Morrus - How's EN World's attendance in light of 4e?

Morrus or anyone else in the know -

Just curious as to how EN World is holding up in light of the advent of the new edition of D&D. I think all would agree that we've seen a significant amount of nerd rage on these (and other) boards these past few months. Such shenanigans seem to have faded away of late, and we're doing a better job of saving the drama for our mamas.

Yet, during those days of upheaval and incrimination, we saw a number of posters claiming they're taking their kick balls and heading home - be that to Dragonsfoot, GR, Paizo, wherever the heck they feel love. Have we lost more than we've gained?

Ergo, this question: Is EN World larger than it was prior to the release of 4e? Is it smaller (in terms of active population)? Or is it pretty much the same? Should we be basing this on number of hits, unique visitors, etc.?

I don't know web metrics, so maybe I'm asking the wrong questions - and maybe this is the type of info that's not shared with normal schleps like myself who don't pay for advertising. Sorry for any confusion.

FWIW - I still love you, Morrus.

Toodles,
Le Penalty

moved to Meta...

I have to admit, I'm curious about this too, now that it has come up.

Another bit of interesting information might be how many new accounts have been created since 4E came out?

Interesting question. I'm not sure how we can really measure it though, because I suspect that while there are still roughly the same number of hits, there might be more lurkers now and possibly a smaller active posting population. That sort of messes up the metrics of something like Alexa, etc.

In my experience compared to pre-4e, there's a chunk of folks not interested in 4e that aren't posting at all, or less frequently than before, while a group of 4e fans have been rather prolific posters. We used to have Dragon and Dungeon getting a single thread each to consolidate their discussion, while now we have one or two folks starting a different thread for every single DDI update (which kinda of completely shuts out all the folks not paying WotC for access).

But I think Enworld has been pretty stable for hits when compared to WotC. The wizards forums are a shadow of their prior selves. They took a -massive- nosedive in traffic after Gleemax was rolled out and continued to decline till 4e was announced. At that point they had a bump for around a month or so, but still didn't reach their previous pre-Gleemax 3.x traffic levels, and then they've continued to decline since then (which isn't a good sign for DDI subs...).

Enworld seems to have avoided all of that decline that WotC has seen, be it the result of poor forum management, forum shuffling and closing and merging, or just ill will from the posting community. While it's not perfect, Enworld is free of the cesspool of issues over on the wizards boards.

LightPhoenix said:

Another bit of interesting information might be how many new accounts have been created since 4E came out?

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Can't answer the original question but this is easy enough to find out. Since June 6th this year, 12038 members has joined ENWorld. That's almost 1/5 of all registered users. Ofcourse, majority of these has not made a single post ...

Shemeska said:

In my experience compared to pre-4e, there's a chunk of folks not interested in 4e that aren't posting at all, or less frequently than before, while a group of 4e fans have been rather prolific posters. We used to have Dragon and Dungeon getting a single thread each to consolidate their discussion, while now we have one or two folks starting a different thread for every single DDI update (which kinda of completely shuts out all the folks not paying WotC for access).

Click to expand...

Yeah, where is Hong?

About the post for every single DDI update contra the consolidated post, I only find that normal. After all, the people who subscribe want to talk about it when they get their hands on it. Just as before. Difference is that now we get it smaller pieces, instead of a whole magazine once a month.

Also, how does it shut people anymore out than before? Those who paid for the magazines had more to say than those who didn't, or what?

Blackrat said:

Can't answer the original question but this is easy enough to find out. Since June 6th this year, 12038 members has joined ENWorld. That's almost 1/5 of all registered users. Ofcourse, majority of these has not made a single post ...

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That's a lot of new members.

Blackrat said:

Can't answer the original question but this is easy enough to find out. Since June 6th this year, 12038 members has joined ENWorld. That's almost 1/5 of all registered users. Of course, majority of these has not made a single post ...

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Wow. Nice bit of detective work. Is that a valid number? It seems very, very high.

The fact those folks haven't posted speaks volumes about the types and manner of our discussions on these forums for the past few months.

Hopefully they'll start to de-lurk now that things seem kinder and gentler around here.

Grampa Wis

Wisdom Penalty said:

Wow. Nice bit of detective work. Is that a valid number? It seems very, very high.

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I concur. Thanks Blackrat!

The fact those folks haven't posted speaks volumes about the types and manner of our discussions on these forums for the past few months.

Hopefully they'll start to de-lurk now that things seem kinder and gentler around here.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure that a link between lurking and board hostility can really be drawn. Correllation is not causation, after all. I don't disagree that the boards have been in a fair bit of agiation in the last year or so. However, there could be any number of reasons for the lack of posting - normal rate of lurking, spamming, people not interested in D&D, people not interested in 4E, alt accounts, access to registered member features without interest in the boards, still absorbing 4E, liked RPG.net/Wizards boards better, and so forth.

I'd give the argument of intimidation more weight if we could compare the average new poster lurk time of previous members versus these 12k. Of course, you'd probably have to start with accounts made a little after this iteration of the boards, to avoid biasing towards members of the old boards who moved past the lurking stage.

Wisdom Penalty said:

The fact those folks haven't posted speaks volumes about the types and manner of our discussions on these forums for the past few months.

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Not really, IME. The majority of members of any discussion board are lurkers. Normally the actual posting is done by a "few" very active members.

"Few" is in relation to the overall size of the board, and should not be understood to mean "two or three people".

/M