Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!cit-vax!mangler
From: mangler@cit-vax.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: 1% of the readers post 80% of the news
Message-ID: <2952@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Fri, 5-Jun-87 05:24:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.2952
Posted: Fri Jun  5 05:24:01 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jun-87 11:48:51 EDT
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 32

Everybody knows that relatively few people contribute most of
the news articles.  I decided to get some numbers on this.
Out of 18350 entries in our spool directory (about 15000 articles)
there were 5843 different From: addresses.  Of these,

	195000 readers posted nothing
	  3037	       posted 1 article
	  1056		      2 articles
	   500		      3 articles
	   308		      4 articles
	   215		      5 articles
	   379		      6 to 9 articles
	   348		      ten or more articles
The top 691 posters (0.35% of the readers) accounted for half of the
articles, or an average of 13 each.

(Due to over-simplistic method, cross-postings were treated as
multiple articles).

It looks like about 1% of the readers are "regular" posters, and
everybody else either never posts, or only posts requests for info.
I don't have sufficient data to back this up, though, and I'm not
set up to collect data on a long-term basis like Brian Reid does.

It's been observed that the various new-user documents have limited
effect.  This should not be surprising, since the grand majority of
the volume is not new posters, rather, it is the repeat posters.

The posters ultimately determine the character of Usenet.  It may
behoove us to know something about their demographics.

Don Speck   speck@vlsi.caltech.edu  {seismo,rutgers,ames}!cit-vax!speck