At the end of the month, I copy the Board front page, and every back-page that contains posts from that month. I plug it into my spreadsheet, and run a cumbrous macro (related to the Dungeon of the Board, actually) which pulls out every post, its author, and its date, and slaps them together into a giant table.

Then I save the table for the month. I have one for every month back to December 2002.

Yeeeeeeah.

It looks like you Threadlocked me with this thread. The fact that it was about ranting, plus the little descent into sexual swearing down-thread, led me to steer clear of it.

hS

Didn't you sign up before it was even open?

hS

The only comment I could come up with was 'I, um, don't see much specifically-Christian about it', but then I found a few articles that did, so I couldn't even say that. ^_^

hS

What I have is:

-The Board Archives of all posts we still have a record of.
-Permission Request Statistics from April 2010 to January 2016. I update this every so often.
-2015 in the PPC, an analysis of the stories written during that year.
-A file looking at how many missions agents tend to go on, based on the Complete List on the Wiki.
-An incomplete file describing the dramatic events that have taken place on the Board, such as spambots and trolls.
-A gigantic file of daily post-counts, broken down by Boarder, for every post recorded, which is what those graphs came from. It also includes the IP/views data, which I think is the only thing not publicly accessible.

That last gives me the ability to make graphs like this:



Which shows:

a) The dangers of estimates (the red region; the spike was definitely a period of high activity, but I don't think I was routinely doing 300 posts a month).
b) My long 'quiet period' 09-12.
c) That you're in no danger of seeing low-level Huinesoron the Hobbits. ^_~ I've only dropped below 100 posts/month once in the last 16 months.

Last thing: [Halo] Moi?

hS

This is the graph of IP addresses visiting the Board since March 2013:



Our post counts may be crawling up, but the number of people here is at an all-time low. That's not a cheerful graph.

I am absolutely in favour of people handing out random badges. I'll note that every single one of the Oscilloscope badges marks a positive, not a negative - there's no 'post badly' badges.

hS

I think most of them centred around 'here is a big thing, lookit!'. Sorry about that?

I mean, mostly not sorry, because some of them were really good threads. But a little bit sorry.

Maybe this big: |-----|

hS

You gun-jumped by posting alarmingly accurate lists of what the badges meant, in the very first thread. I was mildly put out at you for getting so many right. ;)

The badges were partly to make it more fun for me, and partly in the hopes that people would start trying to get them, and discover that the enjoyed whatever they had to do to get them, and thus keep doing it. That didn't work terribly well, probably because they were overly puzzly. But oh well, it was fun.

hS

To be entirely honest, what I want to see is in-depth geeky conversations about minutae of continua I'm interested in (mostly LotR), but I understand I'm rather in a minority there. ;) So instead I've been all self-sacrificing and tried to watch for threads that are interesting for most of the Board, rather than me in particular (or indeed, me at all sometimes).

In general, what I like to see are threads that prompt open-ended interaction. That needs an opening post which provides a foundation for conversation, but then lets it spiral off in interesting ways. A couple of examples:

-Geeky fandommy threads, including ones about the PPC. The Magic in North America threads were good for this - people (including me) got to throw insane theorising at the wall, and interact over it. I think there was a MLP thread that did the same thing, though obviously I didn't get into that one.

-Things that prompt storytelling (not necessarily formal writing). The Dungeon of the Board, or the Shipfest, or whatnot. Anything that gets people scribbling down narrative ideas on the Board. I like it when people write.

-Threads that let other Boarders share the same kind of thing the original poster did, while also commenting on each other's. My Fanarts & Crafts thread worked perfectly for this, and was in turn inspired (to an extent) by Ix's costume, so that counts too. Ivy's Deduction thread, too.

-Other discussion threads, like posted news-articles and videos. The thing here is that the thread-starter needs to put in the effort to start a discussion. It's not enough to just slap up a link - lots of people won't follow links, and a lot of those who do will just reply with 'wow!' or the like. One needs to say something to start and shape the conversation about it.

(An example I didn't post: there was a new tyrannosaur described a couple of weeks ago. I considered posting both to say it happened - fannish geekery - but also to look at the pictures that had been done of it, and see how good/bad they were. I didn't do it because I couldn't find much to talk about.)

Then there's the threads that I don't find particularly interesting, but which I support on principle:

-People posting their stories. Y'know, the thing we're ostensibly here for. ;)

-Badfic threads. We used to pretty much have a big badfic thread every week or so; it's weird that it's stopped happening. I don't really get involved in them, but people howling over badfic is where the PPC started, so it's kind of a shame they've gone.

Most other threads I'd class as 'neutral' - things that don't really make the Board more exciting in my view, but don't drag it down either. That covers newbie threads, closed-ended questions (the sort that are usually answered with 'here's where to find that in the wiki'), beta requests and the like.

The one thread-type I've seen a lot recently that I've never liked is 'I'll be gone for the next three days!'; I don't think we're a fast-moving, intense-enough community that people need to announce when they're not going to be around. I used to vanish for 2-3 weeks over summer and not say a word. But like my favourite thread type, that's a personal preference, and not one I'd try to enforce (hence, no badge attacking it).

hS

(No doubt if you'd asked on another day you'd've got a different answer...)

You and Phobos and Iximaz, in fact. Which I think means everyone who got the Metameta badge (and you've no idea how much I wanted to make a third 'Delved Too Greedily And Too Deep' level of that one ^_~).

Waning enthusiasm levels are a terrible curse which I wish we could all escape. :-/

hS

... who utterly threw me by talking to me on the GDocs chat? I think that's where it came from.

Sneaky blighter.

hS

For the past few years, our monthly post counts have peaked in March-May. Then we have a long decline over the course of late summer and autumn.

My theory is that people get so fed up with their revision that they take refuge on the Board instead. ;)

hS

((It feels super-weird to actually reply to questions about this now.))

hS