Number of postings to comp.lang.* newsgroups.

Number of postings to comp.lang.* newsgroups.

[Dan Stubbs]

The following is the number of postings (for all time) to the "top
twenty" groups in comp.lang.*. I don't believe there is any special 
significance to this list, but believe it is as interesting as most
"top n" lists.

+------+-------+-----------------------------+
| rank | #posts| language in comp.lang.*     |
+------+-------+-----------------------------+
    1.  133,135   comp.lang.c++
    2.  125,582   comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
    3.  105,277   comp.lang.c
    4.   73,312   comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc
    5.   53,962   comp.lang.perl.misc
    6.   37,853   comp.lang.tcl
    7.   32,553   comp.lang.asm.x86
    8.   31,080   comp.lang.ada
    9.   31,055   comp.lang.pascal.delphi.atabases
   10.   30,505   comp.lang.basic.visual.databae
 +-----+--------+-----------------------------+
   11.   29,540   comp.lang.smlltalk
   12.   28,053   comp.lang.pascal.borland
   13.   25,400   comp.lang.basic.misc
   14.   24,925   comp.lang.clipper
   15.   22,224   comp.lang.fortran
   16.   20,590   comp.lang.javascript
   17.  19,770   comp.lang.java.programmer
   18.   18,968   comp.lang.postscript
   19.   18,089   comp.lang.basic.visual.3rdparty
   20.   14,074   comp.lang.cobol
 +-----+--------+-----------------------------+

Re: Number of postings to comp.lang.* newsgroups.

[Tore Lund]

Dan Stubbs wrote:
> 
> The following is the number of postings (for all time) to the "top
> twenty" groups in comp.lang.*. I don't believe there is any special
> significance to this list, but believe it is as interesting as most
> "top n" lists.
> 
> +------+-------+-----------------------------+
> | rank | #posts| language in comp.lang.*     |
> +------+-------+-----------------------------+
>     1.  133,135   comp.lang.c++
>     2.  125,582   comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
>     3.  105,277   comp.lang.c
>     4.   73,312   comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc
>     5.   53,962   comp.lang.perl.misc
>     6.   37,853   comp.lang.tcl
>     7.   32,553   comp.lang.asm.x86
>     8.   31,080   comp.lang.ada
>     9.   31,055   comp.lang.pascal.delphi.atabases
>    10.   30,505   comp.lang.basic.visual.databae
>  +-----+--------+-----------------------------+
>    11.   29,540   comp.lang.smlltalk
>    12.   28,053   comp.lang.pascal.borland
>    13.   25,400   comp.lang.basic.misc
>    14.   24,925   comp.lang.clipper
>    15.   22,224   comp.lang.fortran
>    16.   20,590   comp.lang.javascript
>    17.  19,770   comp.lang.java.programmer
>    18.   18,968   comp.lang.postscript
>    19.   18,089   comp.lang.basic.visual.3rdparty
>    20.   14,074   comp.lang.cobol
>  +-----+--------+-----------------------------+

Pardon the expression, Dan, but this "Top Twenty" is nutty in the
extreme. Some groups have existed for years, while others are brand new,
so this list tells us next to nothing about present turnover for the
different groups.

Moreover, if the popularity of different languages or topics is to be
measured, one ought to group together all the Java-groups and all the
Basic-groups, and one should probably do the same for a host of other
languages. Comp.lang.asm.x86 should clearly be grouped with
alt.lang.asm, since both groups mostly deal with 80x86 programming.

Admittedly, the question of grouping is rather thorny, since e.g. much C
programming is discussed in comp.os.ms-windows.* and other places. But
some attempt at grouping should still be made.

We know that you mean it well and that you yourself may not be
responsible for the "Top Twenty". But whoever made it would be able to
make a far more interesting statistic by submitting it to some
elementary arithmetic beforehand.
-- 
Tore Lund <tl001@sn.no>

Re: Number of postings to comp.lang.* newsgroups.

[Larry W. Virden]

According to Tore Lund  <tl001@sn.no>:
:Dan Stubbs wrote:
:> 
:> The following is the number of postings (for all time) to the "top
:> twenty" groups in comp.lang.*. I don't believe there is any special
:> significance to this list, but believe it is as interesting as most
:> "top n" lists.
:> 
:> +------+-------+-----------------------------+
:> | rank | #posts| language in comp.lang.*     |
:> +------+-------+-----------------------------+
:>     1.  133,135   comp.lang.c++
:>     2.  125,582   comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
:>     3.  105,277   comp.lang.c
:>     4.   73,312   comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc
:>     5.   53,962   comp.lang.perl.misc
:>     6.   37,853   comp.lang.tcl

Here's another interesting note - the msg being quoted here happens to be
message 51,660 on my system; which means the number of posts listed are
off by almost 50% !

-- 
:s Larry W. Virden                 INET: lvirden@cas.org
:s <URL:http://www.teraform.com/%7Elvirden/> <*> O- "We are all Kosh."
:s Unless explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting should
:s be construed as representing my employer's opinions.

Re: Number of postings to comp.lang.* newsgroups.

[ccrayne]

In <57uku7$7je@srv13s4.cas.org>, lwv26@cas.org (Larry W. Virden) writes:
#Here's another interesting note - the msg being quoted here happens to be
#message 51,660 on my system; which means the number of posts listed are
#off by almost 50% !

Here's another interesting note - the msg being quoted here happens to be
message 26,102 on my system; which means the number of posts has
nothing whatsoever to do with the message number provided by my ISP.

-- Chuck

Re: Number of postings to comp.lang.* newsgroups.

[Larry W. Virden]

According to  <ccrayne@pacific.net>:
:In <57uku7$7je@srv13s4.cas.org>, lwv26@cas.org (Larry W. Virden) writes:
:#Here's another interesting note - the msg being quoted here happens to be
:#message 51,660 on my system; which means the number of posts listed are
:#off by almost 50% !
:
:Here's another interesting note - the msg being quoted here happens to be
:message 26,102 on my system; which means the number of posts has
:nothing whatsoever to do with the message number provided by my ISP.

Hopefully this is blindingly obvious to folk - unless your ISP has been
around for 3 years, of course s/he will not have the articles posted from
the beginning.

Besides this difference, there are outages, cancelled articles which may
make it to some sites and not others, etc.

However, in _most_ implementations, the article number of an article
reflects a sequentially increasing number based on arrival times.

I suspect that by looking at the active file from uunet (a long time
usenet news provider, who definitely was around back at the beginning of
a majority of newsgroups, and whose connectivity is pretty high, thus
reflecting a lot of postings which never make it a lot farther due to
cancellations...) we can get pretty close to the number of articles.
For the above 3 newsgroups, uunet reports, as of early this morning:
comp.lang.ada: 0000054555
comp.lang.asm.x86: 0000035059
comp.lang.tcl: 0000059159
-- 
:s Larry W. Virden                 INET: lvirden@cas.org
:s <URL:http://www.teraform.com/%7Elvirden/> <*> O- "We are all Kosh."
:s Unless explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting should
:s be construed as representing my employer's opinions.