Archinect
anchor

Taking a Poll

Carrera

I have asked but Archinect isn’t talking…how many people per day do you suppose are reading-in to this Forum? Also, how would that number break-down?

  1. Students
  2. Professionals under 35
  3. Professionals over 35
  4. Firm principals

I don’t have any idea myself but am very curious of what you think.

 
Aug 21, 14 8:57 am
Non Sequitur

Poll? I am sure I've seen a similar thread some time ago.

I think you need a few more categories to your poll

  • Contractors/Homeowners looking for free services
  • Lazy students looking for free CAD files and/or thesis topics
  • Lazy potential students asking about Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc admissions
  • Non-Designers looking to start flamewars
  • Spam bots

I sit in your 2nd category as a licensed professional under 35... although I may soon cross that line into category 3... I've only been commenting since 2010 but I did lurk in the background for several years prior to that.

Aug 21, 14 10:34 am  · 
 · 
curtkram

the forum is open to the public.  people can be reading without having accounts, so from what i can tell, carrera is sort of asking how many lurkers are out there, in addition to active accounts and posters and such.

i'd be curious if more people are reading the news sections, the forums, or employment section.

although I may soon cross that line into category 3

good luck on the cross-over.  i made the leap from category 2 to 3.

Aug 21, 14 10:40 am  · 
 · 
x-jla

I'm in category 2 but 3 is just around the corner. 

Aug 21, 14 11:11 am  · 
 · 
Carrera

Yes curtkram is correct, it’s statistical. It’s obvious – post a question - get a response. But who/how-many are listening? Who is the audience? I am driving at making it more interesting. How can it be more interesting if those creating threads don’t know who they are talking to (generally)? I know it’s generally architects but at what level? The fact that Quondam and others are finding it “less interesting” reinforces the need to know this.

Let’s expand. Quondam and others, based on your knowledge of audience what topics/direction would be more interesting?

Aug 21, 14 11:31 am  · 
 · 
Non Sequitur

Carrera, one topic I remember that attracted a great deal of interest was on the subject of exterior insulation at the foundation level. I followed the discussion without adding much. Perhaps someone involved can link the specific thread.

I find topics with technical questions tend to attract decent discussion because it weeds out the tourists. But I see the local crowd here composed of students and designers, not exclusively licensed architects practising for 10+ years therefore topics like the only I mention are not common.

Curt, thanks for the encouragement.

Aug 21, 14 11:42 am  · 
 · 
x intern

I would be category 3.  Lurked for years but typically didn't have time to do more than look every once in a while.  I would imagine this is typical as projects ebb and flow and people have lulls that allow them to spend time on the internet that is less productive than product searches and trying to figure out software issues.       

Aug 21, 14 11:45 am  · 
 · 

Technical threads are always interesting, especially when they feature obscure problems.

Professional practice threads are interesting when they are NOT about student fantasies or interoffice politics.

Sustainability should be the hottest topic but in actuality it is the least active.

Non Sequitur: Base of walls questions ...

Aug 21, 14 1:02 pm  · 
 · 
CD.Arch
I am a high school student, here to learn more, so I guess I fit none of those categories as "student" isn't very specific. I lurked for a couple months before signing on and I check in several times a day through my iPhone. It's a time passer.
Aug 21, 14 1:18 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

Quondam, you state precisely the point. There are many on here including you that may have interesting topics but don’t find interesting dialog in return and stop posting. I think if we had a broader knowledge of who is listening we could better select topics that would get more interesting returns. I have what I think is an interesting Professional Practice topic but am hesitant to post it. If there is no one here that is interested in Professional Practice I may as well just email it to Miles.

I agree with Miles on Sustainability. It took a girl from as far away as the UK to fly-in with some great questions that everyone should know something about. It should be the hottest topic among us all but fell a bit flat. Makes me wonder if anyone is listening.

We may never know the answers to the stated OP, we’ll see, but without it this is a meander.

Aug 21, 14 3:11 pm  · 
 · 
gwharton

i've been in all four of those categories at one time or another.

Aug 21, 14 3:14 pm  · 
 · 
Non Sequitur

Miles, that's the one I was thinking about.

Aug 21, 14 3:16 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

Quondam, I have read your most recent post and appreciate your insight, points well taken. I also contacted Archinect with my questions and got no reply. Taking This-and-That as my answer - I am resolved, so let’s just leave it there.

Thank you to all that contributed – back to meandering.

Aug 21, 14 7:21 pm  · 
 · 

Reading the poll:

  • 1. Students
  • 2. Professionals under 35
  • 3. Professionals over 35
  • 4. Firm principals

Having read the poll categories. I'm going to interpret "professional" in this case to mean both licensed and non-licensed professionals. I'm going to interpret "Firm principals" to mean owning a business with employees and consists of one or more owners. Be it a partnership, LLC, corporation, S Corp, etc.

I'm assuming firms to mean owning a business vs. being an employee. As a sole-proprietor, I am technically a "firm principal" in a technical sense. However, I am assuming the intent to mean something more. At this time, I would not be a principal in that regard as I do not have employees working for me at this time.

I am also #2 but in 2 years, I'll be 35 and technically #3 after my birthday in 2016.

Therefore, with more money and projects, I would be category 4. Partnering with others could help with that but that isn't happening at this time.

In some regards, I am also in category #1 in that I continue to take courses and learn things.

Aug 21, 14 7:52 pm  · 
 · 

Earlier today, I was listening to a continuing education webinar on Wall Bracing.

Aug 21, 14 7:56 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

Richard, your assumptions are correct, Firm Principals are any form of ownership without regard to having employees.

Aug 21, 14 8:01 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

Richard, wall bracing is a good subject but probably a difficult topic. I find it to be a complicated subject.

Once as a kid I did the first big wood frame office building (2 story/10,000 SF) in my town and once framed the owner of the rough framing carpenter said “come over here for a minute”. He was a big guy and he grabbed a hold of the corner of the whole building and moved the whole thing to and fro, I remember “Jesus Christ” being mentioned and the next morning I delivered a truck-load of plywood and created the first interior plywood lined office building in the country….that’s how I learned about wall bracing.

Aug 21, 14 8:22 pm  · 
 · 

Hi Carrera, thanks for your interest, and thanks for your overall great contributions to the discussions on Archinect. Glad to have you on board.

Statistically, only 0.118% of Archinect's readers are active contributors to the discussions. That's only 1 commenter for every 850 readers. I'm not sure how that compares to other similar community platforms, but I think it's safe to say it's probably similar, outside of social networks.

Regarding your questions regarding demographic breakdown, we don't currently have those stats for the forum. What do you think about having an actual poll in the forum to try to collect this info? If you like that idea, I'm open to suggestions on questions to include.

Aug 21, 14 8:51 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

Just for the record/reference the last I checked Reddit listed 47,493 members and had 48 people listening at that moment.

Don’t like Reddit as well. They really watch things, probably too much….responded to a thread about U Mercy in Detroit that I knew something about. Others were chiming in about how Detroit “Sucked Balls” and just 2 others used the later word just once, man they slammed the whole thread down.

Aug 21, 14 8:54 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

WOW! Paul Petrunia! See guys, if you don’t ask you don’t learn!

Thanks Paul for the thoughtful response and complement! The 1 commenter for every 850 readers is an astounding statistic. Only 0.118% of Archinect's readers are active contributors to the discussions? Jesus guys sit up in your chair and put a tie on!

Paul, lets do the survey! I’ll have to sleep on the questions to offer and will get back tomorrow, meanwhile let’s rev this thread back up guys and offer Paul some good ones.

Paul Petrunia responded to my email and offered to do a study? I think I see a twinkle in the sky!

Respect Paul!

Aug 21, 14 9:20 pm  · 
 · 

I wonder how many of those 849 are bots indexing the site.

Aug 21, 14 9:23 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

Miles, I don’t really understand robots indexing but I’m sure Paul does better than most. I’ll add the question to the batch. I would think that it would be a multiplier in some cases. Google is probably the biggest scanner…I’ve found some of the stuff I have written here coming up on random searches on Google. I have also found Archinect Forum Threads on Google when searching for answers to architectural questions…making robot indexing a multiplier.

Quondam, it’s not a direct correlation meaning that if you write something that 850 people are going to read it, it’s a statistical ratio of writers vs. just-readers. Frequency is a different statistic altogether. As I said Reddit has a floating number displayed on their page reporting current occupants with no ratio. I’ll add the frequency question to the batch.

Aug 22, 14 8:56 am  · 
 · 
Carrera

Quondam, that’s it. I think having the “Views” (Hits) back on is productive. Total views I suppose is the sum of the equation but still important is the demographic make-up of the equation. That demographic make-up does not have to be a running equation but a snap-shot periodically may yield better thread offerings and discussions. No worry, things will still meander which is okay with me.

Aug 22, 14 10:34 am  · 
 · 

Carrera,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler

A fairly simple explaination of these bots being referred to. They aren't robots. They are internet bots. Mainly the kind called 'Web crawlers' or also called an automatic indexer.

Do you know that Google search engine has cached copies of websites and pages within a website? So in case the actual site is down, there maybe a cached copy of it inside google's database that people may visit. Now, of course trying to use contact forms on a cached website may or may not function if the real site is down. More often it won't unless a client side script and a third-party service is used. 

The Wikipedia article is accurate enough for a fundamental understanding from a non-IT professional.

Aug 22, 14 11:42 am  · 
 · 
Carrera

Quondam, I suppose the number of “Views” can get semantic but I think it is way more than I thought even with the discounts. It’s not a matter of pride or conquest to an OP but rather it matters as to measuring interest in subjects. It’s a number but it’s demographic at the same time.

I have only been here for 2 months but just in that short time I’ve noticed a lull which brought me to my curiosity.

Will be posting a preliminary list for Paul later this afternoon, please chime-in.

Aug 22, 14 11:45 am  · 
 · 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_indexing

This article is about web indexing.... what the bots do.

So, yes, a number of sum of "guests" and "members" (users with accounts on Archinect) are these bots. These web crawling bots are mostly "guests". The other kind of internet bots that browses the web often seen are spam bots. They are sophisticated in the sense that they are created  to create user accounts and flood forums with spam.

A number of the members are maybe spam bots. 

I suspect that maybe 10% of the users are the bots. A majority of the users on the site will visit the site for information. There are a lot of people who just reads and only posts if they feel they can add something meaningful to the discussion. Usually, just listening.

Sometimes, it helps in some discussions that they ask questions. In fact, some of them do in fact do ask questions. The active users for each day maybe different each day with a certain variable contingency of them that are regularly active and posting every day or nearly every day. A active members yesterday are not the same as those two days ago or 7 days ago. 

It varies. Sometimes, people will read and only login when they making a reply to a discussion.

Aug 22, 14 11:57 am  · 
 · 

1/850 = for each recorded user that posts a comment (not number of comments), there are 850 unique visitors (our analytics excludes bots) viewing the threads in the forum section of archinect (not the discussion index pages). this data is based the most recent month. summer is slowest; early-mid spring is the most busy.

compared to 2010, traffic (page views, unique users) is much higher in the forum today, but i don't have immediately available stats on the commenting volume from 2010. archinect's forum has been around for 15 years, long before any social media sites (including myspace, friendster, etc.). naturally, people have transitioned more "intimate" discussions to their socially curated networks, while archinect has adopted a more industry-wide community that isn't as socially connected as each user's personal community. 

Aug 22, 14 12:02 pm  · 
 · 

Thanks Paul,

So the number doesn't count web crawler bots. It may count spam bots that created user accounts (some do) but I suspect that is a small number. Maybe less than a dozen in a given day or time frame. We usually don't see that many spam bots here that often. Those would likely be in the banned accounts for giving a relative figure in past and a gauge for present. 

I suspect, of the 850 unique visitors, at any one time on any one thread, there is a good chance 90% of all of them would have posted on a thread in a given week or month analytics.

Not everyone posts a comment and alot reads until they feel there is something they want to say. After all, most browsing during the week days will likely be reading because they can't spend much time commenting on posts while working without risk of getting in trouble. On weekends, people tend to have weekend activities they want to do.

Aug 22, 14 1:29 pm  · 
 · 

In addition, I would argue there is a lot of students and they don't tend to speak much other than asking questions that are often asked dozens of times a month. Oh well.... most of them are probably browsing as they work on their studio project.

Aug 22, 14 1:31 pm  · 
 · 

I only recently began commenting, only after discovering there's more tho Archinect than the front page.  Frankly I only stumbled onto the page while doing some research for a project a year or so ago.  Now that I've graduated, have yet to be hired, I don't fit into any of those categories, but like to stay informed, engaged, and learning while I'm in limbo.  I don't know how everyone else found architect, but in my experience with online forums no one participates in discussions unless they really care, want to troll, or have something to contribute.  Maybe some of the topics that come up here pretty intimidating as well, so it really culls the herd of possible participants.  Personally I wish the forums here were better organized, which might help people find answers to old questions, as well as make it easier to find a comfortable place to begin contributing for those who don't.  

Aug 22, 14 4:09 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

All:

First: I left at noon to the doctors and to get a bottle of whiskey, Jesus Christ doesn’t anybody work anymore? Took me almost 4 hours to get to and fro! And why is it so hard to find a liquor store? The proliferation of purists in control.

Second: I think Paul’s participation here speaks volumes about Archinect. I hope he continues to chime-in. I also think it proves that this all matters to him. The debate over the statistics may and should continue but the fact remains that it does matter to him and should to us too.

Third: I have completed the draft of our suggested survey and hope you all will edit/contribute – just-listeners too, as I will be sending it off to Paul via email in the morning. I included you too Matthew.

Archinect Forum Survey

We thank you for your interest and participation in our Forum. We seek to improve your experience here and expand participation by learning more about you and your interests.

Please take a moment to respond to our survey as this will benefit your future experience.

Please check the title that best describes your status:

  • Lay-Person
  • Architectural Student
  • Architectural Grad Unemployed
  • Architectural Post Grad with 1 to 5 years of experience
  • Architectural Post Grad with 5 to 10 years experience
  • Architectural Post Grad with over 10 years experience
  • Person with ownership in architectural practice, licensed or non-licensed
  • Other

Given your stated status which Forum category do you enjoy, profit from the most (check all that apply):

  • General Discussion
  • Employment
  • Business & Economy
  • Random Tangents
  • Politics
  • Competitions
  • Technology
  • Culture
  • Professional Practice
  • Academia
  • Sustainability

Thank you for your reply, stay tuned for more exciting Forum topics and discussions, we appreciate your continued interest and encourage your participation.

Archinect

Aug 22, 14 6:17 pm  · 
 · 
Carrera

Well it’s off to see the Wizard…..just sent Paul the suggested poll. I included thoughts shared here about “Views” suggesting it be reinstated as a form of demographic, excluding repeat posters. I think there is frustration here-and-about involving the Forum and maybe this will in some way help. Looking forward to its posting and especially the results…you should too.

I also offered my thoughts and learning about meandering and conveyed that it is a good thing and should not be hindered, but for those seeking more I believe that the survey will help raise all boats….hang on to the gunwales because I think this survey will bring about the improved quality we seek.

Finally I thanked Paul profusely for contributing and chiming-in and said it speaks volumes about him and Archinect.

Aug 23, 14 8:09 pm  · 
 · 

Block this user


Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?

Archinect


This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.

  • ×Search in: