Forum statistics

[Eastman]

Does anyone ever look at the forum statistics?  http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?action=stats  In light of all the discussion on the health of the format and all that biz, I think they are sort of interesting.  It would help in reading this thread if you familiarized yourself with them or had them to compare to what I'm saying.  It would also help if, if looking at data like this is boring to you, you just move on and skip this thread (you have been forewarned). 

0. A Threshold Point

As a first matter, I'd note that the June restrictions didn't seem to have any kind of destructive effect on participation in the boards.  But those kind of stats are too easy.. I have a more bizarre item to talk about, which follows:


1.  Membership Rates: A Drastic Increase

I wanted to ask about/discuss one particular item in the statistics: the explosive growth in the rate of new members to the forum in the last few months. 

In short: the forum has, for the last several years, averaged maybe about 150 or so new members per month.  This had previously peaked at 385 in December 2006, and had dwindled to only about 70 or so per month throughout 2008. 

but then in November '08, it spiked to 440, followed by an insane 849 in December '08, and we're already to 455 this month (January '09). 

NOW, let me point out that you can't be sure if this means there is an increased outside interest in the boards.  It could be spammers or something accounting for the increase, or who knows what else.  That's part of why I'm making this thread, because I think the numbers are interesting and I'd like to figure out what is going on. 


2.  Pinning the Date of Change

You can actually dig into the statistics and get daily stats.  This is where it gets really interesting....
For most of 2008, the forums had been getting 0-5 or so new members per day.  The average looks to have been about 3, and the peak was a single instance of 8 new members in a single day, going back through September.

On November 9th, there were 4 new members.

THEN whatever caused this monthly spike occurred. 

On November 10th, there were 12 new members.
On November 11th, there were 24 new members.
On November 12th, ................17
On November 13th, ................27

And the forum has averaged about 20 new members (more than 5 times the previous average) on a daily basis every day since November 10th.

So we can conclude that something happened on November 10th or 11th that drastically changed the rate new people are signing up for the forum.   


3. Guessing at Causes

This is where you all might come in.  I would LOVE to hear speculation on what happened that cause that change.  Now I can jump ahead and note that Steve's Sept/Oct metagame breakdown: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/16674_So_Many_Insane_Plays_Whats_Winning_in_VintageThe_SeptemberOctober_Vintage_Metagame_Report.html was published on November 10th.  That article did report on a very fun/health meta, but that explanation doesn't account for the fact that the increased rate has remained through at least today. 

So what happened - is it spammers? A Bot?  Did we start showing up in Google searches?  Did we get a large number of 'Diggs'?   I think it is tremendously curious.


4.  Curious Lack of Analogous Changes

Something else makes this change seem all the more strange to me: the "New Posts", "New Topics", and "Most Online" numbers haven't changed a bit.  Most explanations that I can come up with for the change in "New Members" would predict analogous changes in, at the very least, the "Most Online" numbers, but that isn't borne out in the statistics.  What in all getout is going on with this! ?!


Anyway, apologies to those of you who find this incredibly boring, and for the rest of you I hope you find it interesting and are able to offer some insight. 

[Demonic Attorney]

I have three bits of conjecture to add.  First, there's been an approximately threefold increase in the number of spambots I've had to deal with on TMD recently, so that might have played some minor role in the uptick in registrations.  Second, I make a point of asking my tournament opponents if they use TMD, in part to feel out what kind of decks/lines of play to expect from them, and in part to judge the relative penetration of TMD into Vintage.  The most frequent response is, "I read but don't post."  An increase in registration activity, but not posts, would be consistent with this usage model of TMD. 

The other bit I wanted to add, at the risk of speaking too soon, is that very early 2009 seems to have brought something of a resurgence in Vintage lately.  People who'd been absent from the format for months, or in some cases years, made their return.  Taking a statistically invalid sample, Myriad Games got a turnout that was approximately twice as high as any of their other events in recent history.

[Eastman]

I have three bits of conjecture to add.  First, there's been an approximately threefold increase in the number of spambots I've had to deal with on TMD recently

Do you have a sense of the actual number of spambots?  If you did we could account for it. 

The most frequent response is, "I read but don't post."  An increase in registration activity, but not posts, would be consistent with this usage model of TMD.

I agree, that may be the explanation.  We've all seen threads with 10,000+ views but only a hundred or so replies. 

[LotusHead]

  Second, I make a point of asking my tournament opponents if they use TMD, in part to feel out what kind of decks/lines of play to expect from them, and in part to judge the relative penetration of TMD into Vintage.  The most frequent response is, "I read but don't post."  An increase in registration activity, but not posts, would be consistent with this usage model of TMD. 

There are many NorCal Vintage players who read TMD but don't post. I wouldn't even know what their user name is.  Poster's are rare in my meta (for a long time, I was was of two or three I knew of).  But at one point, many of the players would get lists off SCG from their power nine events.  Those have dried up as of late, and maybe the finally decided to look into TMD for their fix.  Also, in the last year, many MWS players put SCG and/or TMD in their game invite to get better players.  (that hasn't worked much for me, so I've dropped it myself), but that could be an additional influx of newer useres who got their asses wiped on MWS.

Interesting thread!

[Purple Hat]

Does anyone know when SCG started linking TMD in the vintage section of their homepage above the SCG vintage forums?  Also the SCG deck database doesn't work for vintage.  I would guess, with no actual information, that this might be a cause.

[chrissss]

The reason I am back is because I got fed up with my other game.

Also I noticed TMD is very active compared to other magic forums, I think more and more forum members interested in magic will join TMD because of activity.

And I really don't think people would join to spam, its extremely hard to spam compared to lets say steampowered forums. Here one wrong word will get you a tripple warning, on forums I used to post you can pretty much spam all day without having a single warning. It's better without all the spam, so you don't have to go though so many posts reading bs. Though I still think I post too much, I am working on Quality > quantity.

"I read but don't post."

I know a few people who read the articles, deck breakdowns, etc, but who never ever post. Some people dislike forum posting, some people don't feel confidant enough to post and others don't have english as a first language, which means they can usually read it, but writing would be harder.