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[grumpy]

For those of you who were part of the old PleoWorld forums, this will seem like the return of an old friend.  For those newer members, this will be a new daily treat.   What I'm talking about is the Dino Bones Pleodustrial Average.

Out int the "real world" there's this ridiculous concept called the "stock market" where people ruin their lives and squander their fortunes gambling on the popularity of other people's businesses.  Well, it's not fair that our pleos can't do the same.  So, off in that wonderful land of Weedovia, some pleos got together to start their own stock market.  But since no one would invest in Grumpy's business and everyone knows that as long as Bob's around Fred's business will always thrive, where's the challange?  And besides that, pleos don't use money.

But wait!  What's the one thing all pleos wonder about, and that people are always wanting to know?  The answer is simple!  The overall level of interest in pleos!  And where better to find out than by looking right here at these forums!  So, all that those curious little green guys and gals had to do is examine the details right here as to what we humans are doing, and they came up with the answer.  Thus, the Dino Bones Pleodustrial Average (or DBPA) was born.  This "market" doesn't track silly old stocks, it uses various indicies from the forums to keep up with the rise and fall of human interest in pleos.   We restarted tracking these values at the first of the year, but once we get going, this chart will graph the latest 3 months worth of activity.

The DBPA is composed of eight indicies:

• AMI - Active Member Index: The number of members that are "active"; that is, have visited the forums today.  Logically, the more members that visit the forum, the more interest they have in pleo.
• AMR - Active Member Ratio: The percentage of members that are "active".  Some members come to the forums every day, others occasionally, and alas some join but never come back.  So, if interest is high, more members will be active.  So the higher the percentage of members that are active, the higher the interest must be.
• NEW - New Member Count: The number of new members that joined on this day.  That is, the more guests that see a reason to join, the more interest there must be in pleo.
• AGC - Average Guest Count: The average number of guests online at any hour of the day.  The more guests we have visiting, the more interest.
• GMR - Guest to Member Ratio: The Ratio of the average number of guests online on a given day compared to the average number of members.  Member activity is good, but members obviously have an interest.  But guests indicate outside interest.  So the more guests per member we have, the higher the outside interest must  be.
• PTR - Posts to Topic Ratio: The average number of posts per topic.  The logic here is, if people reply to a topic, they must have some interest.  So, the more posts per topic, the more interest there must be.
• PAR - Posts to Active member Ratio: The average number of posts made today per active member.  If people are visiting and not posting, then there isn't enough interest to get  involved.  If they visit AND post post, they must have some interest in what's going on.
• PCF - Post Count Factor: The number of posts over or under the average and the number of new topics started.  People post every day, but if they are posting more than normal, interest must be going up.  And when interest is down, people post less.

[Crewella]

Ooooh, I LIKE that! 

Will we be able to view the results over a longer period? 

*Or should I not have asked that!  *

[mweed]

This chart will post yesterday's details and the graph will reflect the last 3 months worth.  The "Explanation" page (http://bobthepleo.com/forums/index.php?page=dbpa) linked off of the home page has little graphs for each of the eight indicies and will show you a 60 day history.  Right now that's all we've got.  I basically just restored what we used to have on PleoWorld.  All the data will be saved going forward, so a year from now we could create some charts and graphs if we want to.   We'll just have to see how the "interest" goes! 

[RedwoodsMama]

 Sounds really interesting and great grumpy.  wonder how much stock I have and if Pleo Rb is a part of the New stock or not? I am not familiar with the old graph, so this will provide some interesting reading...wish the real Stock Market was this intersting.( at least to me... )
                                                   RedwoodsMama

[Crewella]

Ooooh!  That's even fabbier - I do  love a nice clear graph!  Thanks mweed (and grumpy)! 

[fancyfont]

Always enjoyed the DBPA before. Thank you for bringing it back Mike!

[fancyfont]

What is the high peak on DBPA?

[Wicked_Lovely]

Oooh, this seems so cool! O.O I've never been interested in graphs before, but this is a PLEO graph, so I'll definitely tune in ! Thanks, hard working admins! ^^ 

[Crewella]

Check the stats at the bottom of the forum page - the most guests online ever was 240 something for months ...... it suddenly shot past the 600 mark at the very end of January!! 

Mweed (or Grumpy) will explain it far better than I can, I'm sure.  

[grumpy]

AS Crewella said, Up until the end of January, our record for the number of guests online was 241.  We normally run around 70 guests in a given hour.  The 241 wasn't real guests, it was due to a flood of search engine robots analyzing the site.  The forum is set up to allow robots to search the site because we want all the search engine visibility we can get.   Last month we had a really big flood . . . 629 guests!   Well, google is smart enough to know the visitors aren't real, it reports we had pretty much the same activity of live people that day, but the server software doesn't know the difference.  So, now we have a new record showing . . . 

But on the other hand, we seem to have had a continuing higher than average flow of actual visitors.  Not in the 600+ level, but in the 80-100 level, along with some more member activity as well . . . The odd thing is, when I checked the logs, a higher than average amount of the traffic seems to be coming from the UK . . .

The DBPA is influenced by the number of guests visiting, the number of members spending time here, as well as the number of posts and topics.

So, in the end, the big spike was due to a surge in search engine activity, but it seemed to coincide with an actual increase in user activity.

[fancyfont]

Thank you for the information!