ZooChat is 18 years old!

33. Media uploads per day - top 50% of uploaders vs the rest (90 day moving averages)

Let's do that same analysis for media uploads next.
  • From launch to our 18th anniversary, we've had 1,444 members upload media on ZooChat
  • In that same period, we made 488,341 media uploads
  • I found that 29 members made 50% of the uploads - that's 2.0% of the members making 50% of the uploads
  • In summary: if you have made at least 2,905 media uploads then you are in the top 50% of uploaders, if we measure it by contribution to the overall media total

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No real surprises there - and it's a lot more consistent than the posts. The main thing of note would be the early surge by our top uploaders - they got in early, and that head start makes it difficult for new comers to catch up.

If we look at the difference between the two groups - it's much closer overall than the post chart - and it changes frequently. I suspect this is more based on the fact that media uploads tend to come less frequently, but in larger numbers - someone will go on a trip or visit a zoo, and then upload dozens (or even hundreds) of photos. This will skew the daily results one way of the other, depending on who it is doing the uploads.

upload_2021-10-21_9-7-16.png

Note that I removed the first couple of years of data because the data was quite extreme (ie for quite some time in the early days of the site, 100% of uploads were made by our bottom 50% of posters) and it was making it difficult to see the overall picture.

Again, I'm not sure if these charts actually mean much - but they still are quite pretty.
 

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34. Posts per month - top forums (3 month moving averages)

Our top three "country" forums are the US, UK and Australia forums.

The following charts shows the average daily post volume in each of these three forums.

As you can see, Australia dominated in the early years, but was rapidly overtaken by the UK.

The US got off to a slow start, but has been steadily increasing over time.

It will be interesting to see the trends over the next few years as global travel restrictions start to lift post-COVID.

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For our non-country forums, the top four topics are General, Fantasy, Cafe and Wildlife:

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Now, given post volumes change over time - it might be more meaningful to look at the relative post rates for each of these top forums as a percentage of the overall number of posts made in that particular month.

So here are the charts again, this time as a percentage:

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... as you can see early posts were dominated by Australia, with over 70% of the posts made on the forum in the Australia forum - so let's start the chart from Jan 2008 to get a more balanced view:

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That's a bit better - early part of the chart definitely dominated by UK posts - but as the site diversified, the percentage of overall posts made in the UK forum decreased. More recently, we're seeing more posts in the US forum than the UK forum.


How about the other topics?

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... again, early posts are dominated by the General topic - so again, let's start the chart a bit later to bypass that section.

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That's more like it. We get surprisingly few "off topic" (ie Cafe) posts on this site compared to other sites I run or am involved in.
 

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35. Posts per month - top zoos (3 month moving averages)

Our top 8 zoos by total posts are:
  1. Chester Zoo
  2. ZSL London Zoo
  3. Toronto Zoo
  4. Twycross Zoo
  5. Taronga Zoo
  6. Edinburgh Zoo
  7. ZSL Whipsnade Zoo
  8. San Diego Zoo
(Colchester Zoo was #8, but recently got overtaken by San Diego)

So let's look at the number of posts for each zoo by month:

upload_2021-10-22_10-22-16.png

upload_2021-10-22_10-22-33.png

Two standouts here - Chester Zoo has dominated since 2007 and Taronga Zoo dominated the early years.

To look at relative post volumes though - let's compare these post counts to the overall posts on the forum and express them as a percentage:

upload_2021-10-22_10-24-31.png

... let's see if we can do something about that early peak for Chester Zoo and start the chart from the beginning of 2008 instead:

upload_2021-10-22_10-25-37.png


It's interesting that Chester isn't as dominant as it once was - although I suspect the last 18 months are more of an anomaly than anything.

How about the next 4:

upload_2021-10-22_10-26-51.png

LOL - well that's a bit useless - when nearly 50% of the discussion on the site is about Taronga Zoo, it kind of drowns everything else out.

Let's start from Jan 2008 here as well:

upload_2021-10-22_10-27-45.png

A bit difficult to see much through the mess - but it is interesting how different zoos have dominated the discussion at different periods over the years.


(EDIT: all of the charts say "top forums", when they should say "top zoos" - I can't be bothered reuploading them, so just go with it!)
 

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37. Posts per month - zoo keywords (3 month moving averages)

So taking our list of top 8 zoos, I've queried the posts in the database to determine how many times certain keywords relating to those zoos have been mentioned each day.

The search terms used were literally:
  • chester
  • london
  • toronto
  • twycross
  • etc
It's a pretty simplistic query and will pick up on general mentions of London or Toronto, etc - so not 100% accurate, but it's still a good indication.

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Chester still reigns supreme.

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The rise and rise of San Diego Zoo (aka the increase in US based membership!).
 

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38. Posts per month - animal keywords (3 month moving averages)

Let's do the search again - this time with animals:

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Lions and elephants reign supreme!

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Panda is cheating - it gets both giant pandas and red pandas!

Nobody cares about pangolins anymore in 2021.

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Giraffes are popular - who knew?

Penguins need more love.

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What's with the sudden love for zebras and lemurs?

... and why do meerkats get as much love as cheetahs do ... or more the point - why don't cheetahs get more love?
 

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39. Media uploads per year - top zoos

Media uploads tend to be lumpy - meaning we get large numbers of media uploads in a specific category all at once and then relatively few for a while. This is because people tend to visit a zoo, take lots of photos and then upload them - but there aren't lots of uploads for any specific zoo on a regular basis.

As such, I've found it more meaningful to show this data on a yearly basis rather than a monthly or daily - we can at least observe some rough trends.

upload_2021-10-22_16-25-6.png

The peak from Cincinnati Zoo back around 2011-13 was mostly from one single user!

Chester Zoo and San Diego zoos are both pretty consistent - unsurprisingly.

upload_2021-10-22_16-25-24.png

Pairi Daiza getting a lot of love recently!

Bronx was a hot topic back in 2015-16.
 

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Simon Hampel said:
38. Posts per month - animal keywords (3 month moving averages)

Let's do the search again - this time with animals:

View attachment 514170

Lions and elephants reign supreme!

View attachment 514171

Panda is cheating - it gets both giant pandas and red pandas!

Nobody cares about pangolins anymore in 2021.

View attachment 514172

Giraffes are popular - who knew?

Penguins need more love.

View attachment 514173

What's with the sudden love for zebras and lemurs?

... and why do meerkats get as much love as cheetahs do ... or more the point - why don't cheetahs get more love?
Click to expand...
I have a light suspision the meerkats search are hate rather than love.
Also why do pangolin get so little (crying emoji)
 

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41. Likes per month - all content types (3 month moving average)

Likes made on all types of content (posts, media, comments, etc)

Likes were a new feature of the XenForo forum software that we migrated to in late 2016, so data is only for the last 5 years.

upload_2021-10-22_17-0-39.png

Yes, we really have been seeing between 20,000 and 30,000 likes given every month for the last couple of years :eek:
 

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43. Likes per post per month (3 month moving average)

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... on average every post receives nearly 1.4 likes (or there are 14 likes given to every 10 posts).

The reality is that some posts get lots of likes and others get none - such is the way with averages.
 

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Last edited:
46. Active users per day (90 day moving average)

The XenForo forum software that we've used since late 2016 tracks the number of active users each day - ie. registered users who have logged in at least once during the day.

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C1. User status

upload_2021-10-22_18-0-14.png

  • Valid: account is fully active and the user can post (this number is shown as the "total users" count you see in the sidebar)
  • Invalid: account is suspended because the user either has not confirmed their email address; emails sent to them have bounced back as undeliverable; the user requested that their account be disabled; or they changed their email address but never verified it
  • Banned: account has been disabled because the user was either banned for spamming, or banned for rule violations.
  • Removed: accounts have been purged from the database because they were either invalid or banned and never posted. Purges happen only periodically, so over time more of the invalid and banned (because of spam) users will be removed.
Our removed figure is currently quite high because of a cleanup / purge I did prior to the migration to the new software back in 2016. Those were old users who had either never activated their account, or were banned - and had never posted. I think I may have also deleted a few old accounts who had never posted and hadn't been online in more than a couple of years too - as a way of freeing up some usernames.

The new system gives us a lot more flexibility in managing disabled/deactivated accounts, so I'm unlikely to perform a similar purge again.

If we break down the valid users and compare users who have posted vs those who haven't, we get the following:

Valid users



upload_2021-10-22_18-0-37.png

  • Active: valid and has posted
  • Never posted: can post, but hasn't (lurkers!)
The "Never posted" figure would be a lot higher if it weren't for all the "removed" users (users are only removed if they have never posted). Note that a lot of the "removed" users would not count as "Never posted" because a lot of them were not able to post because their account was not activated or had otherwise been disabled for various reasons.

We can also break down the invalid users:

Invalid users

upload_2021-10-22_18-0-53.png

  • Email bounced: we received notification from our email service provider that mail was permanently undeliverable to this user (ie was never a valid email address; email address is no longer valid; user has blocked us; user made a spam complaint against us; our email service provider blocks us from sending to that address)
  • Incomplete Registration: user never confirmed their email address after registering
  • Account Disabled: user voluntarily requested us to disable their account
  • Never logged in: user has never logged in again since registering and never completed registration
  • Email Changed: user changed their email address but did not confirm the new address
 

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