Re: $NORM is dropping! Should we care?

[grinder]

I assume you've been looking at the $NORM graph. It goes up, it goes down, but it doesn't look any different now as it did 5 years ago. It looks like... the norm :).

Maybe a little on the low side, but nothing to be alarmed about. I would not attach any significance to it until it reached either 7, or 13.

PTAV, another of jcwren's Grand Unfinished Projects gives you a good indication of long-term trends, as it gives you the count of number of top-level nodes posted per month. Basically, the monastery hit cruising speed in 2001, and the traffic has been pretty stable ever since.

I think nodes garner less responses these days, so yes, in some ways, the site is a bit quieter than it used to be. But it still seems in good health to me.

[husker]

The $NORM graph only covers 30 days .. I don't see a way to extend to a longer period, which is what would show any long-term trends. What was $NORM, say, a year ago? It's those long-term trends that I'm thinking might possibly tell us something interesting, not the minute day-to-day fluctuations.