Mailing List Archive: Mail Stats

Mail Stats

Jun 16, 2006, 7:03 AM

Post #1 of 6 (1553 views)

In the category 'nice to know':

I made a script to measure who is most involved in public mailing lists
discussions, and on which lists.

You'll find a complete list of mailing lists and how their activy changed
over time
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/

For each list you'll find a breakdown of posts by author, with board
activity added separately, e.g. for the foundation list
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/foundation-l.html

Powerposters get their own page (*). They are all combined at
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/_PowerPosters.html

Overall board activy on public mailing lists has not significantly decreased
over time
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Board.html
Most change of activity can be alluded to less board posts on technical
lists.

Caveat: be careful with interpretations.

1 Please don't confuse number of posts of a person with relevance of that
person's contributions. Less may be more in some cases.
2 People who seem less active may be very active on private mailing lists.
3 Lists that are hardly active may have a private couterpart.
4 People may have posted with different names, some are already interpreted
as aliasses, but probably some not yet.
5 Over time the character of some lists may have evolved as new more
specialized lists were introduced.
6 There is no strict separation between lists. Non technical lists will
contain technical discussions from time to time.

These stats are autoupdated daily.

By the way, I hope to refresh wikistats as soon as a reasonably complete set
of new downloads is available, with most major wikipedias included.
http://download.wikimedia.org/

Erik Zachte

* Known bug: for some powerposters with special chars in their name their
own page is not linked properly.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Unrelated: Delphine pointed out my posts break mail threads.
That was not on purpose e.g. to draw attention.
I follow lists through pipermail and copy/paste texts I quote.
I'll subscribe to mail, and reply in orderly fashion.

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Re: Mail Stats [ In reply to ]

Anthere9 at yahoo

Jun 16, 2006, 8:35 AM

Post #2 of 6 (1469 views)

Permalink

> Erik Zachte
-------------------------------------------------------------
> Unrelated: Delphine pointed out my posts break mail threads.
> That was not on purpose e.g. to draw attention.
> I follow lists through pipermail and copy/paste texts I quote.
> I'll subscribe to mail, and reply in orderly fashion.

Better yet, read them through gmane. It is working great. Ant

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Re: Mail Stats [ In reply to ]

michael_irwin at verizon

Jun 16, 2006, 4:49 PM

Post #3 of 6 (1468 views)

Permalink

Erik Zachte wrote:

>In the category 'nice to know':
>
>I made a script to measure who is most involved in public mailing lists
>discussions, and on which lists.
>
>You'll find a complete list of mailing lists and how their activy changed
>over time
>http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/
>
>For each list you'll find a breakdown of posts by author, with board
>activity added separately, e.g. for the foundation list
>http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/foundation-l.html
>
>
snip rest

Eric,

There may be a minor error in one of your loops or pattern matching
comparisons, or the explanation above is slightly off.

The appears enwiki-l stats appear to shut off at five posts. Perhaps
the graphics is truncated for ease of use and the totals are accurate?

There was a single post by me to enwiki-l.

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000003.html

The header was:

*Michael R. Irwin* mri_icboise at surfbest.net
<mailto:wikien-l%40Wikipedia.org?Subject=%5BWikien-l%5D%20Getting%20started&In-Reply-To=>
/Fri Nov 15 03:32:18 UTC 2002

/The other two places I expected to see data on my activity it was there
under Michael R. Irwin. Some of it originated from the above email
address and some from my current address so I have concluded your
processing routines were focused on the name Michael R. Irwin which is
what is shown in the y-axis of the summary stats.

It seemed to accurately pick up posts signed as both mirwin and as my
later handle lazyquasar but they were all annotated as from Michael R.
Irwin in the header so that was not surprising.

Forgive my pickiness but these stats look incredibly useful for some
kinds project management activities such as proposal preparation or
analsysis of participation trends but it is easy to draw wrong
conclusions if the basis for the data presented and being used is
misunderstood.

Obviously any subtle error off by one on my data may be way off for
someone else.

Any further explanation to clarify exactly what is counted and how it is
summarized if the data is not exactly accurate in the counts of all the
emails in the archives would be appreciated by me.

Thanks!

regards,
Michael R. Irwin
lazyquasar

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Re: Mail Stats [ In reply to ]

erikzachte at infodisiac

Jun 16, 2006, 6:04 PM

Post #4 of 6 (1463 views)

Permalink

Michael R. Irwin wrote:

> The appears enwiki-l stats appear to shut off at five posts. Perhaps
> the graphics is truncated for ease of use and the totals are accurate?

Yes indeed. This is on purpose. The table would be extraordinary large if I
showed everyone who edited one or two times on a list. Yet the counts are
complete. Those single edits are included.

On startup mailing lists I do show all data, even single posts.

I parse mailman archives. I do not use mail address, scan for username as z
in
"From: x at y (z)"

> It seemed to accurately pick up posts signed as both mirwin and as my
> later handle lazyquasar but they were all annotated as from Michael R.
> Irwin in the header so that was not surprising.

Yes, as explained above.

> Any further explanation to clarify exactly what is counted and how it is
> summarized if the data is not exactly accurate in the counts of all the
> emails in the archives would be appreciated by me.

Please ask if you have more questions.

Oh, I was asked why Jimbo has more posts than the board combined.
That is because Jimbo preceded the board with quite a few months. :)

Erik Zachte

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Re: Mail Stats [ In reply to ]

Anthere9 at yahoo

Jun 18, 2006, 7:03 AM

Post #5 of 6 (1461 views)

Permalink

Erik Zachte wrote:
> In the category 'nice to know':
>
> I made a script to measure who is most involved in public mailing lists
> discussions, and on which lists.
>
> You'll find a complete list of mailing lists and how their activy changed
> over time
> http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/
>
> For each list you'll find a breakdown of posts by author, with board
> activity added separately, e.g. for the foundation list
> http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/foundation-l.html
>

...
I find these stats more scary than anything :-)

Okay, I shut up for a while...

Thanks Eric ...

> Powerposters get their own page (*). They are all combined at
> http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/_PowerPosters.html
>
> Overall board activy on public mailing lists has not significantly decreased
> over time
> http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Board.html
> Most change of activity can be alluded to less board posts on technical
> lists.
>
> Caveat: be careful with interpretations.
>
> 1 Please don't confuse number of posts of a person with relevance of that
> person's contributions. Less may be more in some cases.
> 2 People who seem less active may be very active on private mailing lists.
> 3 Lists that are hardly active may have a private couterpart.
> 4 People may have posted with different names, some are already interpreted
> as aliasses, but probably some not yet.
> 5 Over time the character of some lists may have evolved as new more
> specialized lists were introduced.
> 6 There is no strict separation between lists. Non technical lists will
> contain technical discussions from time to time.
>
> These stats are autoupdated daily.
>
> By the way, I hope to refresh wikistats as soon as a reasonably complete set
> of new downloads is available, with most major wikipedias included.
> http://download.wikimedia.org/
>
> Erik Zachte
>
> * Known bug: for some powerposters with special chars in their name their
> own page is not linked properly.
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Unrelated: Delphine pointed out my posts break mail threads.
> That was not on purpose e.g. to draw attention.
> I follow lists through pipermail and copy/paste texts I quote.
> I'll subscribe to mail, and reply in orderly fashion.

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: Mail Stats [ In reply to ]

saintonge at telus

Jun 19, 2006, 3:34 PM

Post #6 of 6 (1455 views)

Permalink

Anthere wrote:

>Erik Zachte wrote:
>
>
>>In the category 'nice to know':
>>
>>I made a script to measure who is most involved in public mailing lists
>>discussions, and on which lists.
>>
>>For each list you'll find a breakdown of posts by author, with board
>>activity added separately, e.g. for the foundation list
>>http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/foundation-l.html
>>
>>
>...
>I find these stats more scary than anything :-)
>
>Okay, I shut up for a while...
>
>Thanks Eric ...
>
Yeah, thanks?!

The scary thing for me is how much time I spend on these lists producing
dubious accomplishments. :-[

Ec

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