[CHARTS] Brief monthly overview of the local boards activity

[Rikafip]

For the last few months I am writing short overview of our local board posts and merit activity. I was curious how we compare with other boards, so I made few charts for February report. Might as well share it here too, some people may find it useful/interesting, and I'll add one more chart with merit/post ratio.

As I said in the title, it will be  monthly overview, and brief, so I don't plan to go into details. All data was taken from @DdmrDdmr Merit Dashboard.


Number of posts in the period between January 28th and February 28th

As seen in the chart below, Russian board is by far the most active one, having almost as many posts as all other local boards combined, followed by German and Turkish local boards. I knew that Russian board is very active, but I didn't know there is such difference compared to rest of them.
Few local boards that have negative post difference are missing, like Chinese and Scandinavian.





Number of merits in the period between January 28th and February 28th

There is no surprise that Russian local board is yet again on the top, considering their activity, but difference between them and few others like German, Turkish and Pilipinas is significantly smaller  compared to the  post difference.





Merit/Post ratio

Since i made charts for posts and merit, might as well compare that data to get  merit/post ratio. I must say that results are surprising, and for some boards might be even misleading (e.g. Dutch board had quite a few posts deleted compared to their activity, and that might pump their ratio). Like in the post chart, some boards are excluded due negative post count, or in Hebrew case not getting even single merit.
I expect this chart to change quite a lot each month and shouldn't be  taken too seriously, as many things can affect it, like deleted posts, merit giveaways etc.




List of monthly overviews

2020
March 2020
April 2020
May 2020
June 2020
July 2020
August 2020
September 2020
October 2020
November 2020
December 2020

2021
January 2021
February 2021
March 2021
April 2021
May 2021
June 2021
July 2021
August 2021
September 2021
October 2021
November 2021
December 2021

2022
January 2022
February 2022
March 2022
April 2022
May 2022
June 2022
July 2022
August 2022
September 2022
October 2022
November 2022
December 2022

2023
January 2023
February 2023
March 2023
April 2023
May 2023
June 2023

[asu]

I'm surprised Pilipinas Section is more actively than I thought. For some reason being at the top 4 makes sense that it's still been active even though yobit campaign ended on 27 Jan that boost the posting activities there while the data gathered starts on 28 Jan and still keeps the number of made per posts there.

Also, it looks like this month of February have been the greatest sMerit distribution so far in Pilipinas Section.

Per Month

Code:

February: 1028 Merit

Make it to the list of another achievement that has been unlocked. A new all time high record for monthly sMerit distribution. This month we surpassed it with certainty to a 4 digits!

[o_e_l_e_o]

It would be useful if we could see up to date merit/post ratios for a number of the English speaking boards as well the English speaking section as a whole. Dutch and Arabic are obviously outliers because their low number of posts, but it's difficult to draw conclusions about the other sections. Are the Russian and French sections significantly under-merited, for example, or is it that the Spanish and Indian sections are over-merited?

If we exclude Russia for being an outlier in terms of number of posts, and look at the next 5 sections - German, Turkish, Pilipinas, French, and Croatian - all have a ratio of around 0.2 - 0.3, which is probably where our real average lies. Indeed, adding up posts and merits from all local sections gives a ratio of 0.26.

I know DdmrDdmr previously provided some very good statistics regarding merits per post ratio in each board. I wonder if he has anything up to date?


It would much easier to read the graphs if each section retained the same color between graphs.

[tranthidung]

It would be useful if we could see up to date merit/post ratios for a number of the English speaking boards as well the English speaking section as a whole. Dutch and Arabic are obviously outliers because their low number of posts, but it's difficult to draw conclusions about the other sections. Are the Russian and French sections significantly under-merited, for example, or is it that the Spanish and Indian sections are over-merited?

If we exclude Russia for being an outlier in terms of number of posts, and look at the next 5 sections - German, Turkish, Pilipinas, French, and Croatian - all have a ratio of around 0.2 - 0.3, which is probably where our real average lies. Indeed, adding up posts and merits from all local sections gives a ratio of 0.26.

It mainly due to spam, I guess. Look at my past statistics on local boards and local moderators.

• Daily number of posts and topics over local boards
• Earned merit per posts over local moderators

These data show us the fact that Russian moderators have to trash spam topics much more than other local moderators. You can easily see it by checking post history of Russian moderators.

I'm surprised Pilipinas Section is more actively than I thought.

For daily merit operations over local boards, here you go: Time series plots of daily merits over boards. Pilipinas and some others have more actively merit operations after new merit sources allocated to their boards.

[Rikafip]

Also, it looks like this month of February have been the greatest sMerit distribution so far in Pilipinas Section.

Good to hear that, it was one of the best months for our local board as well (3rd best since introduction) merit wise. But it is no surprise, since theymos increased smerit allocation of active merit sources few months ago.

Dutch and Arabic are obviously outliers because their low number of posts, but it's difficult to draw conclusions about the other sections. Are the Russian and French sections significantly under-merited, for example, or is it that the Spanish and Indian sections are over-merited?

Yeah, it is hard to draw any conclusions about that without being active in those boards. Deleted posts are also a factor, for example Spanish board had more than 400 posts removed in the mentioned period, therefore affecting merit/post ratio significantly. In January they made 871 posts and shared 292 merits, making it 0.34 merit/post ratio, more than 50% less compared to February. These numbers vary a lot from month to month from what i could notice, that's why I mentioned it shouldn't be taken too seriously.

It would much easier to read the graphs if each section retained the same color between graphs.

I agree, and I realized that after i made charts. Simple chart tool i used didn't have that option. I plan to sort that out in the next monthly overview.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

With the recent legalization of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in India, I believe there would be a significant rise of activity in our Indian local board. Statistics which would be counted upon from March might have a difference (increase) in activity while comparing to previous months.

Prior to the appointment of the merit source in our local, the whole board was lacking quality and was infested with spams which were being posted for the sake of gaining post count. Apart from this, there was no improvement in the total activity of the board and most of the users have moved onto the global boards and significantly the interest in the local board started diminishing as well.

Are the Russian and French sections significantly under-merited, for example, or is it that the Spanish and Indian sections are over-merited?

From a practical view point, some topics and posts in Indian section deserves more than a merit and most of the posts doesn't deserve even a single merit. Also, I merit based on the exposure of a particular topic since 90% of our board is in English. For instance, if a topic is posted in global English board it might receive 4-5 merits on a whole and when they are posted in local board they would receive the same exposure of 4-5 merits as well. Well, if my memory serves right I have never given more than a 5 at one single merit tx for a post/topic.

[joniboini]

It is surprising that Indonesian board has over a thousand posts in a single month, considering there is an apparent decrease of posts in the mainboard. I believe the majority comes from the alt sections which is 'spammy friendly' since a long time ago, though right now it significantly got better.

Prior to the appointment of the merit source in our local, the whole board was lacking quality and was infested with spams which were being posted for the sake of gaining post count. Apart from this, there was no improvement in the total activity of the board and most of the users have moved onto the global boards and significantly the interest in the local board started diminishing as well.

We have a similar situation there. Right now it's much better though. The merit/post ratio is much better than I expected.

[DdmrDdmr]

Just a few additional quick comments:

a)   The data in the OP is relative to one month only. It gives us a fair bird’s eye view of merit/post in the different local boards, and the number of merits and posts within those sections, but it is subject to noise.

As is pointed out on this thread, some months have strange variations in the number of posts, be it due to deletions, threads being moved, re-indexing process, or me tabulating some figure wrongly. For example, the Spanish local board has -327 posts in the Hardware and Mining childboard. Regardless of the reason (I’ve checked that it is not a tabulation error), the merit/post is wildly affected there by this fact. In general, it is better to have various month’s readings to avoid the noise.

b)   A local board has multiple childboards as we know, and the difference within these in terms of merit/post ratio varies wildly. For example, I created this table for my local board not that long ago:



I’m not going to disec the above table here, but the average (last column) is 0,131, and lately between 0,2 and 0,49. That’s kind of half what we see in the reading from the chards in the OP. Adding perspective helps.

c)   The number of posts in Altcoins influences a fair share on the ratio, decreasing its value. If a local board is still rather actively creating posts there, then likely the overall merit/post there will decrease further in comparison to other local boards.

Note: The data for posts and merits in the OP can be aligned, by filtering the dates on the tabs where the merit numbers are derived from. For example, the following (data already filtered) would be the tab I would use to derive the data for the period Jan 28..Feb 28: https://public.tableau.com/shared/ZZDTZZZ5F?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link

[Rikafip]

Just a few additional quick comments:

a)   The data in the OP is relative to one month only. It gives us a fair bird’s eye view of merit/post in the different local boards, and the number of merits and posts within those sections, but it is subject to noise.

As is pointed out on this thread, some months have strange variations in the number of posts, be it due to deletions, threads being moved, re-indexing process, or me tabulating some figure wrongly. For example, the Spanish local board has -327 posts in the Hardware and Mining childboard. Regardless of the reason (I’ve checked that it is not a tabulation error), the merit/post is wildly affected there by this fact. In general, it is better to have various month’s readings to avoid the noise.

First, thanks for your inputs, they are always appreciated!

I wanted to focus mainly on the current situation in local boards, without going too much in the past, but I will certainly add few more stuff for the next monthly overview, like maybe adding some average merit/post ratio in the period of let's say 3 or 6 months, just to average things and give a bit clearer picture. But as previously mentioned, these ratios can very a lot due various reasons, and they shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Note: The data for posts and merits in the OP can be aligned, by filtering the dates on the tabs where the merit numbers are derived from. For example, the following (data already filtered) would be the tab I would use to derive the data for the period Jan 28..Feb 28: https://public.tableau.com/shared/ZZDTZZZ5F?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link

Thanks for this suggestion, it definitely makes more sense, so i updated both Merit and Merit/Post ratio charts according to that data.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

We have a similar situation there. Right now it's much better though. The merit/post ratio is much better than I expected.

The Indonesian board is a knowledge hub for many Indonesian bitcoiners who really don't have a good command with English, but in India we approximately speak over 22 different languages all over our country and this is why English is being referred to as a common language all over the country and has been an official language for Indian netizens.

This is also the reason why, some really good topics made by Indian members are being posted in global boards for better exposure rather than the Indian sub-board. Probably this situation wouldn't change and I would say this is really good since many global members are being educated by the topic as well and it's not being restricted only to Indians. But to increase the activity, we are thinking up of bringing the global topics through translation to Indian board so that our people who aren't really well versed with English might gain knowledge on the topic.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> I know DdmrDdmr previously provided some very good statistics regarding merits per post ratio in each board. I wonder if he has anything up to date? <…>

I’m on it … I’ve got the information ready, and a small set of Beta data on the published Merit Dashboard, but still need to create the OP. I should have it at some point this week. Besides placing the info on the Dashboard, I’ll also recap the info on a regular post.

While looking over the results, I detected something pretty weird on the Chinese local board which I had not paid attention before: Month after month, the number of posts in the Chinese local board decreases (I mean negative number of created posts), and the number of merits is down to a few per month. I wonder in anyone from that local board has inner insights as to why this is happening (I assume I haven’t messed up here, which could be the reason, although I’ve double-checked it). It can't be all down to reindexing the post count numbers ...

[Rikafip]

Brief monthly overview of the local boards activity for the period February 28th - March 31st

As the last time, all data was taken from @DdmrDdmr Merit Dashboard.


Number of posts in the period between February 28th  and March 31st

No changes at the top 3, Russian is still the most active local board by far, followed by German and Turkish boards, while French and Pilipinas changed the spots(French increased by almost 50% compared to the previous month, while Japanese board experienced even more drastic increase ). Few boards saw significant decrease in post quantity, like Romanian (had quite a few posts deleted) and Indonesian, that had approximately 50% decrease.





Number of merits in the period between February 28th and March 31st

As in the last month, Russian is still at the top of the merit list, but Turkish  board very close this month, mostly due Russian board having 25% decrease in merit distribution while Turkish staying almost the same as last month. Another very active local board, German, had even bigger merit decrease.





Merit/Post ratio

It is obvious that Romanian board sticks out here as a sore thumb, and its due  low post amount (additionally  incrsased by huge amount of deleted posts, compared to their activity0 in the combination with one big 50 merit transaction, that kinda "padded" their merit/post ratio. Another board that had big increase is Indonesian board, which was mainly affected by before mentioned decrease of posts in their board.

I just wanna mention again that these numbers shouldn't be taken too seriously, as there will be a lot of changes each month. A lot of things can change these numbers significantly, in both active boards and especially in those that have few dozens/hundreds posts.




To put things a bit more into perspective and to negate extremes a bit, i made another merit/post chart, this time for the period of last 3 months. First I wanted to make this chart for 6 months period, but some currently active boards would be excluded due high amount of deleted posts (e.g. Pilipinas board had 70k posts deleted between October and December), so I settled with 3 months. Even in this 3 month chart some had to be excluded due same reason, unfortunately.

[hugeblack]

It is wrong for all local boards to be classified at the same level due to the differences between them in terms of activity, Merit sources, and deleted posts. Therefore, it is better to define levels and then make statistical measurements on them.
It will also be to compare each local board with itself in terms of the increase or decrease of posts from the previous month, the distribution of Merits, and deleted posts.

I will translate the topic to my local board for further discussion .

[Rikafip]

It is wrong for all local boards to be classified at the same level due to the differences between them in terms of activity, Merit sources, and deleted posts. Therefore, it is better to define levels and then make statistical measurements on them.

Well, that's why i call it brief, as I didn't want to go in depth with the details and analysis, i prefer to keep it relatively simple and stick to the numbers.

It will also be to compare each local board with itself in terms of the increase or decrease of posts from the previous month, the distribution of Merits, and deleted posts.

I planned to do that  for this month overview, to include decrease/increase of merit, posts and merit/post ratio, percentage wise, but in the end I scratched that idea, but i might include that in the next monthly overview when I plan to use some better chart tool (another thing I planned to do for this month, but I was kinda lazy)

I will translate the topic to my local board for further discussion .

Nice, good to hear that!

[Rikafip]

Brief monthly overview of the local boards activity for the period  between March 31st and April 30th

As always, all data was taken from  @DdmrDdmr Merit Dashboard where you can find much more data regarding specific board.


Number of posts between 31st - April 30th

Despite noticeable drop compared to previous month, Russian was the most active, as usual, with German and Turkish being 2nd and 3rd, followed by French. Some boards experienced big activity increase this month, like Indonesian (almost 100%) and especially Romanian board (from 13 posts to 150, in part affected with no posts deleted this month). Korean increase looks like anomaly, same thing happened with Japanese board previous month. On the other hand, few boards had noticeable decrease, like Pilipinas with almost 50% drop, and French with 40% decrease.

As in previous overviews, some boards are missing due having negative post difference, like Chinese board that has huge amount of posts deleted each month. Same thing happened to one of the more active  local boards, Arabic. Due moved topics and deleted posts (spring cleanup i guess  )  they end up with negative (-207) posts difference so they weren't included in this month's post chart.




Number of merit between  March 31st - April 30th

When it comes to merit distribution, top of the chart looks similar as the previous one: Russian at the top, followed by Turkish and German. It is good to see that some boards like Portuguese (from 78 to 155) and Romanian ( from 85 to 155) had significant increase, compared to previous month. In general, numbers here fluctuate considerably each month, that is not a surprise as it as manny things can affect it, especially among boards with less activity.




Merit/Post ratio between March 31st - April 30th

While previous month Romanian board was far ahead on this chart due deleted posts, this time that didn't had any influence, and they stayed at the top, with an excellent 1.02 merit/post ratio, and like last month, followed by Indonesian. Arabic board is usually there around the top as well, but this time due negative post difference they won't be on this chart. Few local boards are also missing because no merit was shared there during the mentioned period.
Just to mentioned again that this chart changes a lot each month, so it shouldn't be taken seriously.

[tranthidung]

Maybe it is personal favorite but I would like to have the plot region ( background) in white. In previous updates, some others asked for same colors for same boards over plots. So if you need help with that, just post data source here then I can help you with appropriate plots. If you don't, simply ignore my proposal. 

[Rikafip]

Maybe it is personal favorite but I would like to have the plot region ( background) in white.

Dunno, I find that shade of blue kinda soothing  

In previous updates, some others asked for same colors for same boards over plots. So if you need help with that, just post data source here then I can help you with appropriate plots. If you don't, simply ignore my proposal.  

True, same colour would be better solution and I planned to do it for this overview, but due convenience and laziness (i tend to procrastinate) I kept using some old chart tool. I will sort it out for the next overview, gonna upgrade it a bit. Thanks for the offer anyway!

[Rikafip]

Another month passed, it's time for a new local boards overview. Finally stopped procrastinating and delaying chart updates, and I introduced  few changes  so now local boards now have fixed color, across different charts for easier reading.

As in all monthly overviews so far, all data was taken from @DdmrDdmr Merit Dashboard. If you want more in depth analysis of each local boards, I suggest you check that tool.


Number of posts in the period between April 30th  and May 31st

In this period, 20.691 posts were made acorss local boards, that is approximately 17% decrease (down from 24970 ) compared to previous period. As in previous months, Russian board is still the most active one, but this time with not so huge difference, as it experienced 25% decrease. Another board that had big decrease is the German board, with 40% decrease. Big reason for that decrease is a lot of posts deleted from off topic section. While Chinese board is regularly in the negative when it comes to post difference and therefore not included in this chart, Arabic board is experiencing same thing like in the previous month - a lot of deleted posts from the main board.

It is important to mention few local  boards that increased activity significantly, like Dutch and Greek boards. I hope that last month was not just an anomaly or exception, and that those boards are really waking up and slowly getting to old numbers.

Number of merits in the period between April 30th  and May 31st

Opposite to the number of posts, in this period local boards had almost 15% more merit shared, from 6445 in the previous period to 7554 in this one. No change at the top of merit shared, but this time German and Turkish board came very close to the Russian board. With the increased  post activity, it is not the surprise that Dutch and Greek board had big increase in shared merit as well.

I thought that it would be interesting to see how many people are part of merit system in the local boards each month, so  I added  this chart as well. No surprise there, more merits shared means more people involved, but it is nice to see Pilipinas board being very active, compared to the amount of merit that they shared.

Merit/Post ratio between April 30th - May 31st

Last but not the least, merit/post ratio chart. Increased activity brought Dutch board on the top for the first time, followed by Italian and Spanish board. As I said in previous overviews, this chart shouldn't be taken seriously as it can be affected by deleted posts a lot. Perfect example for that is German board, that usually doesn't have such high merit/post ratio, but due high amount of posts deleted, their average is much higher than before.
Some boards like Arabic (that is usually very high on this chart ) are not on the list unfortunately, due negative post difference.

[Rikafip]

June is behind us, time a for a new monthly overview of the local boards activity.

Data was taken from @DdmrDdmr Merit Dashboard. I suggest checking that if you want more in depth overview of the each board.


Number of posts between June 1st and  June 30th

One thing is immediately obvious, when compared to previous month- Russian board is not on the top, and not even on the list, due huge amount of posts deleted for some reason (more than 12,000) therefore getting into negative difference. With the absence of Russian board, German is on the top, followed by Turkish. Most of the  boards that were in the top half last month had less had less activity, like French, Italian, Spanish and few others. Some like Arabic had quite a few deleted posts as well, making them look  less active than they actually were.

Number of merit between June 1st  and June 30th

No big changes at the top, Russian board is there as always, and German at the 2nd. Turkish board experienced heavy drop in the terms of shared merit, but something like that was expected because they lost one big merit source who was generating huge percentage of their merit. Two other big boards also had big merit drop for some reason; Spanish went down from 429 to 175 and Italian from 903 to 507.

Merit senders and receivers per local board between June1st and June30th

Previous month was the first time I introduced this chart, and I decided to keep it as I think that it is a decent indicator of the amount of active members on the each board. If you are active on your local board, chances are good that you will either send or receive at least 1 merit in one month period.

Merit/Post ratio between June1st and June30th

After few months absence due negative post difference, Arabic board is back on this chart. Again they had huge amount of posts deleted, that lead to this unrealistically high merit/post ratio. As expected, Turkish board went down a lot on this list compared to last month. Bottom of the chart is reserved for Croatian local board, like in previous months.

[Pmalek]

I am surprised to see how inactive the Indian local board is considering how potentially huge that part of the forum could be. I guess they are not that into Bitcoin after all, or it is somehow related to the constant battle with restricting people from acquiring Bitcoin.
What is going on in the Arabic section? 41 total posts only, but a ratio of over 8 merits per post