Here are the newsgroups statistics for 1991. I am going to start
compiling these on an annual basis from here on (in the past this has
been done irregularly, mainly when numbers were required for funding
agency reports).
The last time I compiled usage statistics was in February 1991
covering the period 1 Nov 89 (start date of GOS) through 2/17/91
(nothing magic about that date). During that period a total of 3228
messages were posted.
The total for all of 1991 (a shorter period than the above and
overlapping it by 1.5 months) was 6406!!
The total of average daily posts to all of the newsgroups was 8.08 at
the time of the last compilation. It is now 20.19!!
While this is still modest by computer science newsgroup standards
(e.g., comp.sys.ibm.pc probably gets over 100 per day), it is clear
that in 1991 the system has finally started to emerge from its
prolonged infancy. The posting frequency on all newsgroups was up
compared to the previous survey except for BIONAUTS, BIO-MATRIX, and
POPULATION-BIOLOGY. BIONAUTS showed a minor posting frequency
decline, but the other two groups were down sharply.
The bottom five groups on the list (AGEING, EMBL-DATABANK,
GENETIC-LINKAGE, CHROMOSOME-22, and GENOMIC-ORGANIZATION) are under
one posting per week on average. I will be opening a discussion on
BIOFORUM soon (when it is also operational at IRLEARN) about possibly
shutting down some of these newsgroups and revising our voting policy
for new newsgroup creation. This issue needs to be resolved before
voting on additional newsgroups.
I must admit that I have been rather disappointed with the
CHROMOSOME-22 newsgroup, particularly when the people working on the
ARABIDOPSIS genome project have made their newsgroup such a success as
seen below. The ARABIDOPSIS newsgroup clearly shows that electronic
communications can play an important role in a major scientific
collaborative effort. I hope that other mapping/sequencing
communities will follow their excellent lead, and I remain ready to
assist in organizing these efforts.
My thanks once again to all of you for your continuing use and support
of BIOSCI. If the early indications for 1992 persist (e.g., active
new groups such as BIO-INFO), it will be an even better year than
1991.
Sincerely,
Dave Kristofferson
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Usage of BIOSCI/bionet Newsgroups
1/1/91 - 12/31/91 inclusive
ranked in order of number of messages posted per day
Newsgroup Name Messages Posted Messages per day*
-------------- ---------------- ----------------
BIONEWS 1379 3.78
BIO-SOFTWARE 1179 3.23
METHODS-AND-REAGENTS 796 2.18
BIO-INFO 19 1.58
NEUROSCIENCE 305 1.11
EMPLOYMENT 392 1.07
ARABIDOPSIS 264 0.94
GENBANK-BB 335 0.92
MOLECULAR-EVOLUTION 304 0.83
BIO-JOURNALS 212 0.58
BIONAUTS 203 0.56
COMPUTATIONAL-BIOLOGY 135 0.51
HIV-MOLECULAR-BIOLOGY 10 0.50
PROTEIN-ANALYSIS 152 0.42
SCIENCE-RESOURCES 149 0.41
HUMAN-GENOME-PROGRAM 114 0.31
BIO-MATRIX 102 0.28
POPULATION-BIOLOGY 92 0.25
AGROFORESTRY 76 0.21
AGEING 50 0.14
EMBL-DATABANK 48 0.13
GENETIC-LINKAGE 35 0.10
CHROMOSOME-22 28 0.08
GENOMIC-ORGANIZATION 27 0.07
Totals: 6406 20.19
* several newsgroups came in to existence during the course of 1991.
The statistic is calculated only over the number of days that the
newsgroup was actually available during 1991.
