ASIF Statistics

[oren]

The statistics are very odd. I strongly suspect they do not represent real readership. One day it's 250k and the next 500k and vice versa. I am betting the spikes above the background level are bots.
This requires more information on the distribution of page view by IP address, by thread and by time of day, in order to prove or disprove properly.

[Aluminium]

The 2019 melting season wins.

[Ktb]

Does this count as statistics? I'm not sure, but I was bored and procrastinating work so here it is anyway:

How long will it take Tom_Mazanec to surpass AbruptSLR as the forums top poster?

A mere 60 years and 276 days

[charles_oil]

Aluminium - though that is the measure of quantity of responses I am not sure that is the best indicator for the quality of the thread (or even level of engagement) - it may encourage too many off-topic posts or multiple (almost) identical posts - extra weather maps / speculation etc.

[kassy]

I think views would be more sensible?

If you could make a list of those it would be interesting to compare.

[crandles]

Viewed and liked also available:

Top 10 Topics (by Views)

IJIS 1972681
The 2015 melting season 1667313
The 2016 melting season 1513394
Home brew AMSR2 extent & area calculation 1393843
The 2014 Melting Season 1317171
The 2019 melting season 1142400
The 2017 melting season 1140702
Latest PIOMAS update (September 2019, mid-monthly update) 1032828
The 2016/2017 freezing season 963882
Jakobshavn Isbræ / Ilulissat Isfjord / West Greenland 788293

Top 10 Liked Topics

The 2019 melting season 3821
The 2018 melting season 1555
2019 sea ice area and extent data 1062
Ice Apocalypse - MULTIPLE METERS SEA LEVEL RISE (narrated video) 697
2018 sea ice area and extent data 694
Latest PIOMAS update (September 2019, mid-monthly update) 622
The 2018/2019 freezing season 512
When will the Arctic Go Ice Free? 500
Hurricane Season 2019 341
Arctic Image of the Day 331

Top 10 Topics (by Replies)

The 2019 melting season 6745
Cars, cars and more cars. And trucks, and.... 6723
The Trump Presidency 5630
Russia, Russia, Russia 5056
IJIS 5053
The 2016 melting season 4869
The 2017 melting season 4149
The 2015 melting season 4092
Renewable Energy 4017
Tesla glory/failure 3650

[kassy]

Thanks. I went to take a look at the IJIS thread. That covers 2013 to 2016 sort of and there after it became yearly extent threads which is a good call because browsing through those long threads always is a PITA.

Home brew and PIOMAS update are also multiyear (but nicely regular).

Winning freeze season so far 2016/2017.

Crandles if you have the longer list what numbers did the 2018/2019 freeze season do?

That is for views. I don´t think that the other measures are that useful.

No likes for IJIS or pre 2017 season threads so they were not around then probably.
Also 2019 is rather the outlier.
Or maybe likes are just in vogue this year.

[crandles]

   
The 2018 melting season : 3488 Replies 523420 Views 1555 Likes

The 2018/2019 freezing season : 1210 Replies 230676 Views / 512 Likes
   
The 2017/2018 freezing season : 1483 Replies 289213 Views / 0 Likes

Where not in top 10, I don't know the position. Guess someone could compile a longer table(s) if they really wanted but sorry I can't see it being worth the effort.

[Neven]

The fact that daily pageviews went down after the minimum was called, may be an argument that it's not just bots inflating the numbers, or that at least the boost is related to general interest in Arctic sea ice.

[blumenkraft]

Interesting!

[charles_oil]

Aren't the "likes" for individuals doing exceptional posts - probably posts above and beyond the "normal" ?  We cant see the likes related to each post I dont think
Think they were only introduced in 2018 too ....   


If we all did a "like" for each time a set of graphs or statistics is posted for example they would soon add up but not sure they would mean as much imho.

[kassy]

Well climate in general and also the Arctic are quite a hot topic this year so it makes sense that more people are looking for information.

Big thanks for the numbers crandles!
Position is not really interesting.

[blumenkraft]

Aren't the "likes" for individuals doing exceptional posts

Why exceptional Charles?

Honestly curious to hear how you define exceptional because in my understanding it would mean you can only like a post a few times a year - or even less. That way a great contributor like Gerontocrat wouldn't ever get one which seems unfair to me.

We can proceed in the forum decorum thread if you like.

[charles_oil]

Don't mind - I was interested in the philosophy - personally I like all of the "data" posts - but I only do a "Like" for a particularly insightful comment /post (which could be embedded in the data post - or a separate one on that thread or elsewhere) - I guess its up to everyone to decide.   


I can't see / dont know if a particular post has been liked - that would soon bump the numbers up & probably skew things, and there is a certain irony in "Liking" a report of say a fall of 100k in sea ice area.  Its usually easer to make the decision in the Arctic Sea Ice Images section!


Facebook goes a bit mad with "likes" so very happy not to go down that route! 

[nanning]

I see them 'likes' as imaginary beautiful flowers to give away for free. There's no end to those flowers, they just keep on coming .

[gerontocrat]

Aren't the "likes" for individuals doing exceptional posts

Why exceptional Charles?

Honestly curious to hear how you define exceptional because in my understanding it would mean you can only like a post a few times a year - or even less. That way a great contributor like Gerontocrat wouldn't ever get one which seems unfair to me.

We can proceed in the forum decorum thread if you like.

I think the reason I get lots of like is simply because most of my posts contain lots of data.

People like data.

[blumenkraft]

I like data too.

But i like your post because you are so consistent, reliable, and oftentimes very wise.

[Steven]

Curious fact:  in the month of December 2022, there were 2578 new comments posted on this forum, which is more than for any other month of 2022.  This makes 2022 the only year for which the peak month was outside May-Aug.  And January 2023 is on track to have more comments than December.

It's probably related to the weak melt season in the Arctic last summer, and maybe also to the strong melting of Antarctic sea ice currently.  But the vast majority of comments on this forum are in the non-cryosphere threads...

[kassy]

Car talk probably makes up a lot of that and the war thread is good for comments too.

Antarctica is interesting but it is cryosphere. Of course when the forum started that was shortly after  2012 so a lot of people were trying to figure out how soon it would all go down. After it all settled down to a slower transition less people commented on it.

[etienne]

The War thread as already 56 pages and it only started in April 2021. 2,6 Pages per month

Tesla Glory and Failure 184 pages and it started in September 2018. 3,5 Page per month.

I don't know what the rule is, to open a new page.

[SteveMDFP]

The War thread as already 56 pages and it only started in April 2021. 2,6 Pages per month

Tesla Glory and Failure 184 pages and it started in September 2018. 3,5 Page per month.

I don't know what the rule is, to open a new page.

When in doubt, ask the moderator of that section before starting one.

ASIF has many, many abandoned threads.  Better to resurrect an old one than to start a redundant new onw.

Unfortunately, the built-in  search function seems to be utter rubbish.  Better to use a focused Google search like:
[search term] site:forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/

I'm mystified as to why this works so well, as one generally needs a userid/password to see any of what Google has indexed on this site.

[oren]

A. I think etienne was referring to pages, not threads. I believe each page is 50 messages, though a user can change this in forum settings if I am not mistaken. New pages are added automatically when more messages are added.
B. I believe it is possible to read the ASIF with no user password and I think many do it. Only to post (or to "Like") one needs to register.
C. Hello to all you lurkers out there!

[Darvince]

I have, after four dark and cold years, updated the data on the spreadsheet up to yesterday. I mostly have become a lurker on these boards, but I am still reading many topics, although especially avoiding the topics where political nonsense breaks out.

The years after 2020 became less active, but also the forum seemed to become much more intelligent, with users making many fewer pointless posts in important topics, so overall it was a huge improvement to my experience as a reader. Next post will contain screenshots of a few charts from the Google sheet, which was also updated.

And unrelated, but happy tenth birthday to the forum!

[Darvince]

1) Daily posts, as a scatter plot bc there are over 3,000 individual days now
2) Forum viewership. A good rule of thumb that used to be true is that 50% of all internet activity is bots, so 50% of views on average are probably bots, which can explain away almost every random spike.
3) Views per post, it's a moving average, so it should tend to increase over time
4) Topic size chart. The moving average shot up to infinity because no one has created a topic in nearly a month, so the recent days are censored

Google docs is quite laggy and unstable with this many rows, so I will probably move it to excel/libreoffice calc with my next update.

[oren]

Great stats, thanks Darvince.

[Neven]

And unrelated, but happy tenth birthday to the forum!

10 years, eh? How time flies!

Thanks for the charts, Darvince!