The 93-94 HOCKEY-L season has been a roller-coaster ride for your
administrator.  Subscriptions and readers continue to climb (more on
that later).  We had coverage of more teams than ever before.  It seems
we had more high quality articles than ever before.
 
Yet this was the season that HOCKEY-L readers learned about flames.
 
This was the season where more than a few people could not tell the
difference between sport and war.  More than a few people were all too
ready to condemn anyone and everyone, without caring for anything or
anyone outside of themselves and, sometimes, their local program.
 
Anyway, it appears the U Maine System and I will sponsor HOCKEY-L one
more year.  There will be a few changes, but I expect minor ones for
most folks.
 
   (Starting next week, all HOCKEY-L distribution problems will
   automatically cause sign-off from the list.  If you suspect your
   subscription has been dropped (the sign-off notice will probably
   bounce also), simply re-subscribe or send the administrator a note).
   (I'll try to exempt those poor souls on the military portion of the
   network, ".mil" ...  there always seem to be problems getting
   postings to ".mil" subscribers).
 
   Let's discuss over the off-season how we can collectively make
   HOCKEY-L better.
 
Now for some statistics.
 
We currently have 900+ HOCKEY-L/HOCKEY-D subscribers.  In addition, an
unknown amount of people read HOCKEY-L via about a dozen local
redistributions.  Although numbers are not available, probably more
people (occasionally) read HOCKEY-L via local redistributions than
subscribe.
 
               total
      season  articles  rate (entire year)
      93/94     7000    19/day
      92/93     4700    13/day
      91/92     4200    11/day
      90/91     2200     6/day
 
      (and back in 91/92 we were worried about the volume of postings!
      ... but that was before the days of the HOCKEY-L digest).
 
During the 1993-94 season, 560 separate individuals wrote articles.  I
estimate that is approximately 25% of our readership (or about 60% of
our subscribers).
 
90% of all articles were written by 1/2 of our posters, yet one third of
all articles were written by people posting less than 10 times/year.
One half of all articles were written by (only) 30 people.
 
With the numbers of people on the internet increasing rapidly, HOCKEY-L
is getting the attention of many new folks.  Whereas we normally have a
drop-off in subscribers this time of year, the numbers are nearly
steady.  For example, for the past week we have had 45 join, 45 drop and
10 removed for distribution problems.
 
I'm very happy to report that several SIDs, ADs, Coaches and players
listen in on HOCKEY-L.  You have heard several on the list this season.
 
You might find it interesting that efforts to promote HOCKEY-L can be
successful.  You will find HOCKEY-L in almost all of the books now
coming out on the internet.  When HOCKEY-L was presented in a BU Free
Press newspaper article a few weeks ago, 50 of the 75 new subscriptions
that week came from BU.  Many of those subscriptions remain with us
today.
 
Yours in college hockey,
 
Wayne Smith
The College Hockey Discussion List administrator
Systems Group - CAPS              BITNET/CREN:  wts@maine
University of Maine System        internet:     [log in to unmask]