[Foundation-l] Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 4:47 PM,  <mikelifeguard at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>* Two [of analyzed] lists -- textbook-l and wikija-l -- show
>>*increase* of traffic! It would be good to analyze why it is so. Maybe
>>they have the answer to our problem: increasing of list traffic
>>usually means that community is increasing. (Or they are just in the
>>earlier phase, which means that they will show decrease of traffic
>>during the next year or two.)
>
> I would suggest that textbook-l traffic is up because we have had several
> announcements lately, such as getting the Collection extension enabled last
> week. In fact, the most voluminous threads over the past 6 months have been
> on the subject of PDF generation, with one exception (a licensing issue).
> I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from that additional information,
> but I think the low level of traffic overall is probably relevant to an
> accurate determination in that case.

Simply, you are working on specific goals. If this is the answer, it
is a very very simple one :)

So, maybe the question should be redefined to others: How many
specific goals do have other projects and supporting mailing lists?