Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!att!occrsh!uokmax!rmtodd
From: rmtodd@uokmax.UUCP (Richard Michael Todd)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Just how big are some of these sites?
Message-ID: <3150@uokmax.UUCP>
Date: 9 May 89 05:57:38 GMT
References: <3209@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: rmtodd@uokmax.UUCP (Richard Michael Todd)
Organization: University of Oklahoma, ECN
Lines: 32

In article <3209@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>With talk about the relative size of USENET, I took a look at the new
>number Brian has added to his arbitron reports, namely the number of
>newsreaders at the reporting sites.  Here are the biggest ones:
>	....
>	uokmax				1278

Well, I'm a user at uokmax, and I know darn well there aren't that many
netreaders here.  There are roughly that many total users, but a quick run of 
the arbitron program shows that only 21 of the people read news.  I suspect the
other figures are similarly bogus--looks like Brian's counting total
number of users at site, not total netreaders.  

>As a sidebar, I believe that a large majority of the '500,000' netreaders
>reported in the survey only read local news.  I have seen arbitron reports
>from some large sites, and the local groups often make up the entire top
>10, if not the top 20.  The odd netwide group will sneak in, but by
>and large the local groups are most of it.   So remember, USENET is
>mostly local groups, even though most of what you *see* is netwide groups.

Frankly, I'm not sure I believe that.  Maybe it's just a local phenomenon,
but around here nobody reads just the local newsgroups; they get
into netnews because of the (inter)national groups.  Of course, this
may be in part because ok.* goes to a grand total of 4 sites and rarely
hits more than 1 message/month; other places may differ (e.g. DFW,
which has enough Usenet sites to support its own set of high-traffic
newsgroups).  Still, it seems to me that the main appeal of Usenet to people 
is the globally-distributed groups, *not* the local ones.
-- 
Richard Todd	Fido:1:147/1     USSnail:820 Annie Court,Norman OK 73069
Try one of these: rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us, rmtodd@killer.dallas.tx.us,
   rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  or ...!sun!texsun!uokmax!rmtodd.