If we could find a reliable way to measure active users, a good way to respond to all the various unscientific surveys would be to simply say, on our website, "43,210 active users!" and explain in fine print how the number is calculated. That alleviates the main concern--that users may be turning away from NetBeans because they think nobody else is using it.
One anonymous way to measure monthly active users would be to count the number of requests to the update center. By default the IDE checks for updates every week. To avoid double-counting clients, a HTTP parameter can be added to the update center request that indicates whether the request is the first one made in the current calendar month. Once monthly active users are measured, a running average over 6 or 12 months can be calculated for website display purposes, to dampen fluctuations due to academic semesters and such. -- Eirik -----Original Message----- From: Geertjan Wielenga <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 7, 2020 10:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Statistics re Apache NetBeans Well, this is problematic, too. Firstly, all months are not equal, e.g., every March and October usage of NetBeans is higher than other months (probably connected to academic years), and secondly, downloads do not equal active users (three pings to plugin infrastructure equals an active user, i.e., starts of NetBeans. Let’s leave this whole survey discussion now. It’s clear surveys suck and every year we’ve been getting further in making this point. Gj On Fri, 7 Feb 2020 at 16:32, Zoran Sevarac <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Also those statistics don't show anything, unique visitors to a site > > is not users. > > > > Actually, statistics provided in Excel file by Emilian for Dec and Jan > include also the number of downloads per month which is very likely > highly correlated with the number of active users > > -- > Zoran Sevarac, PhD, Associate Professor University of Belgrade, > Faculty of Organisational Sciences, Department for Software > Engineering Java Champion > <https://community.oracle.com/community/java/java-champions> > | Oracle Groundbreaker Ambassador | Deep Netts > | <http://www.deepnetts.com> > Co-founder & CEO >
