The first couple of thousand accounts were created very quickly. The first real account (not testing) was a certain NCommander on 12 February 2014. We reached 1000 by 17 Feb, up to 2000 by 19 Feb, up to 3000 by 24 February and up to 4000 by the end of March. So we had over 3000 accounts in less than 2 weeks, and 4000 accounts in less than 2 months. We reached 5000 by January 2015 - which is when, as a rule of thumb, we consider members to be early accounts, but that is entirely arbitrary and is a meaningless term if the truth be known.
Accounts at that time were all active accounts with very few exceptions. Today we have somebody's fake account bot creating accounts at up to 150 a day (guesses on a postcard to the usual address)! It doesn't affect us though - the accounts are never activated and take very little space on the disk. If it ever did become a problem we could simply delete all accounts that have never be activated.
-- I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
That takes a bit of processing to calculate. The last time I did it was probably about this time last year and it was over 50%. I would expect it to be much lower now - I daren't even guess. However, it isn't a priority for me at the moment so I will have to ask you to wait until things are under control on the site.
-- I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
I would imagine there are still quite a few checking in. I know I don't comment often, but I am logged in and lurking. Every time I've come across a story to submit recently I've seen it in the Queue already, so I'm afraid I've not been interacting with the site all that much.
Much the same here. I don't contribute much anymore, but I typically come daily to read the headlines and if something catches my fancy I'll RTFA or the comments.
It will actually be harder to calculate now because more logged in users are posting as AC than were doing so a year ago, and we do not get any identity of those who just read the site without logging in. Even such information that I do have to hand is hard to interpret. Page hits on popular stories can be in the low thousands whereas comments can be anything between single digits up to 100+.
As a wild, wet finger in the air, guess I would say that we have up to 2 hundred active accounts in a month period but many more casual readers who simply don't log in.
The other complicating factor is separating front page and journal posts. Minor problems such as we are experiencing today with the lack of mod points and the journal index side panel not displaying do affect daily figures rather more than one might expect.
-- I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
I am also one of those active, not active users. When beta came along a noped out of that and jumped on the Soylent bandwagon. I log in occasionally, but read every day.
An interesting (and surprising) breakdown of account number milestones. It also helps me gauge where I was in the great scheme of things.
I'm surprised at the long tail for 4000-5000, though. I was a long-time (though periodic) anonymous reader at /., and remember the beta days and the boycott. I clearly hadn't been reading much there in the post-boycott days, I'd probably drifted away temporarily due to the lack of content. Sometime later, it was a member here that was still posting over there, signposting people over to the promised land, that brought me here.
I knew that I'd missed the initial startup of things, but I had no recollection that there was over a year between that boycott and me finding the arrow pointing over here.* I'm wondering how many earlier opportunities to learn of this site I'd ended up missing. On reflection, 2014-2015 was pretty busy for me between work and personal life, so there was ample opportunity for distraction.
*I wonder if said person was posting signposts on the anniversary of the boycott? Janrinok, was there a jump in account creation around February 2015, perchance?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday December 12 2022, @05:36AM (11 children)
Yeah I was surprised too when I signed up. I thought I was one of the early ones!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday December 12 2022, @11:53AM (10 children)
The first couple of thousand accounts were created very quickly. The first real account (not testing) was a certain NCommander on 12 February 2014. We reached 1000 by 17 Feb, up to 2000 by 19 Feb, up to 3000 by 24 February and up to 4000 by the end of March. So we had over 3000 accounts in less than 2 weeks, and 4000 accounts in less than 2 months. We reached 5000 by January 2015 - which is when, as a rule of thumb, we consider members to be early accounts, but that is entirely arbitrary and is a meaningless term if the truth be known.
Accounts at that time were all active accounts with very few exceptions. Today we have somebody's fake account bot creating accounts at up to 150 a day (guesses on a postcard to the usual address)! It doesn't affect us though - the accounts are never activated and take very little space on the disk. If it ever did become a problem we could simply delete all accounts that have never be activated.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday December 12 2022, @12:36PM (6 children)
Just out of curiosity but how many of those low digit (1,2,3 digits and up to a few thousands) accounts are still active and used?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday December 12 2022, @01:09PM (3 children)
That takes a bit of processing to calculate. The last time I did it was probably about this time last year and it was over 50%. I would expect it to be much lower now - I daren't even guess. However, it isn't a priority for me at the moment so I will have to ask you to wait until things are under control on the site.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by dx3bydt3 on Monday December 12 2022, @01:55PM (2 children)
I would imagine there are still quite a few checking in. I know I don't comment often, but I am logged in and lurking.
Every time I've come across a story to submit recently I've seen it in the Queue already, so I'm afraid I've not been interacting with the site all that much.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Wednesday December 14 2022, @11:12PM (1 child)
Much the same here. I don't contribute much anymore, but I typically come daily to read the headlines and if something catches my fancy I'll RTFA or the comments.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday December 15 2022, @01:23PM
You must be new here
;^)
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday December 12 2022, @03:33PM (1 child)
It will actually be harder to calculate now because more logged in users are posting as AC than were doing so a year ago, and we do not get any identity of those who just read the site without logging in. Even such information that I do have to hand is hard to interpret. Page hits on popular stories can be in the low thousands whereas comments can be anything between single digits up to 100+.
As a wild, wet finger in the air, guess I would say that we have up to 2 hundred active accounts in a month period but many more casual readers who simply don't log in.
The other complicating factor is separating front page and journal posts. Minor problems such as we are experiencing today with the lack of mod points and the journal index side panel not displaying do affect daily figures rather more than one might expect.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by weeds on Thursday December 29 2022, @11:18PM
I am also one of those active, not active users. When beta came along a noped out of that and jumped on the Soylent bandwagon. I log in occasionally, but read every day.
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday December 18 2022, @12:03PM (2 children)
An interesting (and surprising) breakdown of account number milestones. It also helps me gauge where I was in the great scheme of things.
I'm surprised at the long tail for 4000-5000, though. I was a long-time (though periodic) anonymous reader at /., and remember the beta days and the boycott. I clearly hadn't been reading much there in the post-boycott days, I'd probably drifted away temporarily due to the lack of content. Sometime later, it was a member here that was still posting over there, signposting people over to the promised land, that brought me here.
I knew that I'd missed the initial startup of things, but I had no recollection that there was over a year between that boycott and me finding the arrow pointing over here.* I'm wondering how many earlier opportunities to learn of this site I'd ended up missing. On reflection, 2014-2015 was pretty busy for me between work and personal life, so there was ample opportunity for distraction.
*I wonder if said person was posting signposts on the anniversary of the boycott? Janrinok, was there a jump in account creation around February 2015, perchance?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday December 18 2022, @12:43PM (1 child)
Give me a while to sort through the data please. I am working on some different analysis at the moment.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday December 19 2022, @08:53PM
By all means. Thanks for the analysis that's already come, too.