The ratio of guests to users

David Ashton | 17/09/2008 - 23:48

Whenever I click on this site there are hundreds of guests logged in and 3-4 members, whereas other sites I frequent the ratio is much much lower, could we ask some of our guests to become members, particularly those who disagree with the views on "techtalk", its been ages since we had a fierce debate about anything, unlike the actor section where they have fierce debates about everything.So don't be a guest,join in.

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Gawd, that's a worrying

Author: Tim Prosser
Date: 18/09/2008 - 02:35

Gawd, that's a worrying thought . . . hundreds of anonymous viewers watching the antics and shenanigans of a small cast of regular characters. Must be like tuning in to the weekly serial!

Soap Opera

Author: Observer (not verified)
Date: 18/09/2008 - 19:39

Best Soap in Town not only is it free, we know most of the players.
Should this site take on a more serious note then I am sure there will be more participants.
I for one will not sign up to have my comments misconstrued, my character questioned and to have any serious discussion degenerate into a mud slinging contest within two to three posts.

Hmm, Observer . . .

Author: Tim Prosser
Date: 18/09/2008 - 22:04

. . . I think you may have misconstrued my jocularity as something more sinister. There's plenty of interesting, rational debate that goes on here without degenerating into attacks on personal character. Please don't assume that you'll be automatically subjected to it if you do decide to sign up - there really are some good people here and you might just make a few new friends!

Cheers!

Just a Small Challenge

Author: Observer (not verified)
Date: 18/09/2008 - 23:49

Explain, if you can, the diatribe regarding B&B et al, show to me that the contributions so far have been reasonable, rational and have contributed to the esteem of this site and I will sign up immediately.

Well cheers to you too,

Author: Tim Prosser
Date: 19/09/2008 - 00:19

Well cheers to you too, Observer. You won't make many new friends by making demands in a confrontationary manner like that. However, yes unfortunately things do get out of hand sometimes because some people just can't help themselves from being confrontationary in their manner. The choice is yours as to whether or not you want to get involved in it. The choice is yours to perhaps add a voice of reason and change the direction of the debate, if you can. The choice is also yours to look at a wide variety of other discussion on the site, where confrontation is not going on and people are being polite and respectful to each other.

Cheer up mate - maybe you're just having a bad day!

You're judging this site

Author: Na
Date: 19/09/2008 - 08:39

You're judging this site based on one thread. That's hardly fair: there are some great discussions on here, from the instructional and informative tech topics, to all the stuff provided in the FAQ. If you want intelligent and reasoned conversation, perhaps you'd best try not to read the reviews section, where people always feel the need to defend and attack.

To judge the thousands of other threads based on one is just as irrational and unreasonable as you accuse others of being.

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There's probably hundreds

Author: Na
Date: 18/09/2008 - 07:01

There's probably hundreds of guests for a very good reason: this site is visited by overseas people. No doubt few of them would actually want to participate in some local bitchfest on an amateur show.

They're probably just browsing the depths that are the old threads.

Also, you're slightly mistaken. Studies show that only a small percentage of people who visit forums actually participate in the conversations; so asking people to join for the sake of joining probably won't work. There's no incentive, and if they wanted to join they'd do so without prompting.

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Various Reasons

Author: Labrug
Date: 18/09/2008 - 09:02

More people just checking auditions/whats on than active members
People who have linked to the site through a random google search - it's amazing how many times www.theatre.asn.au comes up in Google searches
Spam Bots that can attempt to swamp a site with spam, viral attacks, hacking attempts, etc
Guests who are only popping by

Point 3 could account for the high numbers and as Grant could either confirm or deny, such bots are always around.

Absit invidia

Jeff Watkins

Home Page
Yahoo Blog Page

Finding an Agent - ITA

And another one... we have

Author: Na
Date: 18/09/2008 - 11:01

And another one... we have thousands of members; registration does not necessarily make for a more active community. Many people signed up years ago and never came back; some people sign up, post once, and then disappear; some people just post auditions and/or shows but don't actively do anything else (likewise they browse the members list but not much else). It's a small percentage of people who also join and participate.

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On "Blueroom", "Control

Author: David Ashton
Date: 18/09/2008 - 18:57

On "Blueroom", "Control Booth","Alia" and "Lightnetwork", 4 sites I frequent the guest/member ratio is usually 3 or 4 guests per member, on this site it is often 50 or 60 to 1, it just struck me as strange.

Right now it says 247

Author: Na
Date: 18/09/2008 - 19:32

Right now it says 247 guests and 5 users. Again, it's more likely that the google results appear to make this site popular.

After all, a page entitled "Auditions for actors" will entice any number of people from around the world; and most threads don't have a title that is more specific to location, date or whatever.

Besides which I would say that ALIA (the others I never visit so I won't comment on them) is no where near as popular as this for three reasons: ALIA is only for techies, which severely thins out the target audience; ALIA is hardly the first place you go when you're a newbie, and therefore is used more by people who know about it already; and the majority of actively posting people on this site come from WA.

I agree the difference is huge, but hardly surprising. Furthermore as far as I know, the only way you can tell who's reading ALIA is on the forums; there could be 20 times as many people who visit other pages on the site without you knowing about it.

(Another thought: it depends on how the guests 'block' works... does it record people currently visiting the site? No, it probably records the number of people who have visited within, say, the last 10 minutes, and only changes the number when you reload the page... So the number isn't entirely representative anyway)

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So many ideas and questions

Author: Grant Malcolm
Date: 18/09/2008 - 20:46

And some comments of my own...

Na and Jeff are correct that the bulk (89%) of traffic to this website arrives via search engines however, contrary to Na's suggestion, 79% of visits comprising 89% of all traffic is Australian.

Of a total of 667,000 visitors in the last year, 51,000 returned to the site roughly weekly - of these 23,000 visitors made more than 200 return visits in a year!

As Na suggests, the list of who is online is taken from unique visitors in the last ten minutes. In the last year 61,000 visits lasted more than 10 minutes - of these 11,000 visits lasted longer than half an hour.

Within reason, if anyone with a Gmail account would like to confirm these stats for themselves, please let me know and I will be happy to provide access.

In response to our anonymous observer, I do not agree that raising the tone of the site would attract more participants. However, I do believe that improvements to the tone of the site would help attract and retain a larger audience - for this reason, I would regard this as a priority.

As for observer's concerns about misconstrued comments, you've taken an anonymous swipe at a huge group of people with a sweeping generalisation that is as inaccurate as it will be offensive to many. Most people contributing to and frequenting this website recognised a long time ago that character will be judged not by the remarks of others but by your own actions and words. Sign up and show us what you're made of.

Smiling

Cheers
Grant

--
Director, actor and administrator of this website

Interesting... I had

Author: Na
Date: 18/09/2008 - 22:01

Interesting... I had wrongly assumed visitors were coming from overseas Smiling

Nice to learn something new.

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Kudos Grant, Kudos. As

Author: Daniel Kershaw
Date: 18/09/2008 - 21:17

Kudos Grant, Kudos.

As ever, you're the voice of reason.

My Comment

Author: Observer (not verified)
Date: 20/09/2008 - 01:25

To assume I have based my comments on one thread only is alarming, the general content of most threads degenerates. It is my opinion that all comments should be registered.
I will register as soon as it is compulsory. Until then I will not have my views denegrated and pillored.
My last views were lampooned within one post by the administrator. This does not bode well for any continued commentary.

Observer, look, please

Author: Tim Prosser
Date: 20/09/2008 - 01:45

Observer, look, please don't take offence, but if you ever do decide to sign up, do you not think you might lighten up a bit? You know, inject a little friendliness into your tone? Perhaps then people might be a little more accommodating of your views and actually enjoy chatting with you. All this indignation with no time for pleasantries is not doing you any favours, I'm sorry to say - and it's said with the best of intentions.

Best regards,

Tim.

The ratio of guests to users

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