alt.med.cfs readership

Estimating the number of readers of alt.med.cfs is largely guesswork. Nonetheless it's a question that comes up occasionally so below are the best estimates I'm aware of. I'm not sure what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from this. Below are the estimated total number of people who read the group, for the months indicated:

Jan 1995 -- 34,436
Mar 1995 -- 34,201
May 1995 -- 48,583
Jun 1995 -- 49,282
Jul 1995 -- 21,443

If interested, you can view the assumptions behind these numbers. In January 1995 many people read news with UNIX newsreaders, their .newsrc files were stored on their ISP's machine unlike windows newsreaders. (Which is not to say UNIX readers are dead, just most people reading this page are likely to read news with a windows program.) Again, see the details here and note the sections labeled "EXPLANATION OF THE MEASUREMENTS AND STATISTICS" and "ESTIMATED TOTAL NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO READ THIS GROUP, WORLDWIDE".

The estimates were initially done by Brian Reid but the numbers above incorporate a correction for a statistical error described here. Note also that page acknowledges the numbers may still not be accurate "But they are the best numbers we've got".

Brian Reid's original estimate without the statistical correction for July 1995 is 9,100 rather than the corrected 21,443. His post containing the entire uncorrected estimates for July 1995 is available by searching at Deja News.

Subject: USENET Readership report for Jul 95
From: reid@pa.dec.com (Brian Reid)
Date: 1995/08/06
Message-ID: <403m3i$bd6@usenet.pa.dec.com>
Newsgroups: news.lists

The estimates were halted after the July 1995 numbers. Note what Brian Reid had to say in January 1995. Quoting in part:

USENET READERSHIP SUMMARY REPORT for Jan 95

***Note: there have been several months without a readership report. The reason for the hiatus is that a lot of sites have been submitting forged data to make their favorite newsgroups look widely read. Last month's report would have showed "alt.activism" to be the most popular newsgroup on the network. Nearly all of the forgeries are coming from Europe.

I have analyzed all data submitted over the last few years and from this analysis I have programmed a statistical "forged data rejector". This report for January 1995 is the first to exclude all forged data; as I look back through the historical reports, some sites started small-scale doctoring of the data in early 1994, but the practice did not become rampant until summer 1994.

Forgery detection is of course a cat-and-mouse game, and if these people are serious about disrupting the numbers, they will find a way to circumvent my forgery detector, and sooner or later the reports will degrade again.

So it seems reasonable to assume that his (corrected) estimate for January 1995 was a good estimate (34,436) and the numbers degraded in July when he stopped the estimates entirely. We can only hope to guesstimate what that number might imply about the number of readers today. The only record I'm aware of with CFS-L/alt.med.cfs subscriber numbers near that time is November 1994. On the CFS-MED list on November 11, 1994 Roger Burns (the CFS-L listowner) wrote:

The patient discussion group CFS-L has about 400 subscribers.

(You can retrieve the entire quote by sending a email message to LISTSERV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU that reads GET CFS-MED LOG9411.)

With 400 registered subscribers in November 1994, we can estimate there were likely about 450 subscribers in January 1995. So we estimate there were roughly 450 registered subscribers when there was an estimated 34,436 total readers. That works out to approximately 75 total readers for each registered participant (34,000/450).

As of November 3, 1997 there were 2,022 registered subscribers which, if the same ratio holds as in January 1995, implies about 150,000 readers today (November 1997). If we instead use the July 1995 corrected number of 21,443 and assume roughly 600 subscribers at that time, the ratio works out to about 35 total readers per registered subscriber. That implies about 70,000 readers today.

Of course we can't be certain the same ratio of lurkers to subscribers holds today as in the past. Nor can we be certain that the numbers in 1995 were accurate but they all we have to work with.

Are any of these numbers close to the truth? It's impossible to say, it's conceivable all these numbers are inaccurate. While they are the best estimates I'm aware of, I couldn't guess as to how accurate they might be.

[Information developed by Jim Dalton.]

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