MetaFilter

Metafilter Usage Graphs 2018-2021

Those are only for the blue. Comments in projects don’t count. :-)
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 3:00 PM on September 13, 2021

No, unfortunately they were the victims of an overenthusiastic cleanup effort.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 8:53 PM on September 13, 2021

Ah, the wayback machine does have them.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 8:57 PM on September 13, 2021

Second though has to be context.

I've done these periodically over the years. I stay strictly to numbers. Why things happen or what should be done about them is definitely not in my purview.

Seems bad.

Yeah. There were a bunch of other graphs I was going to make but the data so far just reflects a continuation of the 2010-2019 slide. It's dispiriting.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 11:21 AM on September 14, 2021

There's the option on the front page to hide American political posts. You may have hit that in which case you definitely wouldn't notice the uptick.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 9:12 PM on September 14, 2021

Okay, I added that although I made the assumption that you meant average unique commenters and not posters. I can do posters instead if you like.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 6:44 PM on September 18, 2021

Okay, I've added unique posters per week. I put total posts on there too for comparison.

I'm surprised at how many different people post. I would have guessed it would have been 20% of the people providing 80% of the posts but it's not even close to that.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 7:37 PM on September 19, 2021

I added a graph of the new users per day.

Given that the site only sees about one new user per day I'm not sure that much can be gleaned from charting their behaviour. For example, I'm certain that some are accounts created by existing users for asking semi-anonymous AskMe questions. Others may be stunt accounts.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 7:31 PM on September 21, 2021

You’re welcome.

New user == new account created
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 9:06 PM on September 30, 2021

I added a graph of the account age of users who have commented after September 1st, 2021.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 2:35 PM on November 28, 2021

Metafilter Usage 2010-2019

I'm guessing that you're estimating last active date from the most recent comment in the Info Dump per userid?

Yes.

I'd bet that the spike this spring is (mostly) due to recency bias and goes away if you drop userid that have had a longer 'hiatus' than the one they're currently on. This is because a naive parser would see ever user who posts today as having their last post today (by definition) and, therefore, a huge… [more]
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 10:07 AM on June 30, 2019

Wow. 4247 users *average* 90 day gaps, and 13081 users (of the 20974 active between 2010-2019) have had gaps over 90 days in length. I think you're right, your algorithm will smooth out the end of the Last Seen graph nicely.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 10:57 AM on June 30, 2019

The new method yields a significantly different graph -- it stays even at 5 from 2010-2014 and then does a linear decline from 2014-2019. This also seems sort of artifact-y to me but I can't put my finger one why. Declaring everyone who's gone a year without posting as having left makes for a flat graph.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 12:31 PM on June 30, 2019

I’m glad you enjoyed them.

Unfortunately the readership numbers aren’t published, although I imagine they are followed pretty closely as serving ads is where Metafilter makes its money. Hopefully readership has not seen the same slide as membership.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 11:25 PM on July 7, 2019

I don't know if I'll get to the posts per day, but the unique commenters per day has continued to drop. I added a graph at the end of the page.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 12:59 PM on February 9, 2020

I added a posts per day for 2019 graph to the end of the page.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Tell Me No Lies at 1:20 PM on February 9, 2020