Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!rpi!rpi.edu!tale From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Just how big are some of these sites? Message-ID: Date: 9 May 89 17:30:42 GMT References: <3209@looking.UUCP> <8222@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <3216@looking.UUCP> Sender: usenet@rpi.edu Reply-To: tale@pawl.rpi.edu Distribution: news Lines: 31 In-reply-to: brad@looking.UUCP's message of 9 May 89 02:09:28 GMT In article <3216@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes a lot about how local groups are really what most netters read and analyzes why that might be so. I don't think it is so; I think it is a matter of Arbitron reporting statistics as it sees them without any regard for the real reasons behind them. I don't read any soc groups, for example. I read mostly comp, gnu and news with some exceptions. There are, however, people here who conversely read mostly only soc groups. We all tend to read rpi.*, capdist.* and ny.*, though, because there simply isn't any traffic in these local groups (excepting rpi.talk) and the minimal effort to unsubscibe from the one article a month or so in a lot of these groups, just isn't even bothered with. My thumb is resting on SPC, not U. It's just easier to skip right past it. Arbitron though (if it were running here, it is not yet) sees that nearly everyone at our site reads rpi.ral when I make a single posting to it. Groups which are really being read don't get quite the showing because they are split amongst people like me who read USENET for the research and development aspects, and people like my flatmate who reads USENET for the social aspects. The situation might be entirely different in other regions. I can only speak for our region as I observe it and capdist.* and ny.* are really just dead.puppies. Dave -- tale@rpitsmts.bitnet, tale%mts@itsgw.rpi.edu, tale@pawl.rpi.edu