Board stats

[Iridium]

Just out of interest do we record how many unanswered posts there are per day (and also perhaps the thorny subject of unresolved - yes - how to measure blah blah ) - pehaps I missed it on the stat board. Just thought it would be a good objective to minimise how many we have?

 

[Mark O'Brien]

I agree with you that it would be a good objective to minimise the number of unresolved and unanswered threads.

However, there's also a "however" where there's no "but", how do we classify unresolved threads where the OP hasn't bothered to returned to clarify their question? Should we count threads as being unanswered even if the original question is gibberish? Also, some questions are so unintelligible that no one is brave enough to ask the OP for clarification or that the request is so ridiculous that it would take 40+ hours to complete. Is a question resolved when the OP has a workable solution or is it resolved when a solution is determined as being optimal?

Besides all of these reasons, and more, unanswered posts and unresolved questions are very negative stats to have. They're not a very good advert for the board.

 

[NateO]

Hello,

If you're really interested, click on the unanswered posts link. It will deliver a figure, divide that by the days outstanding relative to the age of the board: 09 Feb 2002.

 

[Iridium]

You've hit the nail on the head there and I drew a distinction where there wasn't one - when is the OP satisfied? They possibly/probably won't say when they are or they won't get an answer if no-one knows wtf they're on about. To the board - any suggestions/ideas?

 

[Mark O'Brien]

to the age of the board: 09 Feb 2002.

That's the birthday of the board not the age. (or maybe date of it's code reassignment is a more appropriate term)

You're god **** right I'm cranky. I need food.

 

[Iridium]

How do we compare to eg the MS, ozgrid, officeexperts boards?

 

[Iridium]

Nate

As an aside , since your birthday your youthful, happy smile has been replaced by that of a demon and its a bit scary

 

[Mark O'Brien]

How do we compare to eg the MS, ozgrid, officeexperts boards?

From some stats that Juan gave me about a year ago, I believe our traffic is less than the MS newsgroups, but our typical response time was faster. (however, you should probably take into account the lag time for posts on some newsgroups)

Ozgrid is a younger forum than this one, so a comparison is unfair. It looks like their traffic is less than here. However, MrExcel.com has been running since 1998/1999, so even a comparison based on the php forums is unfair as MrExcel.com had an established membership before transferring to php in Feb 2002. You'll find that a lot of the regulars at OzGrid met over here at MrExcel. So we're almost like God to their Lucifer Morningstar. (j/k, of course, 'sup Ozgrid guys :D )

TheOfficeExperts has less traffic than Ozgrid. Compared directly to Ozgrid, the reason is probably because OzGrid had/has a bigger client base that are probably recommended to try the free forum there. However, comparing OzGrid to TOE is also unfair since TOE tries to cover all MS Office apps. (this could be the folly of TOE, i.e. spread too thin). TheOfficeExperts was begat of TheWordExpert.com which was run/owned by Anne (Dreamboat on this and many other forums).

So in short, MS forums are good. MrExcel is good. Ozgrid sucks. (again, just kidding. I don't want to have to make another public apology to Dave ) OzGrid is good. TOE has less traffic.

The strength of MrExcel is speed of solution. The strength of the newsgroups is more optimised solutions in about 15% of the solutions.

OzGrid has some good people too, but I believe that they don't have the strength in numbers of this site. (yet)

TOE needs more attention. Excel is king of the MS Office Applications.

EDIT:: This is my first "beer" post in quite some time.

 

[XL-Dennis]

Let us face the good points here

Unlike other user-communities the global XL-community is one of the most kindest and generous group that exist today.

Some like to be on only one forum while other prefer to be active members of several forum.

To compare differens forum is not relevant because they really don´t compete. From my point of view all forum put some value to the growing knowledge-base of XL.

However, one drawback of getting bigger is that the family-feeling is lost somewhere along the road. Another possible drawback is that the quality tend to vary because of the number of members who trying to help increase.

Mark: Drink milk - keeps You in a better shape in the mornings

Kind regards,
Dennis

 

[Jack in the UK]

As most of you will know I co run OzGrid as Super Administrator, that’s as senior as it gets, just like Bill Jelen and Juan are. My comments might be simplistic:
It’s not a competition
Have fun guys and help all you can

Your friend Jack