Rook,
The utility that you need is at
http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/Static/Default.asp
You'll notice that that the default page is for a listing of all
newsgroups in microsoft.* which contain the word "windowsxp". You'll
also notice that the default statistics are set to "monthly" for all
these groups. You have the option of choosing daily, weekly, or
monthly statistics for dates of 9/30/2002 or earlier. (I've no idea
what date they started posting these statistics.)
As I've already said, the main "official" Big-8 hierarchies are soc.*,
news.*, rec.*, humanities.*, sci.*, comp.*, talk.*, and misc.* . The
largest hierarchy, though, is alt.*, which isn't officially part of
the Big-8, but still contains the majority of traffic going through
Usenet. One of the reasons for this is that it's much easier to create
a group in alt.* than anywhere else. The other reason is that alt.* is
where most of Usenet's binary newsgroups exist. Since you're not
interested in binary data, I'll show you how to skip them later. If
you need assistance with the basics of what Usenet is and how it
works, I've included links further down in this answer.
If you want to see a traffic breadown of "all" of Usenet in both its
official and unofficial meanings, click on the link labelled "Tree
Map" at the top of the Netscan default page. This lets you see a map
of the size of Usenet and should give you a visual picture of which
hierarchies you want to examine. Here's a direct link to this page:
http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/Static/treemap/nsbox.asp
In any case, let's say you want to get a listing of all groups under
"rec.*" for 8/25/2002.
1) click on "Day" so that you set the listing type to daily.
2) click on the button to the left of "starts with" so that you've
selected the starts with method of searching.
3) type "rec" into the box to the right of "starts with"
4) change the date to 8/25/2002
5) click "Show Data"
You should now see a listing of 639 newsgroups. The first newsgroup in
the list should be "rec.autos.sport.nascar". Based on the data shown,
there were 995 posts in this newsgroup on 8/25/2002. A total of 180
different people/posters/e-mail addresses made all these postings. If
you've done it all right, you should get a page which looks like this:
http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/Static/default.asp?NGType=D&SearchType=0&NGSearch=rec&orand=or&NGSearch2=&SearchDate=8%2F25%2F2002&gd=Show+Data
FYI, it seems that the data may be more accurate as you choose dates
closer to 9/30/2002. Your mileage may vary. Now, what does one need to
do in order to find out the exact number of posts made to all groups
in rec.*? Just add up all the numbers in the columns. If you want to
find out the total number of posters, than add up the posters for each
group. Obviously, there may be people who post messages to more than
one group in one day, but the number you get should be correct in
terms of the right exponential order. (I'd guess that you'll probably
want to estimate by dividing the number by 2 -- or, just skim the
PPRatio column and use that to make up a good ratio that you can
multiply your results by to get something approximately correct.)
The one really big bugaboo you might have is doing this for alt.* as
when I tried it, I got more than 7000 newsgroups listed on one page.
This is a bad thing, as it may use up your computer's memory. If
you're searching for groups in alt.*, I suggest breaking them down by
letter of the alphabet, i.e. typing "alt.a", "alt.c", "alt.d" into the
"starts with" box. Just skip all of "alt.b" since it's probably 90%
binary groups.
Here's another statistics links which may be of use to you:
[Graph of daily bytes and articles received by newsfeed.mesh.ad.jp]
http://newsfeed.mesh.ad.jp/flow/index.html
Finally, here are some links that should provide you with some
information about how Usnet works. I hope that you find these useful:
[Usenet Access Guide]
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1131/ua.htm
[Usenet the global watering hole]
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/bdgtti/bdgtti_7.html
[The Big-8 hierarchies]
http://tgos.org/newbie/newsgroups2.html
The following search will point you at other statistics pages for
Usenet. I've browsed through a handful of these, but you may want to
examine these more closely to see which are most useful. Be aware that
some of these pages are outdated and they haven't been updated in
months/years.
://www.google.com/search?as_q=usenet+statistics&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images
I hope this has given you the information you need. If any of this is
unclear, feel free to ask.
/ephraim |
