Stats.. God love 'em… The one that stands out to me (and I've used Echo to sell recently and donated to their charity as part of that sale, so have no issue with that group), is that the stats given show in the last 30 days there have been 4506 'active members', one would assume that that to be active they must make a post or click like on a feed/thread, not just be someone that has liked the actual page… interaction with it would make you active. Fair assumption?
I can also see that there have been in the past 30 days 4196 posts, so actual contributory text to aid discussion, sales or purchases ("claim" / "PM sent")
This can only lead to one conclusion, if active members post (4506 of them) and there are only 4196 posts… either posts are being regularly deleted and not recorded or at best each active member is posting once at best each and a handful (c400 others) are interacting with those posts, not really a community.
Either way, the 10,064 people on Echo rhetoric, is utter nonsense, yes, 10,064 people like the page... but the stats show 4506 at the most, given that a 30 day period is a fair view of activity. From what I can see on Edd's stats, the Forum is growing, the members page shows over 4700 registered users; there are a chunk of zero post members (c1500) but, the majority of the zero posters are brand new.
So on the forum there's an active posting base of 68% of its membership
On Echo Base an active posting base of 55% of its membership
So, one has more members, but both has a very similar active membership that actually post and contribute
Jeez, I have 5268 followers on my (predominantly Star Wars driven) Instagram feed, do I know them, no, maybe a dozen of them… am I famous or important because of it, Insta-famous maybe! :lol: :lol: :lol: I certainly wouldn't be quoting it at the start of any discussion as to why my Instagram is better than yours..
What the actual contribution is on each of the two platforms is not something that the stats clearly reveal, however 9 words per post average is a slightly damming stat in that this thread alone doesn't have many posts on it less than 9 words and a statistical view as this would rocket that average up (404 so far BTW) simply by its inclusion. I would personally not write something like this on any Facebook group as it would simply be a waste of me typing it, no one would see it after a few moments and it would be subsumed into the sales on most of them.
It does suggest that if an opening sales post is say 100 words and 4 people write "claim" and 3 put "PM sent" , of course four more write someone's name and a couple of "bump" in response that gets you an average of nine words per post… It's a selling site, it's what you would expect.
Now, if that is what they advertise themselves as a sales site (I like the car boot sale comment personally as it reflects the general trading style on most Facebook groups) which is what they are and not a community which they all seem to think they are, but, what they are not; no stats required to explain that difference, just use your eyes and look at pretty much any Facebook group, then I do think a lot of the tension would dissipate. It up to folk to educate themselves about what they are buying and what it is worth, not the Admins and equally its fair game to laugh at and mock some of the beyond stupid things written on any Facebook group or forum, be that "what's this worth" 2 minutes after someone else posted the same (probably worthless) item, "mail call" which I will never understand on a selling page or "great price" at something they have no idea what it is or what the price should be…
The best thing to do is keep this place growing and full of knowledge and the more interested parties that take the hobby seriously will dip in and out here and learn to appreciate it, the rest will just do their thing no matter how upset we get.
