Every month, I scrape some data from Spoolstats at http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/spoolstats/allgroups.html and, me being
me, I enter the data into a spreadsheet. Mostly, I just want a
snapshot so see how busy this newsgroup is. How do we rank against the
other newsgroups, how many articles get posted, and is activity in the newsgroup tending upwards or downwards; that sort of thing. And while
I can't answer the last question yet (seeing as I've only been doing
this for a year), here are some other stats:


The average number of posts per day is 14, with the maximum that I've
recorded being 23.

That averages to about 38KB of data per day (or just over 2.5kb per
post). Of course, that total includes header info and quotes from
previous posts; it's not as if every post has 1000 words of new data.

There's an average of 16 unique posters per week (with a recorded high
of 19). That, more or less, lets you know how many people are active
in the newsgroup.

Compared to other newsgroups, we're positioned, on average, in the
21st spot; there are 20 newsgroups more active than us (and 166 less
active, at least as recorded by spoolstats. However, spoolstats
doesn't log activity from alt.* newsgroups).

June seems to have been the month with the most activity; October the
month with the least.

So, overall not too bad. We're still a tiny, tiny forum with an
absolutely miniscule audience (or, at least, a miniscule /active/
audience; there's no way to tell how many people
read-but-don't-post)... but we seem to be fairly stable in size and
activity.

Here's hoping 2026 will be a year of growth. Maybe by 2030 we can make
it so Usenet once again rules the Internet! (Yeah, it won't happen, I
know, but I like to dream big ;-)




--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 1/2/2026 6:38 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Compared to other newsgroups, we're positioned, on average, in the
21st spot; there are 20 newsgroups more active than us (and 166 less
active, at least as recorded by spoolstats. However, spoolstats
doesn't log activity from alt.* newsgroups).

you say average, but does that mean average for an actuallly active
newsgroup or average including those that only have activity every few
months?

June seems to have been the month with the most activity; October the
month with the least.

In June everyone still has vigor. In October the ennui starts to set in.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 18:47:55 +0100, Gottfried Neuner
<kyonshi@wilderland.ovh> wrote:

On 1/2/2026 6:38 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Compared to other newsgroups, we're positioned, on average, in the
21st spot; there are 20 newsgroups more active than us (and 166 less
active, at least as recorded by spoolstats. However, spoolstats
doesn't log activity from alt.* newsgroups).

you say average, but does that mean average for an actuallly active >newsgroup or average including those that only have activity every few >months?

AFAIK, spoolstats only lists /active/ newsgroups which get at least 1
post per week. There are tens of thousands of newsgroups that don't
see any activity.

Also, take my numbers with a large grain of salt.

Spoolstats shows activity from the last seven days, indicating number
of posts (per week), number of posters (per week), total data (per
day), and comparative ranking.

But...

Fact 1:
Spoolstats seems to only show stats from Big-Seven newsgroups (e.g.,
comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*.) and uk.*. It
does not include any ALT newsgroups, and no 'smaller' hierarchies like
fido.*, microsoft.*, etc. Also, if the spoolstat maintainers block
certain newsgroups (possibly for being nothing but trolls or spam, or
even because they just disagree with the contents), these groups
wouldn't show up in the stats.

[I don't know if they do any of the latter, I'm just
saying its a possibility]

Fact 2: The stats are updated weekly. I, on the other hand, only
snapshot them on a monthly basis (usually on the 1st of the month). So
really, I'm just recording the activity in the last week of the
previous month. Since I'm doing this consistently and mostly just to
graph activity overall, I don't think this is TOO much of a problem...
but I wouldn't put a lot of rigour into my averages. ;-). Especially
over such a short period.

Still, our average position seems more or less consistent within the
other active groups. I haven't maintained history for other newsgroups
over that time, so it's quite possible that during the past year
certain newsgroups may have briefly spiked upwards and then declined.
Still, the top-twenty almost always include groups like rec.art.tv, comp.os.linux.advocacy, talk.politics.misc, uk.railway, and
rec.food.cooking. I don't think there's that much change going amongst
the top-contenders.

Again, my purpose with these stats was mostly just to see if CSIPGA
was growing, shrinking, or staying the same, and not to really provide
a detailed breakdown of individual stats. I just thought I'd share the
few tidbits I could glean based on my half-assed recordings. ;-)



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)