Netscan and Python

[Paul Prescod]

Aahz wrote:

> In article <mailman.35.1076810936.31398.python-list at python.org>,
> Paul Prescod  <paul at prescod.net> wrote:
> 
>>According to Netscan,
>>comp.lang.python was the 19th most popular Usenet newsgroup in 1999
> 
> 
> Based on the rest of the post, I'm assuming you meant to say
> "comp.lang.*" instead of "Usenet".  There's also the question of whether
> popularity is best measured by number of posts -- I'm sure the
> readership of rec.humor.funny still far outweighs comp.lang.python.

True. But as you surmised, rec.humor.funny is not in the domain of 
newsgroups that interest me for this discussion. It seems logical to me 
that popularity would follow number of readers and that number of posts 
would tend to follow number of readers. The relationship is certainly 
not direct: the more mainstream a language is (e.g. C++) the less likely 
one is to use a newsgroup as a support channel for it. Also, in the case 
of Ruby, cultural issues may be relevant. Perhaps some Japanese mailing 
list is booming.

  Paul Prescod