Chris Marlow will pull the Talk usage data for the next few months when she launches the new month’s Show & Tell. That will allow updating the usage data so all can understand just how well Talk does or does not reach the membership. While we have no way to know what was looked at or even if it was more than one single post, we can at least see the day of the last visit for an individual member.
EDIT: This post was revised and updated on May 5, 2019. See here for the corrected numbers and to see how eligible voters are using Talk.
I think the best way to get a quick glance is to look at cumulative totals going back one day at a time for Green Dot members … those who can see Member Only postings.
For example on April 30 there were 111 Green Dot viewers.
A total of 61 last visited on April 29.
Those with a last visit on April 28 totaled 23.
By adding up the totals by days, it’s possible to know that 111+61+23= 195 Green Dot members have been to Talk at least once and viewed at least one topic during these 3 days.
As of May 1, 2019 there are 1411 Green Dot members out of a total membership of 2173.
Therefore in the last three days of April, nearly 14% of Green Dots and 9% of the total membership saw at least one Members Only post. The numbers climb to 19% and 12% respectively during the last week of April and grows very slowly from there.
This charts shows just how many DMS members are not seeing anything in the Members Only sections of Talk during the entire month of April with Day 1 being April 30 and Day 30 being April 1.
Chris and I will continue to pull this data until it becomes obvious that a pattern is consistent. So far, mid March to mid April looks very much like the calendar month of April. Too soon to know if the decline in readership over the last half of April is significant or within what will be determined as normal variation.
I think there is, but no easy way to match physical visitors with Talk viewers.
If you are just looking for physical visitors independently, I suggest you talk to Stan or Chris directly and I would not use data from April since the back door lock was broken for a long time and members did not have to badge in. Data will be unrealistically low in April as a result.
The ramp door also has a tendency to be left open for hours on end, further impeding the relevance of badge-in data. There’s enough foot traffic in the evening that I’ve been able to transit between workshop and office without hitting that reader fairly reliably.
Ramp always makes the data imprecise, but it’s probably more consistently an issue that the personnel door. So, my guess is that ramp impact is OK for monthly comparison but not true headcounts. That also assumes follow-ins have some consistency over time.
I gather that the personnel door has been fixed, so one less distortion for next month’s data.
I also recall a project to install a timer on the rollup door that would close it after X minutes of being open without an obstruction which would capture more badge-in’s, however the status and viability of such an effort is unknown.
