--- On Sun, 7/13/08, Jonathan Hutchins hutchins@tarcanfel.org wrote:

On Sunday 13 July 2008 03:09:56 pm Leo Mauler wrote:

...

11,000,000 messages a DAY in *current* NetNews traffic is not "me and a couple of buddies".

My own numbers were mere guesses, as I expect Mr. Watts' are. Yours would carry a stronger authority if you cited a source.

I *did* cite a source in the message to which you responded, as I did when I first quoted the 11,000,000 figure (NetNews posting is currently hovering around 10,000,000 daily message posts). The full text you responded to read like this (note the linked source in parentheses):

Leo> 11,000,000 messages a DAY in *current* Leo> NetNews traffic is not "me and a couple Leo> of buddies". The "three of us" aren't Leo> generating that much daily traffic all Leo> on our own. Clearly there are a lot Leo> more than three NetNews users, and I Leo> was under the impression that companies Leo> ignored huge markets at their peril. Leo> Leo> (http://www.newsadmin.com/usenet.asp)

Newsadmin did note a brief dip in daily NetNews posting traffic at the beginning of July, from 10 million daily messages to 9 million daily messages, when TWC dropped NetNews service. I say a brief dip because it was back up to the regular 10 million figure within a week (as users found alternative NetNews servers), showing that the market for NetNews exists and TWC has (or possibly "had") enough regular NetNews users to generate 1 million NetNews posts a day (hint: quite a lot more than "three people"). Any user market which can generate 1 million NetNews posts a day is ignored at an ISP's peril (as there is considerably more than three people in such a group).

I agree with your premise, the "Usenet News" community is not insignificant, nor is the medium obsolete for either filesharing or conversation.

Thank you.

On a note of statistics more related to the mailing list, the top 100 text-only message boards, ranked by posting activity, contain 17 Linux and UNIX newsgroups, with a grand total of 6,798 unique messages posted every day to these groups.

Linux-related groups and their newsadmin "daily posts" ranking, from the same source used above (http://www.newsadmin.com/usenet.asp):

34 - comp.os.linux.misc, 35 - alt.os.linux, 37 - comp.os.linux.setup, 38 - comp.os.linux.announce, 42 - comp.unix.shell, 48 - comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc, 49 - comp.os.linux.hardware, 50 - comp.unix.misc, 51 - comp.os.linux.networking, 53 - comp.os.linux.security, 70 - alt.linux, 76 - comp.os.linux.x, 80 - linux.kernel, 88 - comp.security.unix, 95 - alt.os.linux.slackware, and 99 - alt.os.linux.redhat.

Nearly 7,000 unique messages a day posted to Linux and UNIX Newsgroups. That is not an insignificant number of people.