MacRumors has defiantly grown. I have been posting causally and in niche areas for three years and it really shows. The focus seems to have really evolved beyond rumors to total apple discussion. It was there before just not as much as there is now.
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MacRumors' surging popularity
- Thread starter mad jew
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Mac Rumors has grown extremely fast.
The One Millionth Post was posted on August 23, 2004, around 2 years from when MR was born.
The Second Millionth Post took only 1 year and two months more to get.
This Saturday will be the ninth month since the 2,000,000 mark, and we're currently at about 2.862 million post.
MR has gone from 24 months -> 14 months -> 9.5 months*.
*Just a guess as to when 3,000,000 posts will happen.
The One Millionth Post was posted on August 23, 2004, around 2 years from when MR was born.
The Second Millionth Post took only 1 year and two months more to get.
This Saturday will be the ninth month since the 2,000,000 mark, and we're currently at about 2.862 million post.
MR has gone from 24 months -> 14 months -> 9.5 months*.
*Just a guess as to when 3,000,000 posts will happen.
Where's Q with his VLC when you need him? based on the extrapolation above, when will MR cross the event horizon into a singularity?
You can see some stats for MacRumors on Big-Boards. Last two graphs are probably most interesting, although they still only show the last year.
spicyapple said:Posts have increased 61% from a year ago.
Members have increased 67% from a year ago.
Very nice growth!
So what you are saying is that the newbies don't pull their posting weights around here... hmm... those lazy newbies...spicyapple said:
The mac community has significantly grown over the past year, and MacRumors has had a surge in member registration, not a bad thing, but I feel there are many who sign up an account to specifically post a question, then they disappear and never log back on. Or some can have very rude posts, not all.
I was thinking a solution to this could be that people are not allowed to post only after they've been registered for an x amount of time, this way, the new member can get a feel of what MacRumors is all about and will be able to post in a proper manner. Maybe if they're not allowed to make a post for the first 7 days of their registration will force some to start using the search function and the whole site would get less pointless posts that get replies criticizing the poster to search.
I think this is an idea that should be considered by whoever makes such decisions
I was thinking a solution to this could be that people are not allowed to post only after they've been registered for an x amount of time, this way, the new member can get a feel of what MacRumors is all about and will be able to post in a proper manner. Maybe if they're not allowed to make a post for the first 7 days of their registration will force some to start using the search function and the whole site would get less pointless posts that get replies criticizing the poster to search.
I think this is an idea that should be considered by whoever makes such decisions
monke said:
hmmm, seems like a growth curve very similar to iTunes purchases. Coincidence? I think not! Feel free to doff your tin foil hat, sir.
Your idea has been considered before, and it's good to bring it up for discussion now and then. The tradeoff with a "waiting period" is that it prevents new members from asking questions that are important to them now, and they will "take their business" elsewhere if they have an immediate problem to solve. Providing such member-to-member help is an important aspect of MacRumors.Jericho2550 said:The mac community has significantly grown over the past year, and MacRumors has had a surge in member registration, not a bad thing, but I feel there are many who sign up an account to specifically post a question, then they disappear and never log back on. Or some can have very rude posts, not all.
I was thinking a solution to this could be that people are not allowed to post only after they've been registered for an x amount of time, this way, the new member can get a feel of what MacRumors is all about and will be able to post in a proper manner. Maybe if they're not allowed to make a post for the first 7 days of their registration will force some to start using the search function and the whole site would get less pointless posts that get replies criticizing the poster to search.
I think this is an idea that should be considered by whoever makes such decisions
Also, we get a surge of new members when there are Apple events or announcements, and people want to be able to discuss and react to news while the events are approaching, in progress, or just completed.
So, while a waiting period would weed out unwanted hit-and-run posts (trolling) and increase the average quality of posts by new members, we think that it would reduce the overall usefulness of MacRumors to institute such a delay.
However, in theory the rules could differ for particular forums, e.g., news story threads vs. question and answer threads vs. community discussion threads, and that's an idea that I don't think we've discussed in the forums.
Finally, some forum websites are set up so that posts are pre-reviewed (aka "moderated"). With that system, posts can be made by new members but they do not appear in the forums until they have had a human review. While this can solve the problem too, it takes much more time and effort, introduces a posting delay of its own, and can cause the forum content to reflect biases of the chosen moderators more than after-the-fact moderation is likely to do.
Has there really been some dramatic increase in poor posts by new members? It seems to me that even regulars (myself includedDoctor Q said:
) have their fair share of inane, rude, useless, and/or redundant posts. Having a waiting period for new members just shifts the problem by 7 days, it doesn't eliminate it.Trolls are dealt with quickly and, I think, fairly by the moderators, so even that isn't an issue. The major "problem areas" used to be Marketplace and Political forums, and after instituting the minimum post-count rules, those both improved.
However, we did see people who didn't meet the minimums posting political or market threads in other forums to bypass the rules, and I think we'd still get that if the waiting period was only for certain forums.
In the end, this is a great place to come and share stories, news, rumors, etc. Sure, we have the occasional "riff-raff" who cause some problems, but mostly the problems are caused by regulars responding to bad posts. Perhaps we just need to control ourselves better.
I don't think so. The percentage of poor posts is fairly constant. As we get more members, and more posts during big events, the absolute number goes up accordingly.emw said:
I think that the moderators would have fewer posts to remove for trolling and, for example, fewer posts that say nothing but "sweet!" when a new product is announced, if new members couldn't as easily join and post on an impulse. But sometimes new members bring us new information and new opinions that deserve to be shared promptly.
It's still an issue for the moderators!
MR is running fine. The last thing it needs is to have posts moderated so they may be edited before going online (that's another mistake AppleTalk Australia makes). After a while the forum becomes a "club" and the only people who can be bothered to post anything are teenagers who's only concern is to get their post count up.
