Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.fan.john-winston Path: newsfeed.slurp.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.new-york.net!uunet!ffx.uu.net!in2.uu.net!world!kibo From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) Subject: Re: Results Of Mustard Article. Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) Message-ID: X-Face: 8"g"L\_0@_U(>UXK.Z1O&I/2Z"{u:Z$yd/};V7:nDV/M9[vY5}WEW|9~k.,.1@Dt Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 08:07:04 GMT Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com References: NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp0b163.std.com Organization: Stately Kibo Manor X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 Followup-To: alt.religion.kibology Lines: 510 Xref: newsfeed.slurp.net alt.religion.kibology:243951 alt.fan.john-winston:7306 X-Cache: nntpcache 2.3.2 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) WARNING: DURING THIS POST, I WILL BECOME BORING. (DON'T WORRY, IT WILL WEAR OFF IN A FEW YEARS.) John F. Winston (johnfwin@mlode.com) wrote: > > Now to utter something. > Hey Kibo: > Please send me you opinion as to how many people are reading your > group called alt.religion.kibology also alt.alien visitors and > alt.conspiracy. I really want to know. > John Winston. Now to attempt to say something. Dear John_-_: I wish I knew, too. But it's so kind of you to refer to the people on alt.religion.kibology as "people". I think most of them are actually robots and/or random surges of electrons in the upper ionosphere.* As far as I know (someone will hopefully correct me in the unlikely event I am ever wrong) the last time anyone attempted to estimate Usenet statistics was around 1994, and even then it was a subject of controversy because it was based on an estimate of the number of people "on Usenet" which would be all over the place depending on who you asked. In other words, they studied a few thousand Usenet users to see what percentages of them read each group, but then they had to multiply that by some made-up "population of the Internet" number, and different people had waaaaaayyy different estimates of that factor. I think the number (as reported in news.lists) for alt.religion.kibology was fluctuating around 80,000 estimated readers in 1994; if we assume that the number of people is correlated to the number of postings per day, the group's volume is more or less the same as it was in 1994 (150-200 articles per day.) Of course, that's another big assumption. Basically, nobody ever knew the numbers back then, and we absolutely don't know now. More rambling about what those numbers mean and in what ways they may be inaccurate: The numbers from 1994, assuming the "arbitron" users sampled represented a good cross-section of the Usenet population (about which I have my doubts, because at every site several groups are much more popular than they are elsewhere based on the habits of that particular clique, and I don't know now many sites "arbitron" monitored) we can at least determine the _relative_ popularity of newsgroups, for instance, "alt.religion.kibology has the same number of readers as alt.fan.howard-stern". (That was a 1994 estimate, although I wouldn't be surprised if Howard Stern's inched up or dropped since then. Or if I have.) Alt.religion.kibology went from 0 to about 80,000 (estimated) within its first three years, and during the last year those stats were kept it fluctuated above and below 80,000; I suspect it was a plateau and the fluctuations may be artifacts from the estimation methods. Note that although it's very hard to scale the 1994 number to 1999 (since 1994, the number of people on the Internet has gone up by an order of magnitude, as has the number of newsgroups on Usenet) I am inclined to believe it's still more likely to be around 80,000 than to be wildly higher or lower, because the number of articles per day in the newsgroup has remained more or less the same (150-200/day) and the number I write has remained the same since even before the newsgroup was founded (20-60/week). One thing I can give you semi-accurate numbers for: The hit-count on my Web site. I say "semi-accurate" because Web "hits" are always somewhat bogus to tally (be skeptical of any news report where they say "Web site xyz.com got over five hundred billion visitors yesterday", because they don't seem to understand that "hits" measures "visitors multiplied by the number of little icons on your menu page") but because I have access to the server logs as well as some others my site generates, I can say that about 500 *different* people visit www.kibo.com every week (which amounts to 30,000 hits per week, or 1,560,000 per year.) Each person accounts for about 60 hits (in my site's case, not in general) meaning that they look at several pages (each page having several icons) before they get disgusted and leave. 500 people per week doesn't seem like a lot, but when you convert that into "1,560,000 hits per year" that sounds like a big deal. And it is very good traffic for a Web site that doesn't sell anything, doesn't advertise on other Web sites, and doesn't have anything about Beanie Babies. Hmm, that gives me an idea. As one of the people who maintains the Web services on world.std.com, I've seen the hit statistics for various other sites hosted by that ISP (including its own site) and a few get more hits, most get fewer (World's own site gets fewer than my personal site does!) For your reference, here are some articles from my archives about the "arbitron" statistics for alt.religion.kibology during 1992 to 1994. (alt.religion.kibology was founded in 1991 and it grew rapidly, as the tiny readership in the first post from 1992 indicates.) I'm sorry, but I don't have archives of statistics other than these fragments -- if someone has complete copies of news.lists statistics from anywhere in the 1991 to 1994 period, I'd be interested in studying them. (I could make a real purty graph.) ================================== RE-RUNS ==================================== [in this article, a.r.k was three months old, and had 9100 estimated readers] ~From: James 'Kibo' Parry (kibo@world.std.com) ~Subject: Kibology Cheaper Than Sex--proof from news.lists! ~Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology ~Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1992 02:42:17 GMT [] From Brian Reid's latest news.lists Usenet readership summary. Notice that reading alt.sex costs you $0.04 per reader per month but alt.religion.kibology costs you $0.03. This is the full set of data from the USENET readership report for Jan 92. Explanations of the figures are in a companion posting. +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide. | +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population | | +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all | | | +-- Recent traffic (messages per month) | | | | +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month) | | | | | +-- Crossposting percentage | | | | | | +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr | | | | | | | +-- Share: % of newsrders | | | | | | | | who read this group. V V V V V V V V 1 250000 5272 70% 1756 6300.0 28% 0.04 13.0% alt.sex 2 220000 4597 85% 814 1629.4 17% 0.01 11.4% misc.jobs.offered 3 190000 3932 83% 82 159.2 0% 0.00 9.7% rec.humor.funny 4 170000 3551 82% 2067 3472.9 10% 0.04 8.8% rec.humor [...] 988 9300 197 14% 248 567.2 3% 0.02 0.5% aus.general 989 9300 196 50% 39 82.8 11% 0.01 0.5% alt.education.disabled 990 9300 196 5% 22 37.4 19% 0.00 0.5% ucb.general 991 9200 195 45% 1 1.2 100% 0.00 0.5% alt.desert-shield 992 9200 194 47% 73 121.3 1% 0.01 0.5% alt.fan.pern 993 9100 193 42% 43 69.4 37% 0.01 0.5% biz.sco.opendesktop *994 9100 192 39% 187 292.3 42% 0.03 0.5% alt.religion.kibology 995 9100 192 39% 75 123.2 16% 0.01 0.5% alt.missing-kids 996 9100 192 5% 55 84.3 10% 0.00 0.5% sfnet.atk.ms-dos 997 9000 191 47% 2 73.6 0% 0.01 0.5% alt.comp.acad-freedom.news [...] 1650 95 2 1% 4 3.8 50% 0.00 0.0% uiuc.announce 1651 95 2 0% 13 173.1 0% 0.03 0.0% ar.info-ada 1652 95 2 0% 5 5.4 0% 0.00 0.0% tamu.phil.240 1653 47 1 1% 4 6.9 25% 0.00 0.0% uiuc.sys.next 1654 47 1 0% 20 37.6 0% 0.01 0.0% nyu.listserv.cwis-l ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [this article lists the most popular groups when a.r.k was eight months old] ~From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) ~Subject: How To Be Really Obnoxious. Don't try this at home! ~Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology, alt.cascade, news.admin Followup-To: alt.religion.kibology ~Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 05:52:09 GMT [] I was recently wondering how many groups you'd need to cross-post to, for getting over a million people to read your deathless prose (in the Usenet sense of "read", of course, since there's no way to ascertain how many of them read only the first few lines.) We'll assume that the statistics from news.lists, below, are an accurate reflection of reality--that the people they claim are reading articles really are reading them (and not just seeing their subject lines on a menu) and that the total readership of the net was accurately guessed. Here's an excerpt from Brian Reid's Usenet Readership Report for June '92. The numbers for the 12 most popular groups are the estimated readership and the percent of people who read the group. 1 280000 12.2% misc.jobs.offered 2 250000 10.5% misc.forsale 3 220000 9.4% alt.sex 4 220000 9.2% rec.humor.funny 5 180000 7.7% news.answers 6 170000 7.3% rec.humor 7 160000 6.9% misc.forsale.computes 8 160000 6.9% news.groups 9 160000 6.7% news.announce.newgros 10 150000 6.4% rec.arts.erotica 11 150000 6.3% misc.jobs.misc 12 140000 6.0% comp.graphics Estimated total readership of the net, according to these figures: 2,300,000. (280,000*12.2%) Now, assuming that there is zero correlation between the readership of these twelve groups (which makes calculation possible, although it is unrealistic, because most of the misc.jobs.misc readers also read misc.jobs.offered), and that we can post to any group we want (not true, since some of these are moderated): We can calculate the number of readers we would get from a massive crosspost by subtracting each of those percentages from 100%, multiplying them all together, and subtracting that from 100%. A cross-post to the Top 6 would have 1,000,000 readers (45% rating.) A cross-post to the Top 12 would have 1,450,000 (63.1%!) Now, in reality, these figures would be lower, because of the overlap between similar groups, and because you'd have to omit things like rec.humor.funny (unless you're forging the post.) Without data on how the groups' readership correlates we can't figure out how much to correct for that, of course. To show how influential that factor is, if you multiply the percentages for the top six groups--to get the number of readers who read ALL six--you get 1.4 estimated readers! I'm sure a lot of people, especially admins, read all the popular groups. It should still be possible to post something to enough groups that at least a million people will be exposing themselves to it. I refuse to try on the grounds that it would be obnoxious. However, I predict that soon some weenie cascader will. Don't we live in exciting times? -- K. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [here, a.r.k was nearly a year old] ~From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) ~Subject: Relative popularity of our candidates on Usenet ~Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology, alt.politics.kibo, alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.clinton, alt.politics.perot ~Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 06:25:43 GMT [] According to the September Usenet Readership Report, which Brian Reid has posted to news.lists, the following groups stack up in this order: alt.politics.clinton is the most-read alt.religion.kibology alt.politics.bush alt.politics.perot alt.politics.marrou is the least-read (The newsgroups alt.politics.kibo and alt.politics.libertarian are not listed in the statistics for some reason. See news.lists for all the figures.) Now, obviously, what these stats show is that: (A) Kibo is more popular than the President. Yay. (B) When Clinton drops out of the race, Kibo will win. (C) There is a conspiracy to keep alt.politics.kibo from being listed with the other statistics. I bet that Perot weenie is behind it. -- K. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Mike Jittlov discovers statistics when a.r.k is two and a half years old and has 87,000 estimated readers] ~From: Mike Jittlov (jittlov@gumby.cs.caltech.edu) ~Subject: Who are you, Green Person? ~Newsgroups: alt.fan.mike-jittlov, alt.religion.kibology, alt.fan.dave-barry, alt.fan.douglas-adams, alt.tv.mst3k Followups-To: alt.fan.mike-jittlov Summary: It's a mystery Keywords: Jittlov,wizard SubSubject: And what are you doing in this newsgroup? ~Date: 16 May 1994 20:13:37 GMT From the Gumby Email Avalanche: >How did you find out that 56,000 people subscribe to your news >group? We didn't even know you existed until you crossposted in It constantly amazes me that so _many_ people don't realize how famous I am. Though I must admit, even _I_ was unaware of my own ripple of renown, until NetGod *Kibo* alerted me to "news.lists" -- and I ploughed through a posting even longer than one my own, to learn The Awesome Truth (see below)! (BTW we're a bit higher now ;) From: reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) Newsgroups: news.lists Subject: USENET Readership report for Apr 94 Date: 3 May 1994 12:06:00 -0700 Organization: DEC Network Systems Laboratory Lines: 3203 Summary: data for all groups Keywords: arbitron, statistics, full +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide. | +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population | | +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all | | | +-- Recent traffic (messages per month) | | | | +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month) | | | | | +-- Crossposting percentage | | | | | | +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr | | | | | | | +-- Share: % of newsrders | | | | | | | | who read this group. V V V V V V V V 87000 645 60% 5346 3911.7 59% 0.04 1.5% alt.religion.kibology 71000 527 58% 1168 1662.3 9% 0.02 1.2% alt.fan.douglas-adams 69000 512 60% 879 1689.4 1% 0.02 1.2% alt.fan.dave_barry 67000 491 58% 321 613.0 8% 0.01 1.1% alt.fan.mike-jittlov <-* 65000 482 60% 979 1213.5 10% 0.01 1.1% alt.fan.howard-stern 61000 453 52% 3199 5558.3 39% 0.06 1.0% alt.rush-limbaugh 61000 451 49% 1733 2360.1 1% 0.03 1.0% alt.tv.melrose-place 60000 446 41% 453 5933.6 1% 0.05 1.0% alt.sex.fetish.feet 60000 443 60% 372 529.1 24% 0.01 1.0% alt.tv.tiny-toon 58000 430 57% 808 718.8 59% 0.01 1.0% alt.society.civil-liberty 55000 409 62% 671 1224.2 0% 0.02 0.9% alt.recovery 55000 405 55% 4198 8916.8 3% 0.12 0.9% alt.tv.mst3k Actually, it IS rather incredible that "my" newsgroup even exists, let alone makes it this high on the scale. Its namesake has no daily TV show, has no press agent or manager, has written no books, has no visible Life and and doesn't charge $100 for his autograph. Kinda makes you wonder about UseNet subscriber priorities. (Kinda makes ME wonder...if I had a dollar for every subscription...) ___________________________________________ __ ._`.*.'_._ ____ ____ Mike Jittlov - Wizard, etc . . + * .o o.* `.`. +. . Hollywood, California, USA ' * . ' ' |\^/| `. * . * ` jittlov@gumby.cs.caltech.edu (: May All Your \$/ Good Dreams . + <& alt.fan.mike-jittlov> and Fine Wishes /_\ Come True:) .`. ================================================ _/ \_ ============::::. Coming soon to a.f.m-j: "SAVE THE WIZARD MOVIE!!" Postcard Campaign! "Friends don't let friends access the InterNet" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A few months later, a.r.k has moved down to 43,000 readers -- consequences of the massive flamewar with rec.org.mensa, or due to changing estimates of the Internet's size? I have no idea.] ~From: Eric Walker (modemac@netcom.com) ~Subject: USENET Readership ~Newsgroups: alt.slack, alt.religion.kibology, alt.discordia ~Date: Fri, 22 Jul 1994 21:24:58 GMT ~From: reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) ~Newsgroups: news.lists ~Subject: USENET Readership report for Jun 94 ~Date: 14 Jul 1994 08:34:47 -0700 This is the full set of data from the USENET readership report for Jun 94. Explanations of the figures are in a companion posting. +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide. | +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population | | +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all | | | +-- Recent traffic (messages per month) | | | | +-- Recent traffic (megabytes per month) | | | | | +-- Crossposting percentage | | | | | | +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr | | | | | | | +-- Share: % of newsrders | | | | | | | | who read this group. V V V V V V V V 414 57000 722 60% 831 1.1 36% 0.02 1.5% alt.slack 654 43000 566 58% 3008 2.2 57% 0.04 1.1% alt.religion.kibology 1531 15000 229 49% 1016 2.4 13% 0.11 0.5% alt.discordia / \ | | + -- Of the 3121 newsgroups monitored by this report, the ranking of the newsgroup - i.e. alt.slack was ranked #414. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [no stats in this article from the beginning of a.r.k's third year, but it is the first time I publicly bemoaned the cessation of the stat-keeping. Incidentally, I think 1994 was the year it became Eternal September and thus it would be a good date to select to represent the year the "real world" discovered the Internet. Incidentally, the "Wired" issue with me as the centerfold -- towards the end of "Wired"'s first year -- came out around the time this article was written.] ~From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) ~Subject: Re: The year the Net Broke ~Newsgroups: alt.online-service.prodigy, alt.culture.usenet, misc.misc, alt.religion.kibology ~Date: Sat, 10 Dec 1994 07:01:47 GMT In several groups, article <3c30sf$c97@doc.jmu.edu>, lee s. bumgarner wrote: > I've heard that recently Howard Stern has become aware of the Net. This happens "recently"? He's been talking about his CompuServe account for years. > just as Kibo gets himself on the front page of a Boston newspaper. Stern's > recent comments to me sybolize how far the Net has developed past being the > pleasent little secret of Netheads. If Stern starts to wade in full force, ie > recording non-FCC regulated InternetRadio versions of his show, posting a lot > to alt.fan.howard-stern, then popularization of the Net will be even more fully > at hand. > > Kibo is becoming the Net's answer to Stern. Stern will probably be bemused by > how much more popular He who greps is on Usenet than The King of All Media is. alt.religion.kibology and alt.fan.howard-stern had roughly the same number of readers about two years ago, but one of them's been steadily moving upwards since then. Guess which. (Someone should pull out the archive of news.lists stats and draw nice bar graphs of which groups have been growing the fastest. Heck, someone should volunteer to *compile* current stats, since nobody seems to be posting them to news.lists any more, which is a shame, because they're the only real information we've ever had about how many people care about which newsgroup.) We also should come up with a scientific method of determining whose ego is the biggest. Of course, my mere existence may also mandate the invention of some new numbers to measure it with. (The mere fact that I can joke about having the biggest ego in the world proves that I'm actually quite humble, despite the fact that I HAVE THE BIGGEST EGO IN THE WORLD.) > While Stern is often goes for bathroom humor, Kibo is more apt to just cynicly > make fun of everything, including Kibology itself. Kibology is just the kind Kibology isn't even worth making fun of. I prefer to make fun of bathroom humor. I hate it when creepy guys use words like "DOODIE" in an article cross-posted to alt.online-service.prodigy, which is a FAMILY newsgroup! > of thing that middle aged newspeople would get enough of a chuckle out of to > end a broadcast with. The day I hear "Kibo" on headline news is the day I know Well, I'm glad *someone* gets a chuckle out of it, though I'm kind of puzzled by this reaction. By all rights, newscasters should do stories about "It's more popular than anything worthwhile on the Information Superhighway. Will Kibology sneak into your home over the phone and molest your pets while you sleep? KIBOLOGY, CULT OF POINTLESSNESS, next on DONAHUE!" I recently gave a reporter from Channel 5 (WCVB, "Chronicle") some choice soundbites, so we will get to see (in about a month) whether they go with the "Look how cool this funny 'Kibo' guy is and how everyone loves him" (I hate that) or the "Kibo warns of imminent death of the net, film at 11" angle. Personally, I'd just like to know what's 'funny' about alt.religion.kibology. I find it about as funny as, oh, alt.sex. > the average joe-sixpack is interested in the Net. > > It is interesting how infecious Kibology has become. While Stern's followers > are apt to make rude,crude, sociably unacceptable comments on call in shows, > Kibologist normally do nothing worse than troll for newbies or crosspost in > weird ways. Or slap "Kibo Inside!" stickers on other people's Pentiums, or plant stories in the media, or hold parties where they watch bad movies made by insane people, or offer Kibo large quantities of money for doing product placements. ONE OF THESE IS WISHFUL THINKING, UNLESS IT'S THIS ONE. > [...] > Another aspect of the popularization of the Net is how the newsmedia is > beginning to absorb it into their world view. More than one article recently > has stated that the Intel's current PR problems would not be so bad if > newspeople weren't reading Usenet grepping for stories ideas. This too will > probably get Kibo well know beyond the Net. Hey, I had nothing to do with breaking the Pentium chip. My specialty is breaking input devices. Speaking of which, it's about time for this keyboard to mysteriously fail. (The mouse already had its turn last week.) > Lastly, let's address the online services. Prodogy will early next year > introduce a new version code-named "P2" according to the Wall Street Journal, Hey, enough with the bathroom humor! "Pee number two" indeed. We must band together to w*pe out infantile drivel! > Please Note. > this essay is not to be taken to terribly serious. Just some thoughts on the > current situation. I'll take it terribly serious[ly] (note pointless grammar nitpick just to show I'm more pedantic than you are) if I want to, thank you, because I take everything too seriously. It's one of my trademarks. This means I can sue anyone else who does the same. The Net: Making It Easier To Sue Everyone. -- K. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Incidentally, the keeper of the statistics, Brian Reid, was the chief instigator of AlterNet, which was an alternative distribution channel for Usenet articles created in opposition to somewhat linear existing structure of the "backbone cabal". Lee Bumgarner has written a FAQ detailing some of that period in Usenet's history. -- K. I AM SO BORING BORING BORING * The first asterisk is where I became boring.