Re: Blast from the past

Edward Vielmetti (emv@msen.com)
Fri, 29 May 92 17:31:20 EDT


Bottom line: if you have source you want to share, and if you take a
little time to put some documentation (and maybe a makefile) together,
the moderated groups will give you the widest possible forum. On the
other hand, if you have some source or discussion that doesn't meet the
requirements for the moderated groups, you can post to "alt.sources"
and reach 1/3 to 1/2 of the same sites.

It's interesting to compare this prediction of alt.sources with the
real traffic from the latest arbitrons. By this time alt.sources is a
widely propogated group, with more readers than any other source
group, slightly worse propogation than the mainstream groups, a
permanent archive (at wuarchive.wustl.edu).

these numbers are estimates etc etc, but the alt.sources figure is not
the "1/3 to 1/2" that was originally noted.

14 130000 2528 77% 71 1758.2 18% 0.02 5.5% alt.sources
19 110000 2269 85% 27 1186.9 4% 0.02 4.9% comp.sources.unix
22 110000 2221 85% 63 2625.0 0% 0.04 4.8% comp.sources.misc
45 86000 1706 82% 24 1037.6 0% 0.02 3.7% comp.sources.x
51 81000 1618 86% 261 319.1 16% 0.01 3.5% comp.sources.wanted
57 77000 1531 85% 64 221.2 10% 0.01 3.3% comp.sources.d
62 76000 1504 83% 5 220.7 0% 0.01 3.3% comp.sources.games
105 59000 1171 74% 68 112.6 9% 0.00 2.5% alt.sources.d
129 53000 1058 71% 88 96.4 28% 0.00 2.3% alt.sources.wanted
153 49000 981 84% 15 75.9 7% 0.00 2.1% comp.sources.bugs
165 48000 951 76% 7 225.1 14% 0.01 2.1% comp.sources.reviewed

Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, Msen Inc. emv@Msen.com
Msen Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI 48103 +1 313 741 1120
"Dogmatic attachement to the supposed merits of a particular structure
hinders the search for an appropriate structure" -- Robert Fripp

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