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CajunRick
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
| Posts: | 5353 |
| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
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Posted: Thu May 3rd, 2007 02:47 pm |
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In case you're wondering, April was our forum's busiest month ever:
Visitors 14,501
Visits 27,064
Page Views 127,227
Posts 1705
Private Messages 425
The statistics include search engines, but as the "human" activity of the forum increases, the percentage of search engine activity drops. In April, it was at 57%. So to get actual numbers representing "human" activity, it's necessary to reduce the figures by 57%. That means the actual numbers are:
Visitors 8,266
Visits 15,426
Page Views 72,519
Posts and Private messages don't change, and are the real indicators of forum activity. Not surprisingly, the busiest days were the week after the Easter Vigil as everyone was relating their experiences.
As of the end of April, we had 269 users. If every user viewed 100 pages in April, that would be 26,900 page views. It would still mean we had more than 45,000 page views by unregistered guests. (More than half of our users log in less than once a month, so the number is really nuch higher.)
David and I stress constantly how important it is for posts to be on topic, for new questions to be posted in new threads, etc. As of today, we have 1,314 topics containing 8,582 posts. Can you imagine how hard it would be for one of those unregistered guests to find what they were looking for if we didn't try to keep things within a given topic area, or if we didn't encourage posting new topics instead of letting everything appear as replies to previous messages? Organization is most important to our unregistered guests.
If every user on the system visited the forum every day (they don't), it would still represent only half of the human visitors to the forum. The other half are anonymous seekers looking for reliable information on the Catholic Church. At any given time, the forum has more guests reading our posts than registered users. It is vitally important that we remember them when we post. We are evangelizing to them as well.
So please understand when we add details that we know our users already know, or when we encourage that new questions get posted as a new topic, or when we move posts to different areas. We're really trying to make things easier to find for our guests.
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
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cdunh
Member
| Joined: | Mon Nov 20th, 2006 |
| Location: | Arkansas USA |
| Posts: | 30 |
| First Name: | Cal | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | methodist to Catholic |
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Posted: Fri May 4th, 2007 11:17 am |
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| Thanks for the data. Some additional data would be of interest. For examples: 1) what proportion of those who are members contribute financially to the organization [occasionally, regularly, monthly]? 2) What is the average contribution (mean, median)? 3) What are the data on membership tenure (time or length of participation, percentage who withdraw membership, etc.)? 4) What proportion are "seekers" (on the journey to the Church) and what proportion are "servants" (those who motivated to assist those who are seekers? 5.) What is the demographic distribution of those partipating (in terms of where they live, ethnicity, retirement, etc.) 6) What proportion of members are active in their own parishes? What is their participation? 7) What proportion of members participate in other forums? 8) What proportion of members periodically watch EWTN? What proportion of members regularly view the "Journey Home" program on EWTN? It may be that you do not have time or resources for seeking all the data suggested above. I offer the suggestions trusting that sociological approaches may be helpful for continued development of the mission of the Coming Home Network. I appreciate your efforts and encourage frequent "reporting back". Sharing the "facts", in a way, confers "ownership".
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CajunRick
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
| Posts: | 5353 |
| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
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Posted: Fri May 4th, 2007 11:49 am |
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cdunh wrote: Thanks for the data. Some additional data would be of interest.
One of the primary values of CHN is anonymity. Many who visit here are seeking the truth about the Catholic faith in a non-threatening environment. I try to keep in mind the Protestant pastor who is sneaking in a visit, fearing that a member of his congregation will catch him in the act. Several of our members are spouses of ardent anti-Catholics who have to come to the forum at times when their spouse is not around.
As for financial contributions, I'm sure CHN has that information but, since David and I are volunteers who live a thousand miles or more from the "home office" that information is not available to us. Nor do such things concern us; all are treated equally whether they contribute or not. And even CHN would not have that information on forum users, as forum membership is anonymous.
Ages, geographical locations, etc., are optional information that some choose to enter in their profiles and others do not. Most do not. I suspect many just don't take the time to add optional information to their profiles, since it doesn't seem to prevent them from sharing their locations in forum messages. Location can be a real value to seekers who might be looking for a Catholic friend in their home city, but I can't force the issue. You, for example, have chosen to give us only your state. That's fine, but it's a long way from Texarkana to Little Rock to Jonesboro. If I'm looking for a recommendation of a good parish in my area, a state is not very helpful, but it's better than nothing.
So the net result of all of this is that the numbers I gave are the only ones I have.
I have often wondered about some of the questions you asked, especially regarding age, activity, geographic distribution, and place on the journey. I have added some questions such as faith history, but not everyone answers it informatively, and many of our users registered before the question was added.
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
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