Re: User Estimates

[Holly Arrow]

Averaging these numbers seems odd -- why average the number of
unique posters PER WEEK (?) with the number of people on swarm-support?  

I think you need to define what you mean as the user community (who
counts as a "user"?), and partition it into different levels of membership
status represented by swarm-support, downloading 1.0, and
going to SwarmFest.  

Thinking of core and periphery makes more sense, with fuzzy boundaries
between core & periphery and between periphery and non-community.

The 258 people who downloaded 1.0 should all be counted as part of
the community in some sense, as should everyone subscribing to
swarm-support, even if they don't have the program up and
running yet (like me).  If you can cross reference those two lists and
delete duplicates, I'd say that's a good fuzzy estimate of the
total moderately-involved community (maybe around 300?).  You could go out
one more level and include non-redundant members of swarm-announce for a
larger number (closer to 400 maybe?).

You probably want an estimate of people who are ACTIVELY using swarm right
now. Anyone who has posted a bug or help message probably qualifies -- but
you need to look at the archive, not just take a week's sample of posts to
swarm-support.  Six months would be a more reasonable sample, since
working on swarm projects probably waxes and wanes for many active users
depending on their other commitments. 

Hits on the web page are probably not a very useful indicator of community
membership.  Downloading & joining swarm support are both good indicators
of peripheral membership (at least) because they show active involvment
rather than just browsing a web page; posting bug and help questions is an
indicator of fuller involvement, since you need to be actively
installing or running to encounter technical problems; going to SwarmFest
represents core membership.  

I agree with using some multiplier of SwarmFest attendance to count people
who are equally involved but couldn't afford the time/money or had a
scheduling conflict.  

Thinking of how many conferences I actually attend versus how many I
would attend if time/money/scheduling was no conflict, my rough guess is
to multiply by three, for a total of around 130 core members, with a
periphery of another 200 or so and maybe another 100 hanging out in the
fringes on swarm-announce.

That's my 2 cents as a social psychologist and self-declared peripheral
member hoping to move toward the core when I have time this summer ...

Holly A.


> Hey guys, 
> 
> Here's my small effort at estimating our user community.
> Please correct my math and let me know if anybody has
> any clever ideas about how to get a good estimate.
> 
> 
>  17 posts to swarm-support from unique posters/week
>               => minimum of 17 active users
> 
>  44 attendees at SwarmFest
>  92 release.html web page hits last week
> 160 members of swarm-support
> 258 downloads of swarm-1.0.? by unique users since release of 1.0
> 
>               => upper bound of ~114 active users
>                  (statistic average (17+44+92+160+258)/5 = 114.2)
> 
> 
> glen
> p.s. There are 377 members of swarm-announce.
> 
> -- 
> +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> |glen e. p. ropella (address@hidden) |                                  |
> |Hive Drone, SFI Swarm Project         |            Hail Eris!            |
> |http://www.trail.com/~gepr/home.html  |                                  |
> +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> 

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Holly Arrow, Assistant Professor   address@hidden
                           
Department of Psychology  &  Center for Social Cognition & Decision Making
1227 University of Oregon               at the 
Eugene OR 97403              Institute for Cognitive and Decision Sciences
Phone: (541) 346-1996        University of Oregon 
FAX: (541) 346-4911          FAX: (541) 346-4914
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