Forum Statistics & Comparisons

[Arrogant-One]

OzChess Statistics

First Quarter (Jan-March 2008)	Posts in Month	Post Per Day Rate
January	756	24.38
February	725	25.00
March	531	17.12
Total For Quarter	2012	22.10

Second Quarter (Apr -June 08)	Posts in Month	Post Per Day Rate
April	473	15.76
May	308	9.94
June	296	9.87
Total For Quarter	1077	11.83

Third Quarter (July to Sept 08)	Posts in Month	Post Per Day Rate
July	900	29.03
August	1078	34.77
September	729	24.30
Total For Quarter	2707	29.43

I'll let Ophichus give the corresponding CC stats (and have kept their stats in case Dr Bonham is tempted to fudge the numbers), but the fact is that they have used voodoo mathematics in the past to tally their figures, so one mustn't place too much faith in their figures this time round.

For instance, on 30 June 2008 Kevin stated that total new posts in the quarter for CC were 22744 giving them a post per day (ppd) rate of 98.1. However, 22744 divided by 91 days would be considerably more than 98, so as I said, there seem to be some voodoo mathematics going on with Kevin's figures. Anyway, this past quarter the swamp appears to have gained 22189 new posts (about 550 less than last quarter), so I'd estimate their ppd rate to be around 93 based on Kevin's 30 June calculations.

But regardless, as we can all see OzChess did well in terms of post per day activity this past quarter - perhaps better than any previous quarter. The stats above do not include correspondence games, and were compiled from the Admin Panel > Statistics > Posting Statistics function.

Best Regards,

AO

[Bill Gletsos]

Originally Posted by Arrogant-One

For instance, on 30 June 2008 Kevin stated that total new posts in the quarter for CC were 22744 giving them a post per day (ppd) rate of 98.1. However, 22744 divided by 91 days would be considerably more than 98, so as I said, there seem to be some voodoo mathematics going on with Kevin's figures.

The period Kevin was quoting the numbers for was not a 3 month period but a 6 month period.

Also the 22744 figure includes correspondence game posts, while the 98.1 ppd does not include the correspondence games.

Originally Posted by Arrogant-One

The stats above do not include correspondence games, and were compiled from the Admin Panel > Statistics > Posting Statistics function.

Although the correspondence games are not adding to the posters individual post counts they are added to the total post counts which the main page of your forum shows as currently being 8789. These 8789 posts include 629 correspondence game posts.

The Posting Statistics function of the admin panel includes all posts (including those that are in forums that do not add to the posters post count) and will include the posts in the correspondence game forum.

To get your posts in a month excluding the correspondence games, you need to visually check the total posts and the end of one period and also note the number of posts in the correspondence forum at that time. Then at the end of the following month note the same figures again.

e.g. Around 9pm on the 31st August Ozchess had 8051 posts including 561 correspondence posts. As of 6pm last night you had 8776 posts including 628 correspondence posts. Your posts for August excluding correspondence posts was 7490 and as of yesterday was 8148. This gives 658 (8148-7490) as the posts for September excluding correspondence posts and therefore a ppd rate of 21.9

[Arrogant-One]

Thanks for your feedback Bill.

Originally Posted by Bill Gletsos

The period Kevin was quoting the numbers for was not a 3 month period but a 6 month period.

Quite possible. Only Kevin would try to confuse things by not using the regular 3 month quarterly reports like everyone else. Glad you caught on to him.

Originally Posted by Bill Gletsos

Although the correspondence games are not adding to the posters individual post counts they are added to the total post counts which the main page of your forum shows as currently being 8789. These 8789 posts include 629 correspondence game posts.

Possibly, but the main index page display is not the one I used to find the monthly totals. I used the Statistics section in the Admin CP.

Best Regards,

AO

[Arrogant-One]

I have entitled this post News News News because I just discovered something!

I don't know why I didn't do this before, but Bill's post prompted me to dig a little deeper. So I tallied, using the Admin CP, the total post count from July 07 when OzChess started through to 30 September 2008.

The number, added manually by myself using a calculator was 9385. I did this twice and reached 9385 both times (for the sake of accuracy).

So Bill appears to be correct, the Admin CP > Statistics function is in fact adding moves in the correspondence chess forum to the total post count. I believe I also discovered why my previous experiment to verify this failed.

What is interesting though, is that if one subtracts the total number of posts in the correspondence chess forum from 9385, you arrive at 8756 which is the total claimed on the OzChess index homepage. This likely means that Kevin's calculations in the past short changed OzChess because the correspondence chess forum posts were being subtracted from the real post count.

Thank you,

AO

[Bill Gletsos]

Originally Posted by Arrogant-One

Quite possible. Only Kevin would try to confuse things by not using the regular 3 month quarterly reports like everyone else. Glad you caught on to him.

The only one who needed to catch on was you.

Unfortunately you were your usual unobservant self.

Chesschat started using the 6 monthly reporting before Ozchess ever existed.

Originally Posted by Arrogant-One

Possibly, but the main index page display is not the one I used to find the monthly totals. I used the Statistics section in the Admin CP.

I had already mentioned that.

Originally Posted by Arrogant-One

This is incorrect. I thought so at first as well, but then conducted an easy experiment to verify if this was true. This was the experiment:

I checked the post count total for the month in the Admin CP. Then I closed the Admin CP and I played a move in the correspondence section. Then I re-opened and checked the Admin CP again to see if the move showed up as a post. The Admin CP showed the same number of posts as it had the first time I looked.

Your experiment is flawed as you did not test if making a post in a normal thread caused the post count to change in the Admin CP.

If you carry out that test you will find the Admin CP will show the same number of posts as before the test.

[Arrogant-One]

Originally Posted by Bill Gletsos

Your experiment is flawed as you did not test if making a post in a normal thread caused the post count to change in the Admin CP.

If you carry out that test you will find the Admin CP will show the same number of posts as before the test.

Agreed, and that's why I amended my post.

For some reason the Admin CP will only show posts made up to midnight the day before. But you have still failed to address the other discovery I made by adding the totals for every month from July 07 through to Sept 08.

Best Regards,

AO

[Bill Gletsos]

Originally Posted by Arrogant-One

What is interesting though, is that if one subtracts the total number of posts in the correspondence chess forum from 9385, you arrive at 8756 which is the total claimed on the OzChess index homepage. This likely means that Kevin's calculations in the past short changed OzChess because the correspondence chess forum posts were being subtracted from the real post count.

Bill, Kevin, please take a bite out of your humble pie now.

The only one wrong is you.

The main page shows total posts of 8798.

The main page shows the posts in each forum as 13 + 1179 + 192 + 1514 + 992 + 1014 + 1740 + 118 + 418 + 107 + 105 + 629 + 399 + 325 + 44 + 9
= 8798

Now the correspondence games is 629.

Therefore the total posts excluding correspondence games is 8169.

[Arrogant-One]

Originally Posted by Bill Gletsos

The only one wrong is you.

The main page shows total posts of 8798.

The main page shows the posts in each forum as 13 + 1179 + 192 + 1514 + 992 + 1014 + 1740 + 118 + 418 + 107 + 105 + 629 + 399 + 325 + 44 + 9
= 8798

Now the correspondence games is 629.

Therefore the total posts excluding correspondence games is 8169.

I just added up the Admin CP > Statistics monthly totals again (its midnight in New York). Maybe it just ticked over to include September 30th because the total is now 9412. I agree the correspondence total posts is 629, but again if you subtract 629 from 9412 you arrive at 8783, and the index homepage is showing 8800 posts - congrats by the way Bill, on making OzChess's 8800th post!

While 8800 is 17 posts more than 8783, it could well mean that the unaccounted for 17 posts belong to today so they won't go into the Admin CP tally until tomorrow.

The math seems to add up, but I also see your point and your math seems to add up as well.

[Bill Gletsos]

Originally Posted by Arrogant-One

I just added up the Admin CP > Statistics monthly totals again (its midnight in New York). Maybe it just ticked over to include September 30th because the total is now 9412. I agree the correspondence total posts is 629, but again if you subtract 629 from 9412 you arrive at 8783, and the index homepage is showing 8800 posts - congrats by the way Bill, on making OzChess's 8800th post!

While 8800 is 17 posts more than 8783, it could well mean that the unaccounted for 17 posts belong to today so they won't go into the Admin CP tally until tomorrow.

The math seems to add up, but I also see your point and your math seems to add up as well.

My figures add up exactly, yours dont.

It is quite simple to see that this site does not have 9412 posts but only 8800, which you can confirm by counting all the posts in all the forums.

You will find that your 9412 figure includes posts that were subsequently deleted. From your figures it appears you have around 600 odd deleted posts since your site started.

Originally Posted by Arrogant-One

This likely means that Kevin's calculations in the past short changed OzChess because the correspondence chess forum posts were being subtracted from the real post count.

There has been no short changing of anyone. My post counts include real undeleted posts but not CC game posts, deleted posts or undeleted spam on both forums.

But regardless, as we can all see OzChess did well in terms of post per day activity this past quarter - perhaps better than any previous quarter.

This is in large part because you have had me to argue with; you were in rock-bottom doldrums (below 10 ppd) before I showed up and started posting regularly and with it being open knowledge that it was me. In July 2008 the threads not involving squabbling with chesschatters contributed less than 10 ppd between them. In August you did have a purple patch in terms of regulars here posting on other threads, which combined with my presence boosted you to a record total. Looks like the purple patch fell over in September though I haven't yet checked in detail.

Now, the approximately correct figures for the last three months here (bearing in mind that I tend to check them at not exactly the same time on the final night) are:

July 25.5 ppd
Aug 33.4 ppd
Sep 21.9 ppd

These figures are obtained simply by adding up the number of posts on public display that are not CC game posts or undeleted spam posts at the end of each month.

The figures here for the months before that were

Jan 25.0 ppd approx (this one is a bit out of whack as I started checking on a monthly basis on 2 Feb)
Feb 20.4 ppd
Mar 14.8 ppd
Apr 9.8 ppd
May 9.0 ppd
Jun 8.6 ppd

Concerning quarters vs half-yearly, the lengthy half-yearly stats report I do for Chesschat is done half-yearly because the amount of effort involved in checking and updating it does not warrant doing it quarterly (and the changes over three months are often relatively minor anyway).

[Arrogant-One]

Originally Posted by Kevin Bonham

Chesschat's list of posters online includes only those online in the last two hours, whereas OzChess includes everyone online on that day. (indeed today as I post they are spuriously "ahead" 110-103).

I know this because I have not been logged-in there for almost 24 hours and am still showing as online!

Not to disagree with the above statement because I simply haven't looked into the matter enough to know whether or not it could be true, but something that may have been overlooked is that often KB and antisense use the same ip address. So if antisense was looking at the site, even though KB had left, that could perhaps explain why KB still showed up as a guest after he logged out.

But another aspect to these mysteries is that the Admin CP Statistics only record daily post counts using New York time. For instance, at 3pm today, the stats will update providing a total daily post count for 28 December 2008, even though here in Australia that was essentially yesterday. So if KB was correct, then the system would likely record guest activity using New York's 24 hour cycle instead of Australia's which would further make it difficult to assess the guest count stats.

My personal view is that there should be no significant difference between the guest count function at either CC or OzChess because both use VBulletin's default settings to measure such.

Best Regards,

AO

[Arrogant-One]

OzChess Statistics

These statistics have been collated directly from the Admin Control Panel Log. A small percentage of total posts would include moves made in correspondence games, although even there often some dialogue accompanies the move.

- First Quarter (Jan-March 2008) ---	- Posts in Month -	- Post Per Day Rate-
January	756	24.38
February	725	25.00
March	531	17.12
Total For Quarter	2012	22.10

- Second Quarter (Apr -June 2008) -	- Posts in Month -	- Post Per Day Rate -
April	473	15.76
May	308	9.94
June	296	9.87
Total For Quarter	1077	11.83

- Third Quarter (July to Sept 2008) -	- Posts in Month -	- Post Per Day Rate -
July	900	29.03
August	1078	34.77
September	729	24.30
Total For Quarter	2707	29.43

- Fourth Quarter (Oct to Dec 2008) -	- Posts in Month -	- Post Per Day Rate -
October	466	15.03
November	493	16.43
December	699	22.54
Total For Quarter	1661	18.05

Contrary to assertions elsewhere, the worst post per day rate in December was 6 which occurred on December 15th (and that was the only day the ppd fell to single digits). The best day in December had 47 posts (and this was achieved twice, on Dec 2 and Dec 7).

And so, the final calendar year average tallies are as follows:

All 4 Quarters	- Total Posts in 2009	- Annual Post Per Day Rate -
1 January to 31 December 2008	7457	20.43

Other interesting asides, our best day this year for ppd was 10 September, which had 73 posts. Our worst day this year was 3 posts, ironically achieved 3 times - once on April 26th and twice in May on the 6th and 20th.

Our best Month was August with a ppd rate of nearly 35, and our worst month was June with a ppd rate of just a touch under 10.

The average monthly post total for 2008 was - 621.4 posts per month, so December 08 finished a little above the average (again contrary to assertions elsewhere that December 08 was a gangbuster month for us.