Forum statistics: yearly report

[Hagar Delest]

Again, nothing very new for this 2nd semester 2016.

[John_Ha]

I have just seen the posts about cities.

In Britain it takes no more than a cathedral plus a Queen's speech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City#Disti ... _and_towns

St Davids, the smallest city is the UK, has a population of only 1,841 and, unless things have changed since I last visited it, doesn't even have any traffic lights!

[Hagar Delest]

Still the same trend.
Note that some spammers had not been moved to the banned group, hence the slight spike when I updated their group.

[Hagar Delest]

Last year trend is very similar to previous ones, even if it seems to show a slight slow down.

[RusselB]

I don't know how a reply post simply saying "Thanks. This solved my problem" (or similar) would show versus a new unsolved topic/post.
It seems to me that we might be getting more Thanks posts rather than even more Unsolved posts (even if the topic was solved in one (or more) previous posts.

[John_Ha]

The solved posts looks remarkably low at 39% (30,000 out of 76,000) but it does cover the entire time span.

Is there an accurate figure for the percentage of "started in 2017" topics solved? I cannot read off the figures from the graph accurately enough to calculate it.

Judging by the Writer forum, I would estimate that 80% or more of topics started during 2017 were actually solved. Unfortunately, many posters seem just stop posting without saying it is fixed or marking the thread solved.

I am pretty horrified at the number of spam posts the Mods filter out!

[robleyd]

Compared to some forums (fora?) this is a peaceful oasis of spam free-ness

[Hagar Delest]

Is there an accurate figure for the percentage of "started in 2017" topics solved? I cannot read off the figures from the graph accurately enough to calculate it.

Not that I know of. In fact, the date is just when I take the figures from the forum statistics, no link with the topics creation date. An access to the full database is likely to be needed for advanced searches.
The numbers are: 77282 topics and 29539 solved.
Are counted only those with the tag in the topic title. Of course this is quite conservative since not all are correctly tagged. I try to scan all the topics to spot in the last reply if it can be tagged because often the OP tags his last post and not the first one.

[eremmel]

Would it make sense to let mods and volunteers change/correct the initial posting title to reflect the Solved status is cases that OP just indicated as answered but did not proceed according demands?
It will ask a little discipline from all of us and volunteers need more rights (I'm a volunteer and have edit rights on the Dutch forum, so I sometimes apply the Solved correction).

[Hagar Delest]

Editing the topics to tag them as solved is already a part of the Mods job (see the code of conduct). And it's often done, it can be seen with the reason for edition line at the bottom of the edited [first] post of the topic.
See for example this post.

Some volunteers already click the "Report this post" button \!/ to warn a mod that the topic should be tagged/moved/...

[John_Ha]

Not that I know of. In fact, the date is just when I take the figures from the forum statistics, no link with the topics creation date.

Do you have the graph data because, if so, you could subtract "total number to end of 2017" from "total number to end of 2018" to get the 2017 numbers. Or do you just get the graph image from which it is difficult to read the actual numbers?

[Hagar Delest]

OK, I see what you mean. We can get the exact number of topics opened for each year and the number of solved topics but the later figures could apply on the previous year for some. However, I agree that this should not be very significant. The overall idea is there.
As shown in the main chart, the number of topics is decreasing (red line with primary axis on the left) but the rate of solved topics is increasing (blue line with secondary axis on the right). And quite 50% of the topics are solved!

Note: I started counting the solved topics early 2012 only.

[Hagar Delest]

A mid-year status as usual. No major change.

2018-07-14.png (10.52 KiB) Viewed 47287 times

[Hagar Delest]

Two charts mid year (had not recorded all the figures in January).

No major change at first sight.

Number of topics continues to decrease:

However, the rate of solved topics is increasing. That's good news at least.

[RusselB]

I think part of the reason the percentage of solved topics is increasing is due to more members actually marking the topics as solved, rather than just letting them sit.

[Hagar Delest]

The usual charts.
Topics per year are steadily decreasing, not a really good sign. But not a surprise either.

[RusselB]

A decrease in the number of valid topics, I hope, means that people are actually looking/searching the forums for answers, rather than creating new topics for problems that have been handled more times than we care to count.

[Hagar Delest]

Well, there has always been the "eternal September", meaning that the same topics used to be posted again and again. Not many users bother searching before posting.
So the trend is really a loss of momentum I think.

[RoryOF]

There seems an increasing inability among computer users to search for any solution - I notice this on the OO Forum and also on AskLibreOffice.org. They expect to be given a 1, 2, 3 solution, which can be applied without thought. If this tendency extends to other areas, particularly medical, I think we are all doomed!

[robleyd]

Good thing we're mostly ancient anyway and may not live to see the worst of it

[Hagar Delest]

Status at mid-year.

[Hagar Delest]

The usual charts. Figures taken on Jan. 1st.
Topics created per year are again decreasing (-21%), this time twice the rate of previous years.
The performance for solving topics (59%) has been rather good in 2020! Note that are considered only the topics solved during the year; the global rate is shown in the first chart (40%, green/red lines).

[Villeroy]

Weekly topics have dropped from 300 around 2010 to 60 in 2020.

[Hagar Delest]

Status at mid-year.
No major change. A slight mistake in previous records on the number of solved posts, I counted admin and archive sections (not sure from when). Hence the very poor increase in solved topics (80). With all sections, the figure would have been +217). Not a tremendous score either. But as noticed by Villeroy early this year, topic rate is still very low.

2021-07-01.png (9.23 KiB) Viewed 35597 times

[Hagar Delest]

The usual charts. Figures taken on Jan. 1st.
Topics created per year are again decreasing (-15%), but less than last year however (was -21%).
The performance for solving topics is still improving (61%)! Note that are considered only the topics solved during the year; the global rate is shown in the first chart (still 40%, green/red lines).

[Hagar Delest]

Mid year status.
Fewer and fewer topics...

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[Hagar Delest]

As usual, some metrics.

2023-01-02.png (15.17 KiB) Viewed 18250 times

The most interesting is the following one.
Topics created per year have tremendously decreased (-47%), when number of posts has decreased by 26% only. Thus, less questions but longer discussions. The good news is that most of the new topics were solved.

2023-01-02 - Rates.png (13.43 KiB) Viewed 18250 times

[Hagar Delest]

As usual, some metrics.

2024-01-01.png (25.79 KiB) Viewed 12602 times

It now seems that 2022 figures were flawed. Not sure what happened. A typo of mine I guess.
The good news is that the rate for the solved topics is still rising.
Number of discussions still decreasing. However, many of the newbie questions have been answered and the applications continue to improve thus less bugs.

2024-01-01 - Rates.png (36.49 KiB) Viewed 12602 times