The Lemon Fool

In what state of health is The Lemon Fool? Is it attracting new contributors? Is it in decline? Are people learning from the site? Is it seen as a hospitable forum where people can post freely? Is it becoming more or less moderated? Maybe once a year there could be an annual review providing some metrics along the following lines

Lemon Fools (LF's)
- Number of LF's
- Number of active/super-active LF's (posted at least x/y times in last 12 months)
- Number of LF's with Pips etc
- Number of new LF's (active and inactive)
- Number of dormant/departed LF's (posted last year but not this year)

Posts
- Number of posts

Boards
- Number of boards
- Number of new boards
- Number of retired boards
- Boards which have the highest growth/decline in posts

Moderation
- Number of moderator actions (in absolute terms and as a percentage of posts posted)

Satisfaction
There could be an annual poll of LF's asking questions such as
- How satisfied are you with the LF? very/so so/not very etc
- Do you find the level of dialogue exceeds/meets/falls below your expectations?
- How often have you been offended by another poster? frequently, sometimes, rarely etc
- Is the moderation too heavy/too light?
- If you lurk, what reasons hold you back from contributing? (Drop down options)
Survey questions need careful word-smithing . I haven't taken the trouble to do that here.

For appropriate metrics the trend would ideally be shown year over year and ideally year by year back to inception.

Pendrainllwyn

Just in case you've missed it, you can get a fair number of those figures whenever you want (not just annually) from the Statistics section and the links at the bottom of the site's home page.

Gengulphus

Thank you. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place but those statistics appear to be either done on an "as of right now" or "inception to date" basis. Much easier to gauge health of the site from a time period over time period comparison. That's what any potential investor in TLF or any other enterprise would want to see. Maybe the stats are not periodically archived so comparison with prior periods is not possible.

Pendrainllwyn

I can see a point to reviewing the boards' activity levels... and deleting boards that show little action and just subsuming their alleged renit elsewhere. Similarly any board that is dominated by one topic above anything else probably deserves a board of its own (CF sports board and the hat trick season game thing of which I still have absolutely no idea as to what it is ).

Maybe cull of accounts that have never posted in a year/two years (obvs got a year to run on that still . Though there is the chance some accounts are merely readers and not posters but its not betond the wit of man to devise a way around an opt-in for such potential closures. That said im not sure what that actually acheives - thopugh it may be a better indicator of activity generally than just (last year we had X members, this year we have X+Y. Meangless if Z (being a sizeable chunk of X+Y) never do anything. Perhaps it could be more a case of a cull for those that have not logged in for a year?

didds

didds wrote:I can see a point to reviewing the boards' activity levels... and deleting boards that show little action and just subsuming their alleged renit elsewhere. Similarly any board that is dominated by one topic above anything else probably deserves a board of its own (CF sports board and the hat trick season game thing of which I still have absolutely no idea as to what it is ).

Maybe cull of accounts that have never posted in a year/two years (obvs got a year to run on that still . Though there is the chance some accounts are merely readers and not posters but its not betond the wit of man to devise a way around an opt-in for such potential closures. That said im not sure what that actually acheives - thopugh it may be a better indicator of activity generally than just (last year we had X members, this year we have X+Y. Meangless if Z (being a sizeable chunk of X+Y) never do anything. Perhaps it could be more a case of a cull for those that have not logged in for a year?

didds

There a sizeable amount of users that do not post but are regular readers, aka lurkers. These we must keep and encourage to post by making the forums relevant and not intimidating. IMHO.

Raptor.

Don't disagree with that at all raptor:-)

Maybe then its a case of everyu so often an admin logs everybody out so everybody that is lurking as well as positing has to log in again.

That will flush out those that never even lurk?

All based on the premise that somebody, somewhere actually "cares" about such metrics as active users etc etc.

didds

Every now and then it seems to forget that we have clicked the "remember me" box and we have to log in again. There is probably a cookie that knows when we last visited the site, so that could identify unused usernames.

TJH

I can see that information by clicking on "members" on the footer, not sure if everyone can.

John

No, I can't for one.

TJH

didds wrote:Maybe then its a case of everyu so often an admin logs everybody out so everybody that is lurking as well as positing has to log in again.

That will flush out those that never even lurk?

Everyone gets logged out every now and again (every 3 weeks?) and has to log in again anyway, but you don't need to log in, indeed you don't need an account at all, to read the forums, although there's no doubt that having one makes it vastly more convenient for following what you've read and what you haven't seen yet.

Still, right now the Home page says In total there are 69 users online :: 15 registered, 10 hidden and 44 guests, so the not-logged-in outnumber the logged-in by almost 2-1.

tjh290633 wrote:There is probably a cookie that knows when we last visited the site, so that could identify unused usernames.

FYI, cookies are stored on the user's system but the site does know when you last visited anyway.

redsturgeon wrote:I can see that information by clicking on "members" on the footer, not sure if everyone can.

Not for us mere mortals. Members just shows when users joined, although we can all can get the "Last active" date for individual users by looking at their profile.

If one goes to the Members list and sorts by Posts and then looks through the pages of the list (quickly-ish by playing 20 questions with the start parameter in the URL), one can discover that of the current 3691 members, as of this moment:

1969 (53%) have never posted at all -- memberlist.php?sk=d&sd=a&start=1965 and
2937 (80%) have posted less than 10 posts -- memberlist.php?sk=d&sd=a&start=2930

Sounds like a standard Pareto distribution -- 20% of Lemons make (at least!) 80% of the juice

Much of that info is available to everyone. But only on an all-time basis. You'd have to snapshot the info to get an annual report.

The advertisers of course will have a very good idea of number of site visitors, and number of ad clicks. Google ads tracks such things, and makes them available to the site owners. And pays accordingly. An investment site by definition attracts mainly affluent people, so should have little trouble generating ad traffic.

The site logs every visit you make. Click on your name and it will tell you your last visit. Of course, it cannot track users who are not logged in. But the advertisers don't really care about that. Only total traffic.

As long as there is a healthy posting community, I doubt the site's owners are too concerned about actual numbers. AFAIK they are not interested in becoming rich or world famous (or maybe they already are, stooz is in the dictionary ). Only in providing a useful resource. Preferably at no cost to their own pocket.

didds wrote:Maybe then its a case of every so often an admin logs everybody out so everybody that is lurking as well as positing has to log in again.

You don't have to log in to lurk. You can read the entire site as a guest without a userid. At the moment 27 registered and 46 guest users. No idea how many of the guests actually possess a login but haven't bothered.

Gryff

mc2fool wrote:If one goes to the Members list and sorts by Posts and then looks through the pages of the list (quickly-ish by playing 20 questions with the start parameter in the URL)...

And if one does the same with Joined then one discovers that of the current 3691 members, as of this moment:

1946 (53%) joined on or before 31-Dec-2016 -- memberlist.php?sk=c&sd=a&start=1940 and
3252 (88%) joined on or before 31-Dec-2017 -- memberlist.php?sk=c&sd=a&start=3250 -- i.e. +1306 (35%) during 2017

And so 439 (12%) joined this year

(The site opened on 4-Nov-2016)

Pendrainllwyn wrote:In what state of health is The Lemon Fool? Is it attracting new contributors? Is it in decline? Are people learning from the site? Is it seen as a hospitable forum where people can post freely? Is it becoming more or less moderated? Maybe once a year there could be an annual review providing some metrics along the following lines

Pendrainllwyn

Why ? Two volunteers started this site to fill the void left by TMF. Surely any detailed analysis of the site traffic/ad revenues is their concern.

As an end user (who tolerates ads and hasn't donated), if I continue to find interesting, informative, thought provoking content, then I'll keeping visiting.

Someone set up a board called the Biscuit Bar and wrote "Pull up a chair, have a biscuit - discuss the site and general questions about the LemonFool." That looked like an invitation to me. I like the site, I enjoyed reading Dod's posts and was sorry to see him go. I agree it's their concern and they are quite welcome to ignore my suggestion should they wish.

Pendrainllwyn

mc2fool wrote:… although we can all can get the "Last active" date for individual users by looking at their profile. ...

Can you?:

memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=259

Some of us have changed the settings.

mrbrightside wrote:

Moderator Message:
Please don't post bare links with no explanation.

But it is quite interesting. So, FYI, this shows some externally monitored site traffic info for LemonFool.
Gryffron

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lemonfool.co.uk

"This site's metrics are estimated

Not all websites implement our on-site analytics and publish the results. For these sites, we show estimated metrics based on traffic patterns across the web as a whole. We identify these patterns by looking at the activity of millions of web users throughout the world, and using data normalization to correct for any biases."

I am especially bemused by their search statistics, which have the top three searches leading to TLF all being "small/est/er oled tv" and numbers 4 & 5 being "abp keeps crashing" and "duracell battery charger lights meaning". And, indeed, if one google those phrases one gets TLF pages in the results, but, really, that's the top 5? Nothing about investing or finance....bizarre!

PinkDalek wrote:

mc2fool wrote:… although we can all can get the "Last active" date for individual users by looking at their profile. ...

Can you?:

memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=259

Some of us have changed the settings.

Ah, oh yeah, I did too! Forgot about that

redsturgeon wrote:I can see that information by clicking on "members" on the footer, not sure if everyone can

"Members" is available to me at the foot and also via the Quick links drop down. Might not be so easy or visible on a smartphone. Even so, I'm unsure what information you are saying is available via that route.

Via the Footer and Quick links I see Username - Rank - Posts - Joined - all sortable.

Do "Global Moderators" see more than those four headers?

PinkDalek wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:I can see that information by clicking on "members" on the footer, not sure if everyone can

"Members" is available to me at the foot and also via the Quick links drop down. Might not be so easy or visible on a smartphone. Even so, I'm unsure what information you are saying is available via that route.

Via the Footer and Quick links I see Username - Rank - Posts - Joined - all sortable.

Do "Global Moderators" see more than those four headers?

Yes, I also see "last active".

John