Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

uli · 2011-11-26 14:55:08

I’m wondering at the current development in visitor statistics, as far as I’m able to track it. The data seem to be quite contradicting. From memory, two months ago we had an average amount of guests around 20, maybe 25 (read, not calculated), which is really, really sparse for the TXP forum. These days the daily average is around 50, 55. And the trend seems to continue: Yesterday, on a Friday afternoon (CET), I watched the counter rise up to an almost insane amount of 82. That was a short-time peek, admitted, but it didn’t fall below 70 around that time, which is like the average in 2006, i.e. at times when there was still roar and flurry around TXP. BTW, today, on this Saturday, we have 60 – 65, steady.

However, although the amount of guests increased, the number of logged in users didn’t change accordingly. And neither did the amount of topics that were posted in. The TXP forums seem pretty lifeless, nowadays, albeit its visitor count. Look at the last 24 hours and you’ll rarely have more than 15 topics with new posts, and over the last weeks I often saw less than 10. Nobody seems to be interested in discussing the pro’s and con’s of (rare) proposals (I mean users here, not devs), even the easy sort of answer, +1, dies off. Help is offered by the small number of top posters, and it doesn’t need other ones.

Liveliness is something else.

Can someone name any reasons for this – as a whole – illogical development trend or one of their symptoms? Are discussions nowadays going on behind login walls in the Facebook group that I don’t perceive (still no FB member, and probably won’t be). Why else avoid so many users logging in? How comes that constant, periodical users don’t post any more? Have we covered every possible question already, is our documentation that perfect, now? Are there any insights based on long-term statistics or download rates? Are there others worried about this development?

colak · 2011-11-26 17:54:55

Hi Uli

There’s one reason I can think of: Ruud’s script to prevent spam. That is spammers and/or bots come, try to register, the script kicks them out so they try again. Before, they would just register, login, post their spam and leave.

Last edited by colak (2011-11-26 17:55:21)

uli · 2011-11-26 18:26:56

That’s very likely, cause the ~~user~~ edit registration count went down after Ruud had installed it. But how can the increase afterwards that I described be explained?

One more technical reason for the phenomenon of users not logged in might be feed reader subscriptions. But the same is valid here: How can its decrease/increase be explained? (Sure, the single penomena will add up.)

But technical reasons may explain only guest counts, the decrease in post counts over the months is the figure that actually gives concerns.

Last edited by uli (2011-11-26 18:53:47)

Bloke · 2011-11-26 20:50:05

uli wrote:

the decrease in post counts over the months is the figure that actually gives concerns.

Txp is just better and fewer people have to ask questions these days :-p

Possible reasons also include:

Txp’s issue tracker.
Manfre (and others) moving development and issue tracking to Github / Bitbucket.
People are posting questions and getting quick responses on the Facebook group.
Some even ask stuff via Twitter.

The number of “wow, can’t believe I never heard of Textpattern” tweets and the number of people in the FB group has been gradually rising, which is great. Hopefully when TXP Mag hits the virtual streets and we get more Textpattern brand aware as we gear up towards Txp 5, things’ll start to take off even more.

The forum is like a nice comfy blanket but it’s not the hub of the universe any more and its use (or lack thereof) is not an indication of Txp use in general.

Destry · 2011-11-27 00:25:52

We could speculate on many valid reasons for the forum’s state, but I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about. It’s just the inevitable taking place.

Since spending more time out of this forum and in other circles (over the last year or so), I’ve realized Textpattern’s user base is a lot wider than the forum has accurately given the impression of, which in turn shows the bulletin board is not really the center of the universe as the 1% probably thinks.

We should be careful when talking about this watering hole against some other. It’s not a question of one place being the end-all, that’s an old project model that has less relevancy. It’s now about different microcosms in a bigger ecosystem. People might come and go in multiple places, or not at all. All of those places need catered too, and the project needs to do that with smart planning and orchestration of content, social channels, and brand recognition… to name three biggies.

The forum may always appeal to the needs or interests of some, but it shouldn’t be something we try and fortify for nostalgia’s sake, that would be counter-productive to say the least.

colak · 2011-11-27 07:12:01

Bloke wrote:

The number of “wow, can’t believe I never heard of Textpattern” tweets and the number of people in the FB group has been gradually rising,

I hope that this will not eventually mean the demise of the forum or even a gravitational shift towards those sites rather than here. I attended a network meeting last wednesday and thursday of a group formed to take a critical look at social networks, FB and twitter being in their centre. The interesting inside information was on thursday when a closed round table discussion was held regarding setting the way the group would communicate and FB was actually put to the table at which point I suggested that a forum software would be a more appropriate platform – even if it is a noughties method of communication. Interestingly enough the youngest members of the group embraced the idea.

I think that the parallel methods we are using now is the correct method as we should not put all our eggs in one basket. FB is popular now but so was myspace a few years back. As we all know popularity trends come and go. I just wish that feeds of the discussions in the other platforms were visible to the rest of us somewhere in this site.

Last edited by colak (2011-11-27 07:13:49)

Destry · 2011-11-27 14:51:48

colak wrote:

I think that the parallel methods we are using now is the correct method as we should not put all our eggs in one basket… As we all know popularity trends come and go.

Exactly. So any given location will see fluctuations for whatever reason. What places exist and their respective fluctuations don’t really matter. What matters is smartly exploiting them so long as Textpattern users (and potential users) are there — speaking from a CMS project point of view.

I just wish that feeds of the discussions in the other platforms were visible to the rest of us somewhere in this site.

Aggregating everything to the forum (or any other single place) isn’t the answer, otherwise you just get a lot of redundancy. This is the “Textpattern Support Forum”, and support is the only thing it should be focusing on…providing it when somebody comes here and asks for it. Other sites are a lot better for general social interaction, and people who use those other locations do so for a reason.

G+ could become extremely relevant, once Google works a few more kinks out on their Pages. It’s a far better discussion platform than Facebook (and less smarmy, IMO), and provides a lot more collaboration features than this forum, all without need for another account (assuming most people have a Gmail account already).

Curation is far more valuable than aggregation, and I think the magazine will carry a lot of that burden.

uli · 2011-11-27 17:15:18

Stef, thanks for naming some reasons.

I absulutely endorse colak in his wish for making FB content publicly available.

It’s FB’s strategy to segragate huge areals of information from the web for monetary reasons, simply put. We have to accept that we’ve to go along with that, but we should neither passively support that nor let that happen for these TXPs users that are averse to FB’s strategy if we can avoid it with simple technical methods.
We should bring the following home to us: TXP mag is a foot we have to keep out of FB territory because FB exits. In the before-FB-age, TXP mag was just a nice read that gave TXP’s image a further facette. Now, you, Destry, and some more people, have to put energy in this project just in order to get perception for TXP. Energy that TXP’s projects could well need elsewhere.

Destry wrote:

Aggregating everything to the forum (or any other single place) isn’t the answer, otherwise you just get a lot of redundancy.

Provided it would be technically possible to create something like a feed link, all redundancy would happen on my desktop. I’d accept that. And I wouldn’t care for where I’d have to go and get my feed subscription. A neat place could be side by side with the twitter news feed on .com. But I’d also peal it off the forum’s Network Links menu. Just two places that I think are possible. Really don’t matter where.

Destry wrote:

The forum may always appeal to the needs or interests of some, but it shouldn’t be something we try and fortify for nostalgia’s sake, that would be counter-productive to say the least.

The forum is part of the TXP brand, and when it shines it sheds its light on TXP as a whole.

A simple, cheap, but effective way to remove nostalgia from it and make it shine a little more would be to finally make “Tabula rasa” the default theme, cause what guests still see (and probably most of our members) is “Txpish”, the old, brown theme “back from the old days” that has the power to put people off. It’s threadbare, completely totally outdated, and disgusting. (BTW: Only members can choose themes.)

Last edited by uli (2011-11-27 17:15:34)

Destry · 2011-11-27 17:38:46

uli wrote:

In the before-FB-age, TXP mag was just a nice read that gave TXP’s image a further facette. Now, you, Destry, and some more people, have to put energy in this project just in order to get perception for TXP. Energy that TXP’s projects could well need elsewhere.

I’m not sure what the FB reference is about, but the magazine will be a boon for the Textpattern project. Don’t worry about that.

uli · 2011-11-27 17:57:42

Destry wrote:

Don’t worry about that.

Read that a lot these days. Worries me ;)

BTW, I was somehow bothered by the term “redundancy” you used. Now I can tell why: a hearing aid also produces redundancy in a sense.

Bloke · 2011-11-27 19:04:15

uli wrote:

It’s FB’s strategy to segragate huge areals of information from the web for monetary reasons

Yes, it’s a pain that Facebook requires login and some people don’t like it. I don’t particularly care for Facebook. I certainly don’t endorse personal pages where people post facets of their everyday thoughts and lives on the medium, because I think that’s idiotic behaviour. But I have an account and my updates — though sporadic — are utterly trivial and 99% rubbish for that reason.

Where Facebook does have importance though is reaching people through fan pages. I won’t go into the marketing details of how to leverage it because it would bore everyone, but friends of friends of friends and virals are very effective communication tools and add relevance, drive and high level perception to a project.

Is Facebook the right tool for a forum replacement? Hell no! Someone asks a question, there’s a flurry of immediate answers, then the information is lost as more info flows in to push it further down the list. People post minutiae and triviality and polls and repost stuff from other sources. It’s useless as a knowledge base — transient at best — but it enables people to rapidly reach out to a different audience than those that use the forum.

When we start running competitions and things in TXP Mag, you can bet we’ll be pimping them on Facebook, G+ and Twitter. Because, as Destry says, they’re the right tools for that job. The orders of magnitude of visibility that Textpattern will get through social connections far outstrip anything we could achieve by advertising a competition on the forum (though we may do so as well).

Provided it would be technically possible to create something like a feed link, all redundancy would happen on my desktop.

It’s technically possible. Heck, smd_xml could probably do it. Just needs a valid login from someone who is a member of the group and we could “echo” whatever is posted to the group to a more persistent medium if that is what is desired. Would it offer tangible benefit? Debatable, but there’s nothing stopping someone from trying it out.

The forum is part of the TXP brand, and when it shines it sheds its light on TXP as a whole.

Yes. And the Facebook / G+ pages and Twitter channels are yet another part of the brand that bring light in from more than one source. It’s not one or the other, it’s all. And it all adds to the perception of Textpattern as a product, system, and global contender on the CMS stage.

Last edited by Bloke (2011-11-27 19:18:36)

ruud · 2011-11-27 19:29:36

uli wrote:

what guests still see (and probably most of our members) is “Txpish”, the old, brown theme “back from the old days” that has the power to put people off. It’s threadbare, completely totally outdated, and disgusting. (BTW: Only members can choose themes.)

I actually like the Txpish theme. Tried the other one, didn’t like it and switched back ;)

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#1 2011-11-26 14:55:08

Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#2 2011-11-26 17:54:55

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#3 2011-11-26 18:26:56

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#4 2011-11-26 20:50:05

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#5 2011-11-27 00:25:52

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#6 2011-11-27 07:12:01

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#7 2011-11-27 14:51:48

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#8 2011-11-27 17:15:18

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#9 2011-11-27 17:38:46

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#10 2011-11-27 17:57:42

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#11 2011-11-27 19:04:15

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

#12 2011-11-27 19:29:36

Re: Guests: 58, Users: 2. -- Pardon?

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