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The TI forum activity stats archival project (2002-present)

Started by Dream of Omnimaga, June 05, 2015, 07:49:49 AM

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Dream of Omnimaga

This project started in February 2010. Back then, I became interested in how the TI community activity, in terms of forum posting, had evolved over the years. Over the decades, many sites came and went, with each site having their respective periods of high activity, inactivity and often demise, thanks to many factors that varied from one site to another. I was also intrigued by the 2004 and 2010 activity spikes and wanted to compare each year and periods of time.

At first, I decided to compare the big English forums at the time since they were the easiest to grab stats from. I originally only included 2005 to present. However, I eventually decided to add more websites, including smaller ones, then I created a yearly forum activity spreadsheet, which I ended up updating at the end of every year of halfway through the year depending of my free time. This culminated to last week, where I finally decided to add 2002 to 2004 stats, as well as stats for 68K and non-English sites to the list, along with many smaller sites that I had forgot the URL of, but were thankfully listed at http://tistory.wikidot.com .

No script was used to achieve this. It was all done manually, during scattered moments of boredom, often taking less time than people might think (the worst of all is CalcGames). On certain forums, it was simply a matter of manually finding early January or late December posts (usually in website news sections), checking their ID, then incrementing the ID by an amount specific to the site activity that I remembered back then (eg if they averaged around 100 posts per day I just incremented IDs by chunks of 100, then less and less as I approached the date), until I land on the first public post of that year. On dead forums, it was simply a matter of counting them by hand and on smaller sites that managed to remain active for only 1 year. But then there were the complicated cases where the site had significant activity, but no way to get post ID, or worse, where the actual messages (or the entire site) were permanently gone. This is where Archive.org (and TI-Story for lost URL's) came to the rescue.

Due to the manual nature of archiving those stats and the lack of viable Archive.org cache for certain defunct or rebooted forums, the yearly posting statistics that I managed to grab back then and more recently are not accurate. They, however, should be just enough to give you an overall idea of how the TI community activity moved from place to place over the last 13 years.

So here, below, you can see the TI community activity of 60 forums/messageboards from 2002 to 2015! :D

http://tistory.wikidot.com/forumstats

Empty spaces means that the website either had no forum yet or its most recent version have shut down entirely. Question marks means missing stats. Also, the following boards (which didn't even survive one year) were not listed, because it appears that no trace of them are available at the Wayback Machine, so retrieving activity data from those sites will most likely never be possible:
-Electroshock Programming
-Midknight Software (formerly Destination Software)
-TI-Jon
-CodyMoats Programming
-SpitFire Productions
-Mogsoft
-Hays Games
-The Calc Site
-Outer Limits Software
-Nerdy Productions
-Basic.Revolution
-Frost Fusion Games
-Hello83
-Michaelv.org
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Adriweb

That's... interesting :P

Also, some numbers directly extracted from TI-Planet's DB (so, which are a lower-bound, since posts can be deleted over time, (like Mic's for instance), but still, relatively pretty close, I suppose)


So, until [late-]2011 (included), it's TI-Bank, then it's TI-Planet.
  • Calculators owned: TI-Nspire CX CAS, TI-Nspire CX, TI-Nspire CAS (x3), TI-Nspire (x2), TI-Nspire CM-C CAS, TI-Nspire CAS+, TI-80, TI-82 Stats.fr, TI-82 Plus, TI-83 Plus, TI-83 Plus.fr USB, TI-84+, TI-84+ Pocket SE, TI-84+ C Silver Edition, TI-84 Plus CE, TI-89 Titanium, TI-86, TI-Voyage 200, TI-Collège Plus, TI-Collège Plus Solaire, 3 HP, some Casios
Co-founder & co-administrator of TI-Planet and Inspired-Lua

Dream of Omnimaga

Yeah that's what I figured when I started finding the first post of each year with TI-Planet. Thankfully the IDs were still available as they were before Mic's posts deletion so it was pretty easy to do it. What surprises me is that the 2004-07 stats aren't lower, but I guess that in 2006-07 Tama was there for something :P (after that year is not surprising since that's around when Mic became less active)


Now imagine if when a TI calculator forum died, it was archived and merged into one, then there would be 1.5 million posts since 2002 (probably even more once I add the missing stats). Of course there would be many duplicates in 2004-06, though, as it was a very common practice to cross-post projects on 5 different boards back then (especially during the infamous 2004-05 invasion of small new programming teams), and merging every site upfront while still in operation would have been impossible due to potential conflicts resulting from different mentalities, but that would have been one hell of a big site.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Snektron

Hooray for CW for being the most active in 2015 yet!  :w00t: also i notice how some have like 60 posts. In a whole year? O.O
  • Calculators owned: TI-84+
Legends say if you spam more than DJ Omnimaga, you will become a walrus...


Unicorn

Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on June 05, 2015, 04:01:04 PM
Hooray for CW for being the most active in 2015 yet!  :w00t: also i notice how some have like 60 posts. In a whole year? O.O

WE are suuuuuch spammers :P
  • Calculators owned: I own all of them: PICKACHUP TI 84+ CSE TI 83+ SE TI something something ??? ??? ??? ??? ???
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: PICKACHUP ??? ??? ??? ??? ???



??? ??? ??? ??? ???

Dream of Omnimaga

Yeah the 60 post ones are usually what happens when people start a forum, but are not active enough themselves and won't replace inactive staff fast enough to allow the forums to live. But there are so many factors that can lead to a forum demise (eg wrong or controversial admin decisions/site changes, certain users or staff hindering user experience, unstable hosting provider/site access, prolonged downtime, not providing enough interesting content, etc), and unless you're Revsoft or Omni, it's quite hard to recover afterward.
Quote from: Unicorn on June 05, 2015, 05:41:58 PM
Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on June 05, 2015, 04:01:04 PM
Hooray for CW for being the most active in 2015 yet!  :w00t: also i notice how some have like 60 posts. In a whole year? O.O

WE are suuuuuch spammers :P
I'm trying to control that a bit, though, when it gets too far :P, not to mention that one day, we might actually need more staff and that staff will need to have learned to control their spam trigger :P
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Snektron

I think my test forum has more posts than 60 (well, at least more posts / day or something). Also didn;t ominaga start in 2001? or is that since they restarted or sokething (so i heard)?
  • Calculators owned: TI-84+
Legends say if you spam more than DJ Omnimaga, you will become a walrus...


Dream of Omnimaga

I don't think a test forum counts :P, but it's kinda sad if an established forum can't even get as many posts as a test one. Sadly that is often out of people's control, though.

And I created Omnimaga on Sept 1st 2001, but it did not get a website until 2004. The restart was in August 2008 (they closed in March of that year). I stepped down from admin in July 2011, though.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

alexgt

Cool that is interesting since I have only been in the calc community for a few months and a programmer for two years :)
  • Calculators owned: Ti-84+, Ti-Nspire, Hp Prime, Broken HP Prime, HP 48SX

Dream of Omnimaga

Did you start calculator programming two years ago too or was it programming for other platforms?

Also I just remembered that I need to add the forums that were hosted on TI-Galaxy in the list. (EDIT: It appears that only Cirrus still has forum caches on archive.org)

EDIT: I compiled CalcHaven stats now. Darn... they restarted from scratch like 5 times. No wonder why they didn't survive. While they were spammy, they had quite some potential to remain alive, because they had 10000 posts one year.

EDIT: yAronet underway. I actually did them for fun in 2010 but I scrapped the project because most cache back then were from August or April. Now they have many from December or January

EDIT: yAronet done. For some reasons from mid 2013 to mid 2014 they lost like 250000 posts, then regained most of them back afterward.

EDIT: CalcWare and TI-89.org done as well. Same for TI-Center. I didn't know that last one survived in 2006, considering the front page had a virus in 2006.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Snektron

Yeah this is actually quite impressing and interesting :)
  • Calculators owned: TI-84+
Legends say if you spam more than DJ Omnimaga, you will become a walrus...


Unicorn

This is quite cool! Wait!!!!!! update it quick! I posted 6 times on cmetech today!!!!
  • Calculators owned: I own all of them: PICKACHUP TI 84+ CSE TI 83+ SE TI something something ??? ??? ??? ??? ???
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: PICKACHUP ??? ??? ??? ??? ???



??? ??? ??? ??? ???

Dream of Omnimaga

Nah I won't update 2015 stats yet. I'll have to update them again afterwards anyway :P
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Snektron

Yeah that would be very time consuming, updating them every day :P
  • Calculators owned: TI-84+
Legends say if you spam more than DJ Omnimaga, you will become a walrus...


Dream of Omnimaga

#14
Here is the updated spreadsheet and I am also updating the first post.:



Basically, from what I can gather,

From 2002 to 2004: yAronet 68K board leads by far the entire community in activity. However, about 70-90% of the posts were flame wars and in 2002 it was before the off-topic boards split off into a different yN forum.
In 2005 it's MaxCoderz
In 2006 it's Cemetech
In 2007 and 2008 it's United-TI.
From 2009 to 2014 it's Omnimaga (including their 115000 posts year).
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

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