On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:53:15 -0800 (PST), Twibil
Post by TwibilPost by Road Glidin' DonMan you're dense sometimes.
Heh.
Post by Road Glidin' Don It doesn't register with you that, if we
don't have 1,700 different people posting here, that number is
obviously only people subscribed to Google?
You poor dumb shit, you got it exactly backwards.
(A) Each newsgroup that Google shows has a *different* number of
subscribers shown, so the number (1700+) we're speaking of here refers
to the subscribers of each *individual group* -in this case, Reeky-
not the total number of subscribers to Google Groups, which is
probably somewhere closer to a million or so.
Exactly. You're at least starting to catch up with the rest of the
pack here.
Now the remaining thing for you to consider is that each of those
numbers are made up of only *Google* users who have subscribed to
those newsgroups.
Meaning that, unless everyone in the world uses Google to read
newsgroups, you are badly mistaken.
Post by Twibil(B) "Subscribers" and "posters" are two different categories: not
everyone who's subscribed bothers reading a group regularly, and of
those who do not all post regularly, or even at all.
There's no controversy on that point.
Post by Twibil(C) That number (1700+) is what leads me to think that Google is
keeping track of all the different IPs that show up from other
servers: it seems *way* too high for Google users alone given the
message traffic on Reeky, but is probably just about right for the
total number of users world-wide, including regulars, non-posters who
still read the group, and those who *have* posted here but who no
longer do.
Your hypothesis would sound reasonable if the numbers dealt with
actual posters (but then we wouldn't have a number like 1,700 for
Reeky), since it would be easy to track that.
But tracking people who simply read? Reading via all the servers
providing newsgroup services out there? As far as I know, they simply
cache the data periodically and pass it along. The administrators of
all those systems would grant Google that kind of access to their
systems? No way.
Post by Twibil(D) Have a nice day.
You too. I think we can still agree that, in terms of one group's
popularity versus another, the Google numbers give a good basis for
comparison; which is the main point anyway. Just not the actual
numbers.