Right, this is a question that has been asked a fair bit lately. I posted this in another thread: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=2293829 , and it resulted in me getting an overwhelming amount of questions over the IM. So, as people seem rather interested about this, I decided to check it out.
Note: I'm writing this as I go along, so I may be rambling abouts a bit. If you're not interested in reading a wall-o-text, just skip past the part between the -------s to the part with the conclusion.
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What I essentially proved with my other post (linked earlier), was that the forums overall haven't decreased. They haven't really increased lately either though. However, what people mainly think, is that the non-offtopic forums have increased, and that the offtopic forum has kept increasing. I'll be testing this out.
What I will doing, is checking each 10 pages backwards on each forum, and at what time the last post in that thread was. I will then check how long time there was in this interval, compared to the others.
This doesn't test the number of posts, but the amount of threads. Not accurate, but the best I can really do.
It's the last post on page 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50, and the 1st post on page 1 (non-stickied)
Sales:
Page 1: 6th July (40 days)
Page 10: 27th May (28 days)
Page 20: 24th April (28 days)
Page 30: 27th March (25 days)
Page 40: 2nd March (33 days)
Page 50: 30th January (26 days)
Page 60: 4th January
So the sales forum does in fact appear to have slowed down since the end of May, or sometime in May. (VGC 2.0 launched 22nd May)
All in all: The sales forum does have less threads created since the launch of 2.0.
Gaming:
Page 1: 6th July (12 days)
Page 10: 24th June (11 days)
Page 20: 13th June (8 days)
Page 30: 5th June (4 days)
Page 40: 1st June (9 days)
Page 50: 22nd May (8 days)
Page 60: 13th May (9 days)
Page 70: 4th May (8 days)
Page 80 26th April (7 days)
Page 90 19th April (8 days)
Page 100 11th April
This seems a bit odd really. The activity doubled at E3but then dipped to a third of that (50% less than usual) rather suddenly. I can't explain this actually. It's either a start of a slowdown, or just a random lack of activity.
Nintendo:
Page 1: 6th July (16 days)
Page 10: 20th June (15 days)
Page 20: 5th June (9 days)
Page 30: 27th May (14 days)
Page 40: 13th May (14 days)
Page 50: 29th April (10 days)
Page 60: 19th April
This doesn't appear to be a drop at all really. E3 bump, then a slight drop compared to the earlier.
Sony:
Page 1: 6th July (16 days)
Page 10: 20th June (14 days)
Page 20: 6th June (7 days)
Page 30: 30th May (16 days)
Page 40: 14th May (14 days)
Page 50: 30th April (11 days)
Page 60: 19th April
This is, essentially, the same as with the Nintendo forum. Increase during E3, steady on other than that. Also incredibly interesting to see that the Sony and the Ninty forums are essentially equally large.
Microsoft:
Page 1: 6th July (13 days)
Page 5: 23rd June (14 days)
Page 10: 9th June (6 days)
Page 15: 3rd June (4 days)
Page 20: 31st May (13 days)
Page 25: 18th May (13 days)
Page 30: 5th May (11 days)
Page 35: 24th April
Same as Nintendo & Sony (except that it is at 60% the speed). Increase with E3, drop to average after that.
PC:
Page 1: 6th July (20 days)
Page 3: 16th June (35 days)
Page 6: 11th May (24 days)
Page 9: 18th April (29 days)
Page 12: 19th March (25 days)
Page 15: 22nd February
Wait... It slowed down during E3? And then bumped up to new heights? This seems odd, so the reason is probably that VGC 2.0 put people off for a short while.
Off-topic:
Page 1: 6th July (22 days)
Page 10: 14th June (26 days)
Page 20: 19th May (17 days)
Page 30: 2nd May (15 days)
Page 40: 17th April (14 days)
Page 50: 3rd April (17 days)
Page 60: 17th March (18 days)
Page 70: 27th February
Off-topic appears to have had a major drop after VGC 2.0. It's either that or E3 which caused it to drop, and there's no reason for it to be the latter. It does, however, seem that it is starting to increase again.
This might not seem all that interesting, but it's essentially proof that the site hasn't really dropped.
Another fun thing:
Average time for 10 pages to pass:
Gaming: ~ 10 days
Nintendo: ~ 15 days
Sony: ~ 15 days
Off-topic: ~ 20 days
Microsoft: ~ 25 days
Sales:~ 35 days
PC: ~ 65 days
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All in all, it seems that the Sales forum, PC and the off-topic forums are the only ones that have dropped. The others remain balanced. It seems that the PC and off-topic ones are also picking up pace again.
I hope this was interesting, and that it can at least prevent people from unkowingly making false claims about the site slowing.
