> losing any feeling of coherence to the discussion.
> 
> There are certainly exceptions, but I don't think planning for only a
> message or two a day or so in the average unmoderated discussion group,
> even on technical topics, is adviseable.

I tallied the number of messages per day in February that I had
archived from the English language ruby-talk mailing list. I believe
them to be accurate, but please don't treat them as definitive:

     2000 Feb 1: 2
     2000 Feb 2: 2
     2000 Feb 3: 1
     2000 Feb 5: 5
     2000 Feb 6: 5
     2000 Feb 8: 2
     2000 Feb 9: 7
     2000 Feb 10: 13
     2000 Feb 11: 6
     2000 Feb 12: 9
     2000 Feb 13: 10
     2000 Feb 14: 12
     2000 Feb 15: 43
     2000 Feb 16: 43
     2000 Feb 17: 16
     2000 Feb 18: 21
     2000 Feb 19: 14

The flurry on the 15/16 was to some extent a discussion of
comp.lang.ruby, but even discounting half of those messages, there is
certainly some volume there.


Regards


Dave