Does size matter? LAVA vs. NI.com

[Jim Kring]

Just out of curiousity (and for the fun of it), I tried to find some comparative numbers. Here they are:

I was able to figure out how many registered users there are on ni.com forums, by doing a simple null string search for user names, which produced a list of all users, having 98,489 results. LAVA shows its user count on its home page at 8,312 (8.4% of NI.com).

The various forums (LabVIEW + all others) on ni.com have 583,832 postings and the LAVA forums (LabVIEW + all others) have 79,554 posts (13.6% of NI.com).

Right now, ni.com has 51 members online and LAVA has 47 members online (92.2% of NI.com).

It's pretty impressive how large and active the LAVA community is, considering that it's 100% community supported. By the way, have you purchased your LAVA Premium Membership?

[Yair]

Those numbers are very impressive, but I'm not sure they tell the entire story. Based purely on impression, I would say that the NI LabVIEW board gets around 300 posts a day on weekdays and I'm sure the other boards increase that number.

I don't think that LAVA gets to 1/7th of that, but it's probably not that far. It actually seems to me as if the NI forums are getting farther away (not that there is any problem with that - even if LAVA had 1% of the activity the NI site has it would be very impressive and I think that LAVA, by the very nature implied by its name, should have less users and less activity).

With all that said - congratulations, Michael, and thanks again.

[Ton Plomp]

QUOTE(Jim Kring @ Feb 2 2008, 06:46 AM)

Just out of curiousity (and for the fun of it), I tried to find some comparative numbers. Here they are:

I was able to figure out how many registered users there are on ni.com forums, by doing a simple null string search for user names, which produced a list of all users, having 98,489 results. LAVA shows its user count on its home page at 8,312 (8.4% of NI.com).

The various forums (LabVIEW + all others) on ni.com have 583,832 postings and the LAVA forums (LabVIEW + all others) have 79,554 posts (13.6% of NI.com).

Right now, ni.com has 51 members online and LAVA has 47 members online (92.2% of NI.com).

It's pretty impressive how large and active the LAVA community is, considering that it's 100% community supported. By the way, have you purchased your LAVA Premium Membership?

Jim,

you didn't mentioned guests, 72 vs. 10.000 at the moment (<1%) at the moment so I think that getting info is more important for NI than LAVA, supporting the '100% community support' idea, although lurking is officially allowed :laugh: .

What I certainly like on LAVA is the PM, the number of abuse has been very little, 3 over 3 years and on NI it is very hard to get into direct (private) contact with other users, if I wanted such a thing on NI I would sent a link to my LAVA PM contact address or use some misformed gmail account.

Ton

[Jim Kring]

QUOTE(tcplomp @ Feb 2 2008, 12:32 PM)

Jim,

you didn't mentioned guests, 72 vs. 10.000 at the moment (<1%) at the moment so I think that getting info is more important for NI than LAVA, supporting the '100% community support' idea, although http://forums.lavag.org/Lurker-Roll-Call-t9277.html#' target="_blank">lurking is officially allowed :laugh: .

What I certainly like on LAVA is the PM, the number of abuse has been very little, 3 over 3 years and on NI it is very hard to get into direct (private) contact with other users, if I wanted such a thing on NI I would sent a link to my LAVA PM contact address or use some misformed gmail account.

Ton

I don't really trust that 10,000 non-registered users stat on NI's website. I'd bet that this is the number of people on NI's entire website at any given time. Also, I'm not sure about the time window that they are measuring over.

[Tomi Maila]

QUOTE(Jim Kring @ Feb 2 2008, 11:19 PM)

I don't really trust that 10,000 non-registered users stat on NI's website. I'd bet that this is the number of people on NI's entire website at any given time. Also, I'm not sure about the time window that they are measuring over.

Hmm... custom signatures could be used to track the dark side usage in high accuracy

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

One thing you left out is the difference in experitse over the visitor from NI & LAVA.

I look around here and you have a higher percentage (per capita) of experts than NI.

This is where the enveloppe gets pushed.. So numbers don't mean much in that respect.

[TG]

QUOTE(JoeLabview @ Feb 3 2008, 07:39 PM)

One thing you left out is the difference in experitse over the visitor from NI & LAVA.

I look around here and you have a higher percentage (per capita) of experts than NI.

This is where the enveloppe gets pushed.. So numbers don't mean much in that respect.

I agree, in my exp there is a lot of eye glazing at NI when a significant Q is asked.

That does not happen here. Thats whay I joined in 2006 and never regret it.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE(TG @ Feb 3 2008, 10:35 PM)

I agree, in my exp there is a lot of eye glazing at NI when a significant Q is asked.

That does not happen here. Thats whay I joined in 2006 and never regret it.

Not just that. The average level of question is very basic on the NI forums in comparison with LAVA. And if you exclude the questions from a few very specific users on LAVA, you can consider the average level of almost every question to be professionel, and the answers as you say even more.

On LAVA I often do not post since I don't know the answer good enough to feel I can add something. On the NI forums I usually don't post since I don't feel any desire to spend even one second in answering a particular question and knowing there are many others that will eventually step up anyhow.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

The most recent member on NI has a user ID of "101525".

Although the NI forum has a lot of simple Q's, the high traffic brings in some interesting questions form time to time. I have to confess that I have lost interest in answering first line Q's on the NI forum and spend my time either looking for up-n-coming contributors who are struggling to answer other's Qs or (my new hobby) tagging posts. I view these two observations as being realted. There is only so many times you can enjoy asking the same Q over and over. By tagging, I hope to make it easier to answer the simple Qs. The tagging also serves me in that I am reviewing some of the best posts and keeping those old synapses lively and strong. But I obviously digress!

For me LAVA traffic is just to low to serve as my single point of LV stimulation. There are days that pass without anything interesting coming up.

So the two forums fit nicely together to fill my needs.

Ben

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

QUOTE(neB @ Feb 4 2008, 08:14 AM)

Although the NI forum has a lot of simple Q's, the high traffic brings in some interesting questions form time to time. I have to confess that I have lost interest in answering first line Q's on the NI forum ..... There is only so many times you can enjoy asking the same Q over and over.

Hey Ben,

I'm starting to post more and more in depth questions over here

Now, you have to try to answer them LOL!!

I have a pet project which involves modelling a complete system for signal analysis. Since the system costs $400,000, they want it modelled to see how / where to improve it. There's gonna be a lot of questions on that one.

I suspect I will use this forum since you can get ideas off the beaten path. I don't need shrink-wrapped solutions... I need tricks and what-nots.. and a bit of fun..

This is where you can get that.

RayR