Well, this isn’t a rant yet and it’s not even really a complaint about the administration but I’m getting nowhere in ATMB so …
Over a week ago I chimed into this thread. In that post and some follow ups I ask a few questions …
You can see from the thread that not only do I not get any answers, I don’t get any acknowledgement for them at all. To be fair some information is posted about the future of the board, chances of getting a new server and the plans for the archives. However there’s no answer to the questions I quoted above, even though TubaDiva posts in the thread again. After a while I ask again …
That was a week ago, since then several mods and admins have posted in ATMB and that thread has been bumped to the top several time by polite enquiries for the information (not just by me). But no response.
Generally I’m reluctant to jump to the worst case but I have to think I’m being deliberately ignored here.
I’m hoping the posting here will bring either the answers I’m looking for or an a polite “Sorry we don’t know/can’t tell you because of some reason or other”. I’m really hoping that’ll be proceeded by “Really sorry Space but we missed your post/forgot/whatever”.
I dunno if anyone besides the myself and the few that posted in that thread (thanks, by the way) cares about the answers but I don’t really think it should matter. It’s only polite to at least acknowledge the question.
Personally, I’d really like to hear the answers to your questions, and I’m sure they would clear up any confusion if the stats were made public.
Perhaps if enough dopers registered their interest (on this thread, or via personal e-mail to the mods, which I know they appreciate) Tubadiva et al might consider it a general benefit to be a little more forthcoming?
The administration has always complained that the SDMB is a great money pit for the Chicago Reader, though they’ve never backed that up. Many dopers have taken to calculating estimates, which (to the best of my knowledge) pretty much have all put the SDMB’s finances in the black. My guess? If the Chicago Reader had the business sense God gave fungi, they’d drop the SDMB the second they lost a mere dollar on it. I wouldn’t expect a clear answer on this any time soon.
I’m no computer genius, but I’d imagine that the admins would be hesitant to give out their server specs to prevent attacks on their system. As for page views/posts per day? I dunno, maybe nobody’s motivated enough to look it up.
This estimate is way off, page views for the average thread run at least 10 to 1 for each post in the thread, so that’s what, a bare minimum of 37,000 page views per week?
That part is massively off. I literaly generate over 100 page views on my own every single day. There are a few thousand members. That has to add up big time.
The administration has answered such questions in the past. I asked roughly the same ones in 2001. The thread is listed below.
I think you’ve asked some very reasonable questions, SpaceDog. Hopefully the unresponsefulness of the administration is simply due to laziness, and not any feeling that they need to hide something.
Businesses don’t just hand out detailed information about their operations to any customer who asks. And in this situation, we’re the customers. If I buy widget X from Joe Schmoe, that doesn’t give me the right to demand detailed production stats on his widget factory; it gives me the right to use the widget, which is what I do when I look at a page or make a post here. Chicago Reader, last I saw, was not a nonprofit, so has no legal obligation to disclose any of this information.
I’d be very surprised if you get any answers to your questions; as customers, we’re not in a position to have a right to know the answers to what you’re asking.
Fear Itself and Shagnasty, I’m not sure what you’re saying is ‘way off’, I quoted big-boards.com for the posts per week and divided by 7 to get a rough posts per day.
That’s not a page view figure (although the sentance could have been clearer) and I’ve not estimated anything in this thread. As far as I know BigBoards just gets it’s figures from the info on the forum homepage.
I don’t know about the page views. I’m not disputing that there may be a huge view-to-post ration, and the page views per day is probably massive. I just don’t know. Which is why I was asking.
Various people, myself included, have indulged in speculation about the figures before (there’s a few threads in ATMB) but they’re just speculation based on the few figures we can scrape together. They don’t tell us anything about peak usage, or how the page views are distributed over time / forums / etc.
Thanks for the link Shagnasty, it’s a bit out of date and before pay-to-post so I was really looking for what the figures are like now. It’d be nice to compare the figures now to the figures then as well.
Added on preview:
Well this thread is partially about the answers and partially about the complete lack of response in the other thread. You’re right of course that we don’t have any right to know but other companies do share this info, just for interest, discussion, bragging rights, whatever.
Secondly it’s not really widget X, it’s a service people are paying for. The original thread was about the performance/usablity of that service and I felt some figures might shed some light on things.
But the stats you were asking for may well fall inn the category of confidential business information, at least in the eyes of the Chicago Reader. Again, just because we pay for a usage of their facilities doesn’t entitle us to know their overhead costs or the breakdown of their operating stats. The two really have no relationship to each other, in my eyes.
It’s such a fundamental tenet of the way for-profit businesses operate that I’m not surprised there’s been no answer, is all I’m saying. I don’t disagree that knowing the information might have been useful for an altruistic purpose on your part; of course, it could also be useful for setting up a business in direct competition for the SDMB members’ money.
There’s no accurate way to judge your motive, thus not responding to you makes perfect sense to me. It’s not going to go anywhere in the end; if my surmise as to why you haven’t been answered is correct, the only answer I can see being made is, “You have no right to know, we aren’t going to tell you, and there’s no point in arguing with you about whether our answer will change because it won’t.” There’s ultimately no point in even opening the dialogue when it’s not going to go anywhere.
What’s the point of answering? If they do, then you’re going to want to know why they won’t provide the information, and there’s really nowhere the conversation can go.
I regard the whole OP as a case of a waste of time on the board administration’s part to even deal with; nothing will change except that those asking the questions will continue to get more upset about the fact that they’re not getting the info they want.
I agree that I have no right to any of the answers. And we’re certainly not entitled to know the costs involved but I’ve not asked for specific costs, merely some indication of how the well subs/ads are doing. Even that I admit I’m not entitled to, just interested.
They’ve certainly posted about costs in the past when the boards where costing the Reader money, even with rough figures. Shagnastys link shows that they’ve been happy to post some of the information I’m looking for in the past as well. I’m just looking for something a bit more up to date.
I’m not sure that not responding ever makes any sense, it’s an annoying, petty and ultimately self-defeating tactic when employed by anyone from children to politicians.
There’s plenty of discussion on this board that doesn’t go anywhere in the end, and plenty of discussion about this board that doesn’t go anywhere (glance around the Pit for evidence). Why single me out for the silent treatment ?
Frankly I still hope that I wasn’t being ignored and an answer (or a clear refusal to answer, or a mix of both) will be forthcoming in this thread at some point.
“Hmm, Big Boards says 25935 posts last week, so 3700 odd a day”
For what it’s worth, Big-Boards isn’t necessarily right on the money. They say my site had 3329 posts last week, when vBulletin tells me I had 3481. Not off by that much for me, but with the much larger numbers that the SDMB pushes I’d imagine the discrepancy could be exacerbated (4% of 25935 is a lot more than 4% of 3481).
I’m 808th on the list as far as posts are concerned, but 25th for post per member ratio. Damn spammers.
There is a huge difference. Last time I remember Jerry from the Reader IS staff making public the page load figure is was in the hundreds of thousands per month.
Because acknowledging questions like these is generally a no-win situation. No comment is deemed to be hiding something. Explaining why you don’t want to answer it just generates more questions on why or rationalization on why this one person should be an exception. Actually giving the information out releases your confidential business information to the public.
There was a huge kerfuffle several months ago that ended with an Official Pronouncement that the staff would not be discussing or disclosing any financial information to any of us.
