Slashdot, a user-generated news, analysis, peer question and professional insight community. Tech professionals moderate the site which averages more than 5,300 comments daily and 3.7 million unique visitors each month.
As I said before, we don't have a really good idea on the number of unique IPIDs visiting the site, but we do have solid numbers for our daily comment counts. Here's the graph as generated by slashcode for a biweekly period:
(due to a quirk in slashcode, the graphs don't update until 48 hours later; our comment count for 04/01 was 712 comments total).
Taking in account averages, we're roughly getting a little less than 10% of Slashdot's comment counts, with a considerably smaller user base. As I said, the OkCupid story made me take notice. Here's the comment counts at various scores between the two sites
| SoylentNews | Slashdot.org | --------------------------------------- Score -1 | 130 | 1017 | Score 0 | 130 | 1005 | Score 1 | 109 | 696 | Score 2 | 74 | 586 | Score 3 | 12 | 96 | Score 4 | 4 | 64 | Score 5 | 1 | 46 | ---------------------------------------Furthermore, I took a look at UIDs on the other site, the vast majority of comments came from 6/7 digit UID posters. Looking at CmdrTaco's Retirement Post as well as posts detailing the history of the other site most of the low UIDs are still around, and are simply in perma-lurk mode.
(Score: 1) by GeriatricGentleman on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:25PM
I lurked for years. And years. I like reading viewpoints of experts and idiots - and often the dissension (and sometimes the condescension) taught me much.
I loved how often the ignorance would often be answered with insight and humour. Knowing how stupidity was propogated cheered me considerably (and kept me calm and amused) when dealing with relatives who think Fox news is the real pulpit of truth.
The commentary on tech, physics, the review of legal cases, chemistry, climate change - all sorts of things...I am smarter because of the insight coming from the community.
I never registered. Never commented. Even when I felt I had something to contribute.
But beta was completely unusable. I couldn't lurk and digest the commentary any more. So here I am. I haven't been back to see if beta was abandoned or fixed.
I registered cos I want to help this place succeed. I don't really want to comment, I just want the richness that comes from many people sharing their knowledge.
Sigh, ok ok - I guess I can make a comment a week and will try and do a submission a month (that would actually be helping) but in truth, I would rather just pay a subscription and not bother...