Thursday, January 24, 2013

Again a proud number as a headline at Uncommon Descent: 10,000!

Again a proud number as a headline at Uncommon Descent: 10,000! The whole thing reads:
This is the 10,000th post at UD. We would like to thank all of our loyal readers, lurkers, commenters, writers, webmaster, contributors and all the others who have made this a wonderful run so far!
So congratulations! But I just have to pour some water in Barry Arrington's wine:
1) It comes actually a little bit late...
The last announcement of a milestone was the thread on Uncommon Descent's 9,000 post on May 14, 2012 - I commented on this event here. At this time, more than 200 threads were created per month, so the 10,000-ceiling should have been shattered in August 2012 (or September 2012) at the latest. What happened? Denise O'Leary - who put on thread after thread under the witty name "news" - left and took here energy over to The Best Schools' Blog, where she now baffles a non-existing audience (which isn't allowed to respond). I don't know why she did so, but it cut the number of threads per month by 75%.
2) The loyal commenters aren't that loyal any longer...
More than 3,300 editors have commented on Uncommon Descent. But over the last months, the number of unique editors per month is decreasing: in October, November and December 2012 it fell even below 100 - the smallest numbers since mid-2005!
3) But at least the number of comments is up - somewhat...
After a period of drought in the first half of the year 2012, the numbers have risen again. Most comments are made by the regulars, therefore the number of deleted comments became very small in November and December 2012. Not small enough though: a couple of my remarks never appeared...