Hi all
Martin O. mentioned some of the fragilities of electronic communities. The
Xlist development -- on the very coarse quantitative level of messages per
year,unique contributors per year and subscribers per year -- in the
growing phase of the list reflects some of the general growth of the
Internet. The phenomenon that the population of humans has decreased the
last couple of years, while the message population does NOT show a marked
decrease presumably reflects on the one hand the improved access and
facility with email use in academic circles, and on the other hand -- I
don't know. The interest in CHAT has certainly NOT decreased in these
years. Perhaps there is more competition among available electronic fora?
Year subsc's contribs. messages
1988 112 80 367
1989 203 111 690
1990 328 140 952
1991 446 214 1759
1992 560 258 1719
1993 686 275 1797
1994 708 260 1991
1995 565 271 2267
1996 352 247 3300
1997 414 276 3137
1998 374 199 2617
1999 300 181 2908
Figures for contributors and postings are derived from the mailflow as
archived. Subscriber counts are of course a trickier matter, a combination
of available masterlists and extrapolations.
MVH
Eva
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:02:30 PST