From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] size of Plan 9 user base From: Richard Uhtenwoldt References: <2a5f19ac9308c5baf2cf3ecf8ac24146@plan9.ucalgary.ca>, <2a5f19ac9308c5baf2cf3ecf8ac24146@plan9.ucalgary.ca> In-reply-to: <2a5f19ac9308c5baf2cf3ecf8ac24146@plan9.ucalgary.ca> Message-Id: Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 23:29:11 -0700 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 4e89e0cc-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 >Can you also provide stats for the number of messages, so we can >compare ourselves to the *BSDs? here you go. the archive for the FreeBSD lists does not list folder sizes, so no i have no info on BSD. but i subscribe to lists covering the Erlang and Haskell functional-programming languages, so here's a summary of traffic volume from 2002 dec 1 to 2003 may 1. plan9 9.9 megs in 1242 messages, haskell 28.5 megs in 781 messages, erlang 13.0 megs in ??? messages, where plan9 == 9fans erlang == Erlang-Questions haskell == haskell@haskell.org, haskell-cafe@haskell.org, glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org, glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org, ffi@haskell.org, nhc-bugs@haskell.org the data above imply that on average, a haskell message is at least 3 times the size of a Plan-9 message! so, a check of the data is in order. for the check, I did not take pains to start and stop at specific dates: rather I just picked 3 files of plan9 archives and 3 files of haskell archives. since we are interested in a ratio (average characters per message), we do not need to ensure that one set of archives covers a different start (or end) date. $ wc -c plan9.old[def] 5089705 plan9.oldd 5701148 plan9.olde 5568847 plan9.oldf 16359700 total $ grep 'Return-path: <9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu>' plan9.old[def]|wc -l 4478 16359700 divided by 4478 messages == 3653 characters per messsage $ wc -c haskell.old[bcd] 4751391 haskell.oldb 3023976 haskell.oldc 3672447 haskell.oldd 11447814 total $ grep 'Delivered-To: haskell@haskell.org' haskell.old[bcd]|wc -l 808 11447814 divided by 808 == 14168 characters per message. $ wc -c erlang- 24533390 erlang- $ grep 'Return-path: ' erlang-|wc -l 5150 24533390 divided by 5150 == 4763 characters per message. summarizing, the avg 9fans message is 3653 characters. the avg erlang message is 4763 the avg haskell message is 14168 so, on average, a Haskell message really is bigger: 3.8 times the size of a 9fans message. the haskell lists apply to every message a "footer" that says, "to unsubscribe to this mailing list...", etc, of 137 characters. but that 137 bytes is trivial compared to the differences in average message size (over 10,000 bytes). (i'm relying here on the fact that subtracting 137 bytes from _every_ message causes the _average_ bytes per message to decrease by exactly 137 bytes.) finally, I tried to explain the discrepancy by measuring the size of the headers of a few messages, but that does not explain it either. about half of the Haskell posters are professors, and I suppose professors are just more verbose.