Forum statistics: yearly report

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Hagar Delest
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Forum statistics: yearly report

Post by Hagar Delest »

Dear All,

Since the forum is doing rather well, we will try to "publish" some statistics about its use, especially the rates of new registrations and solved topics.

Some basics:
- Number of posts, members and topics is taken from the phpBB information bottom of main index page
- Solved topics are counted in all the forums except admins and archives sections (not visible to standard users)
Note that the ratio solved topics vs. total topics is slightly biased since the topics in the archives and admin sections are counted but not the solved ones. However, there are less than 550 topics and 6400 posts there. These last figures shouldn't change very much since the private sections are not very active.

Here it is (since the solved topics is a new metric, there is only one point today).
2011-12-30.png
The decrease in the number of members is linked to the cleaning of banned users. They had just been banned until now but to keep only the "real users", their account has been deleted (nearly 1800). This was the first cleaning ever done from the launch of this forum 4 years ago.

The ratio of the solved topics is rather good: 14,000 solved (green triangle) in 41,000 (red triangles).

For the record, last quarter has been in line with the rest: 2100 new users from Oct. 1st to end of this year, meaning 1800 new topics.
As for the spam, we have had 1800 users in almost 1500 days, it makes 1.21 spammer a day, still rather low. They come by bunches, usually during vacations.

Last figures: 2011 has shown an increase in the max number of online users along the months. Peak was 232 beginning of October:
Image
Note that there was a 357 value in the Most users field but we have strong doubts about it (could come from connection requests released at once). The counter has been set reset on Jan. 1st, 2012.

As for the Volunteers, 4 new users have been promoted in December 2011 (the last approval was in April). Total is now 92.
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Hagar Delest
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Forum statistics: January 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

Nothing special for this beginning of the year.
All metrics are in line with what we used to have.
Most users ever online was 244 on Wed Jan 18, 2012, average is usually around 150.
2012-01-31.png
More than 200 spammers this month, quite higher than we used to see I think (especially some who keep registering for the same 2/3 sites).
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Hagar Delest
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Forum statistics: February 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

Banned accounts for spam has risen to a total of 510, that makes 310 for this single month. There is a clear spike of spam compared to previous months. They are real users, either posting or also (I would say around 1/3) just giving a commercial link in the profile website field. Since they aren't bots at all, the registration process is not faulty. Just more work for the moderators...
Most users ever online is now 296. A rather good point together with the average figure which is now very often above 200.
2012-02-29.png
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Forum statistics: March 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

You've got the trend now so I'll concentrate on the current year, I hope to see some changes after AOO 3.4 release.
012-04-01.png
012-04-01.png (5 KiB) Viewed 79738 times
Nothing special this month except the spam level that is higher and higher (345 additional accounts banned). Thanks to the moderation team, such posts don't stay very long but we have to spend more and more time with this. For the record, until end of last year, we had registered 1800 spamers in 1500 days. From beginning of 2012, 855 have done so in... 90 days!

The rather good news is that there has been no noticeable decrease in the registration rate, the spamers increase the slope, when they are removed from the members figures, the trend is the same as past years. It means that despite the lack of new release, the interest from users has not decreased.
 Edit: To clean the topic, I've split the discussion about that followed this post: March 2012 monthly report and spam 
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Hagar Delest
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Forum statistics: April 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

April has been a harsh one!
2012-05-01.png
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The spam increase has led to special counter-measures. Now all new users are moderated before their posts go online. We have been reluctant to do it but we had no choice. This has been implemented on Apr. 25. It is still too soon to see any big change in the figures.
A new group of users has been created to spot the spammers (black username). They have been added in the chart above also (right axis, beware the scale).
New moderators have been appointed too.

Linked to this spam attack, number of most online users has been reset following a problem with connections (one very small outage during some minutes). Not sure if it comes from a problem with the server of if it was a denial of service attack (latter sounds rather credible).
Most users 2012 04 18.jpg
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Since the first RC is now available for AOO 3.4, hopefully the registration rate should increase in the next weeks.
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Forum statistics: May 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

May has been rather calm, despite the release of Apache OpenOffice 3.4.0. I increased the frequency for the figures to spot any relation with this last release but there has been absolutely no change. I thought we would have had some additional users...

The good news is that spam has been completely eradicated. New posts have to be approved by moderators so we can ban them and delete the post before it's online. Registration of spammers has decreased so the word has spread that there was no point anymore trying to post here.
2012-05-31.png
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Forum statistics: June 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

Rather calm month again. Spam is well under control.
We have registered our 50,000th member mid of June. Still around 1,800 spam accounts but well, that's something! More than 225,000 posts and almost 45,000 topics.
2012-06-30.png
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Forum statistics: July 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

Another calm month with all the metrics following the standard trend. But as this is summer break, this is a good result.
The only interesting point is the most online users count that went from 265 to 292. We used to be just below 300 last year so we are back to standard situation. The 3.4.0 release may have to do with that (quite some regressions, especially for dictionaries).
2012-07-31.png
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Re: Forum statistics: monthly report

Post by kingfisher »

Congratulations on getting the report done so quickly. Can you explain the line for spammers, please? The trend continues to be upwards. What is being measured?
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Re: Forum statistics: monthly report

Post by RoryOF »

If there were no new spammers the line would be flat.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Forum statistics: monthly report

Post by Hagar Delest »

Right. Every day we have roughly 3 spammers. They are 2 kinds of spammers:
  • those who try to post but the first post moderation doesn't give them a chance and they are immediately banned
  • those who don't post but include a commercial link in their signature or profile website field.
    For the latter, I regularly check the 0 post users profile (the nastiest wait for some days before updating their signature!) and ban them.
Both are true humans who still try to spam here but it's impossible to prevent them from registering. It means that the spikes of spam we have seen in April were done by true humans too.

NB: for the "true members" count, I take the total number of users (given at main index page) minus the number of spammers (I add them to the Banned user group, they are in black when you check the Members list).
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Forum statistics: August 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

Still summer break I guess. The only noticeable fact is that spammers are still here (slight increase: 6 per day instead of 3 before), surely summer jobs.
Again a lot of topics about repetitive crashes and dictionary issues, even with 3.4.1. Another flood of similar topics to be expected in September.
2012-09-01.png
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Forum statistics: September 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

Numbers are in line with previous months.
Some remarks:
  • We have now more than 50,000 "true" users (after removing the banned accounts)
  • The spike of spammers is over since mid of September
  • More and more reports about the repetitive crashes under Windows (mostly XP) after upgrade, this is rather worrying. The worst is that this is not reproducible and too complex to report it on bugzilla
2012-09-30.png
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Forum statistics: October 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

The main event this month is the most online users count that went from 292 to 294 the very day oooforum went down.
Spammers are still trying to register but mainly for the signature and web site field of the user profile, they rarely try to post now that posts are moderated.
2012-10-31.png
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Re: Forum statistics: monthly report

Post by kingfisher »

Thanks for the information. The graph shows the number of spammers continuing to increase; I suppose that refers to registrations. Well done on their posting.
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Re: Forum statistics: monthly report

Post by Hagar Delest »

Yes, we have 2 kinds of spammers now:
- The ones who try to post a real spam message with commercial links. Easily banned with the post moderation.
- The ones who don't post at all but add their commercial link in the signature and/or web site field of the forum user profile.

Both are registered and counted in the index statistics which is biased then.
Note that for the latter spammers, the only solution for the moment is to check the newly registered users and also their last active date: some wait for a couple of days before adding their commercial link, thinking they fly under the radar...
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Forum statistics: November 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

Nothing special this month. 5 years now and everything runs rather smoothly.
Spammers are still here (around 5 per day). But at least it does not appear on the forum. For the record, the AOO Mwiki registration process had to be closed because a huge spam attack (more than 60,000 accounts deleted IIRC.
It seems that the forum is more and more advertised in the AOO communication (mailing list, Google Moderator session, ...) which is a pretty good achievement regarding the quality of the support provided here.
2012-11-30.png
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Forum statistics: December 2012

Post by Hagar Delest »

Here are the numbers for the last 2012 report. Nothing special except a ban for breach of the forum rules (and at the OP request); rare enough to be noticed.
2012-12-31.png
And the whole picture (spammers included in the users):
2012-12-31 - All.png
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Forum statistics: January 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

Here are the figures for January 2013:
2013-01-31.png
In line with previous months. A slight increase of spammers (only noticeable with the rate per day calculation, not visible on the chart).

A positive indication is the number of online users that is now frequently around 200 users:
Image
See the related thread: Online users.
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Forum statistics: February 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

Here are the figures (I've removed the secondary axis):
2013-02-28.png
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Nothing special this month.
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Forum statistics: March 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

Again a standard month:
2013-04-01.png
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Forum statistics: April 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

The forum hit the 50,000 topics figure on the 23rd, the threshold of 250,000 posts being already passed beginning of March.
2013-04-30.png
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Forum statistics: May 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

Nothing special this month except that spam has increased. Not visible in the forum of course but more accounts banned than before.
2013-05-31.png
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Forum statistics: June 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

Nothing special this month, except some rise in the spam accounts banned very recently.
We have now more than 55,000 members (spammers excluded).
2013-07-02.png
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Re: Forum statistics: June 2013

Post by Villeroy »

Hagar Delest wrote:Nothing special this month, ...
There is something special since end of 2011 when we used to have 300-350 active topics (topics with new postings during the past 7 days). Now we hardly exceed 150 and there is still the nasty "too many connections error" in MySQL.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Forum statistics: monthly report

Post by Hagar Delest »

Interesting. I had never checked that metrics.

It has been some time since I last got the too many connections error but moderator area is not responsive as previously. I've not heard of imacat since a long time. So we are running on our own...
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Re: Forum statistics: monthly report

Post by Villeroy »

Hagar Delest wrote:Interesting. I had never checked that metrics.

It has been some time since I last got the too many connections error but moderator area is not responsive as previously. I've not heard of imacat since a long time. So we are running on our own...
One week ago I encountered "too many connections" again but only for a short time.
In the "good ol' times" this counter indicated more than 300 constantly, sometimes more than 350 showing 6 or 7 page buttons.
In the "good ol' times" this counter indicated more than 300 constantly, sometimes more than 350 showing 6 or 7 page buttons.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Hagar Delest
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Forum statistics: July 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

Activity has clearly increased with the release of 4.0 end of July.
Quite a lot of problems, partly related to a major upgrade and partly due to some important bugs (several spotted very soon after the release).
The active topics count is now at 225.
2013-08-01.png
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Forum statistics: August 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

Active topics was around 160, not bad for August. Activity did not show a real break.
The main item is the upgrade of the forum. It should prevent the SQL errors we had due to too many connections.
2013-08-31.png
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Forum statistics: September 2013

Post by Hagar Delest »

Some events this month:
- We reached the figure of 60,000 registered users on Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:40 pm (UTC/GMT+2hrs), as noticed by RoryOF (banned account were exactly 3,500 today
- Most users ever online count was 303 on Mon Sep 09, 2013 4:02 pm (previous figure was 294 on Oct. 25, 2012)
- Most active topic has slightly increased (around 200)
2013-09-30.png
RoryOF also recorded the statistics over an exact 7 day period to the minute (from 07:35 23 Sept 2013 to 07:35 30 Sept 2013):
There have been 826 postings (average 118 per day)
170 new topics (average 24-25 per day
170 new members (average 24-25 per day)
NB: the number of posts in the forum is almost 270,000.
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