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Re: INFO : Stats for SRH Postings in 1996
In article <4shpf4$bno@babbage.ece.uc.edu>,
Global Hindu Electronic Network <ghen@netcom.com> wrote:
>Indeed. Here they are
>
>About 27 weeks and 145 sets of postings. Avg. # of postings per week
>5.37
Now, the question is how were these stats determined, especially since
the archives which are advertised on this group _don't_ have the
necessary information to gather this data?
>Of course, now we have to be prepared for a couple of dozen posts
>disputing these stats, but then we all have, by now learnt the use of
>"Skip" and "Next" key, if not the use of kill files.
It makes me wonder how the information that has been provided has been
obtained. Note that the stats page I produced shows very clearly how
the data was obtained. The stats which have been provided for 1996 do
not. Where did this data come from, and how can it be independently
verified? I provided detailed answers to both of these questions in my
stats page, and I would expect that anyone who has nothing to hide should
be willing to provide the same.
Here's what I said in another post on this topic:
All of the archives this year have been _mail_ archives, not _news_
archives. In fact, I downloaded them all last night just to prove it.
Here's a sample of what the date information in the "new" archives
look like:
<em>Date</em>: 18 Mar 1996 02:28:37 GMT
<em>Date</em>: 18 Mar 1996 03:58:20 GMT
<em>Date</em>: 18 Mar 1996 11:45:15 -0500
<em>Date</em>: 18 Mar 1996 12:10:41 -0600
<em>Date</em>: 18 Mar 1996 18:48:32 GMT
Notice that there are at least 3 different formats for a single day,
and notice that the times aren't in any sort of batched order. It's
clear that this is because the archive is a _mail_ archive, as the
alt.hindu archives used to be.
Compare this to a sample taken from the 1995 SRH archives:
<em>Date</em>: 6 Nov 1995 01:37:27 GMT
<em>Date</em>: 6 Nov 1995 01:37:29 GMT
<em>Date</em>: 6 Nov 1995 01:37:29 GMT
<em>Date</em>: 6 Nov 1995 01:37:30 GMT
<em>Date</em>: 6 Nov 1995 01:37:31 GMT
<em>Date</em>: 6 Nov 1995 01:37:32 GMT
Notice that the articles have dates within seconds of each other. This
is from the batch posting style, and could not have been generated
from mail archives. In other words, these are _news_ archives.
The article I had posted explained the difference.
It should be obvious why the new 1996 archives don't lend themselves
to extraction of the same information. In fact, those archives were
unavailable to us mere mortals for a very long time, despite my
repeatedly pointing out this fact. Why did you not speak up then?
-Vivek
