We are being read!

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We are being read!

Postby Doug Coulter » Thu Aug 26, 2010 11:45 am

Hits in August are through the roof! About 50k hits so far this month, which is a huge increase since this forum started. Every day it's more than the last.

This is making me real glad I did this and did it this way, evidently the quality we have here is pulling them in bigtime -- and the web robots are all finding us.
I'm also glad I locked in supposedly unlimited BW and storage with the host :D We're moving terabytes! Zowie!

I'm very gratified to see that Windows Exploder isn't real popular here (largely firefox and others), and that the percentage of Linux users is very high. OK, that's my personal hobby horse, after
having gotten to be well off "fixing windows issues" by writing good code for it for decades. But hey, it's still nice to know I'm not alone.

I am also getting a lot of requests from strangers to join, but am vetting them as well as I can over email first so we don't get any of the worse then useless noisy types in here and I don't have to delete them and the IP range they rode in on, and so forth. I am putting off that problem as well as I can. I suspect that at some point I'm going to have to start using the ranking stuff here and only let newbs post in some limited areas (if I do that, everyone already here won't notice -- y'all will all be top rank since you all deserve it). Then we can all vet them.

No one here is any problem at all -- you guys are all great! -- other than there are a lot of members who just lurk and don't post -- come on, guys! We want you up here! I didn't invite anyone I didn't know had some darned good content to put up here. So instead of just sending me email -- put it up here for all -- this is intended for sharing after all.

Maybe I should threaten to just post some of your emails? (you know who you are) They would have been fine up here as is, you know. If a lack of forum topics is holding anyone back, of course, let me know -- they are easy to add up to a point where it just clutters thing up.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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Doug Coulter
 
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Re: We are being read!

Postby johnf » Fri Aug 27, 2010 6:40 pm

Doug
as things grow you will need help in administration
maybe a few trusted members as moderators /lower heirachy administrators to keep things sane
sort of like 4HV.org


just a thought
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Re: We are being read!

Postby Doug Coulter » Fri Aug 27, 2010 9:01 pm

No question about that one. Just vetting people up front is a big deal, as with this crowd, there's not so much need for moderation, which I'm very gratified by.
I think what we'll do is set up the ranking system this software has, but try and change the criteria as it's set to rank by "most posts"
(meaning certain troublemakers might get high rank -- opposite of what would be wanted). The idea would be to force newbs onto the
"auto delete after some time of no activity" forums here -- and if we decide we like them -- up-rank them and let them post all over.

Only a couple are set up to auto empty so far, (water cooler for example) but I'm finding the quality good enough to make most of the threads "sticky" so they hang around.
I'm sure that will change over time.

I'm on a bit of a learning curve on this, so please be patient with me. The only moderator settings I've got so far are far too godlike even for me, just too much power
altogether -- I can put words in people's mouths, edit their posts, change who posted what, and all kinds of things a responsible guy would never even think
of doing- especially including me. I think my plan was going to be establish this core group, then hand out forums for guys to moderate that fall in their main interest -- for example,
who would do machining best? Jerry, obviously (if I can get him to take the job at some point). And so on. Though my preference would be that we back-channel discuss any big
troubles and have a consensus before we would drop the hammer on anybody.

I have created a moderator entity called "moderator nuke" that is otherwise anonymous in anticipation of this - no one need know who it really was so they don't know
who to get mad at if they get "nuked". This entity just hasn't been needed so far, but the avatar is pretty cool (or scary). Maybe I'll be that guy for a minute
on some thread just to announce itself and say -- if you see this guy -- you'd better start behaving? It just hasn't come up yet -- everyone is doing really well.
I'm afraid that the harsh crap I put up to discourage junk postings is making some of the members who have only lurked so far afraid to post -- you can go too
far the other way.

FWIW, Paul (the perfessor) has been lurking here, we're talking, and he's pretty impressed with how we are doing, so he says. He is really liking the "high bar to entry"
I've started out with -- but don't actually plan to continue with forever, we want new blood of course. Right now, the main problem is getting some of the lurk-only members
to get going, as many of them are really heavy hitters that most of y'all haven't met yet -- and it's going to be nice when we get them to begin here.

I am really trying for us to "write the book" a little more before we let in a flood of beginners. Paul's forum handles them pretty well, almost to the point of ruining it,
so for now, I'm sending them there, first.

For example, between us I think we've got vacuum almost totally handled, just a few details (need a thread on flange types and a why for each) needed and it's done as the "FAQ"
part of things. Then it can go to more "I'm having this weird problem, anybody have a clue?" with the good stuff sticky at the top to send the beginners to.

Really, right now the main problem is -- I'm working so fast (trying to get the last three years of my work up here etc) that I'm way too often "last post" on everything the way
this board reports that -- I don't want this to be so much me, me, me (I don't like opera much), but recognize that I type very fast, I care about making this great, and it's just
going to be that way for a little bit longer. This is "early times". Much easier to build the foundation before the house is on top of it.

In fact, in some cases right now I'm avoiding posting so it's not so much all me -- I can prep offline then blow them up here, that's what I've been up to.

I liked your pun....so I left it top post so others would notice it, for example ;)
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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Re: We are being read! Current stats

Postby Doug Coulter » Thu Sep 23, 2010 9:20 pm

Here's part of what my host tells me.

SeptHits.gif
Stats


Good thing I got "unlimited". Many hits are robots, but evidently some one (s) are using a page grabber that's getting the whole "secret" library too, which is huge. I'm still getting a ton of hits from things that deep linked the two-revs-ago website as well, which I moved and made a special human readable 404 page for that humans can't miss, so I assume that's all robots too -- not very sophisticated ones I suppose.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
User avatar
Doug Coulter
 
Posts: 3515
Joined: Wed Jul 14, 2010 7:05 pm
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