Some interesting statistics regarding Revleft and other rival political forums

[GPDP]

I decided to go to alexa.com and see how revleft fares in comparison to other political boards in terms of traffic, page views, etc. The sites I compared it to are the Mises Institute (libertarian), Stormfront (fascist), Free Republic (conservative), Democratic Underground (liberal), and just for shits, Political Crossfire (multi-ideological). As far as I can tell, these are all the biggest sites for their respective ideologies.

However, what skews a few of these sites is that they are more than just forums. Mises.org, for example, also doubles as an internet archive of Austrian scholarship and texts, so it is the libertarian counterpart to both Revleft and MIA. Democratic Underground is also a satire site, so it serves as a site for liberal humor. As such, both these sites are bound to get more traffic other than message board traffic. Also, Revleft is a relatively new site compared to the others, some of which have been around since the mid 90's! So obviously, one can expect the membership numbers to reflect this reality.

Now, for the statistics:

Traffic Rank

Political Crossfire: 237,836
Revleft: 189,725
Mises Institute: 21,258
Stormfront: 13,834
Democratic Underground: 5,996
Free Republic: 4,315

Ouch. Just ouch. We don't even figure in the top 100,000 sites. Even the Austrians have a respectable showing. No doubt this probably says something about the state of the left, even on the internet, as well as the rising popularity of libertarianism, not to mention the still-worrying popularity of fascism. The other two numbers are nothing particularly surprising, though I would've expected DU to be higher than FR. At least we still beat PC.

Sites Linking In

Political Crossfire: 83
Revleft: 176
Stormfront: 1,286
Democratic Underground: 2,869
Mises Institute: 3,477
Free Republic: 6,463

We're not very reputable, it seems. Barely any sites link to us at all.

Average Time on Site (minutes per day)

Revleft: 4.0
Mises Institute: 5.1
Democratic Underground: 7.1
Free Republic: 8.0
Stormfront: 8.2
Political Crossfire: 10.7

Make of this what you will. You can either argue that this forum doesn't seem to catch posters' attentions long enough, or we're actually too busy with, you know, real life and being active to spend more than a few minutes browsing. Which would consequently mean that the folks at PC have nothing better to do than argue with the myriad other ideologues there. :lol:

Now, I want to move onto demographics, but since there's no concrete numbers, what I will do is take each site, and classify each demographic under over-represented, similar, or under-represented relative to the general internet population.

Revleft

Greatly Over-represented: 18-24 age group, college education
Over-represented: 25-34 age group, males, no children, browsing from home
Under-represented: Females, with children, some college, graduate school, browsing from work
Greatly Under-represented: 35-44 and 45-54 age groups, no college education

Whoever said Revleft is full of kids and people in college deserves a medal!

Mises Institute

Greatly Over-represented: Males (not surprised lol)
Over-represented: College education, no children, browsing from home
Similar: 18-34 and 55-64 age groups, some college
Under-represented: 35-54 and 65+ age groups, with children, graduate school (hmmmmmmm), browsing from school or work
Greatly Under-represented: Females (hurp durp)

Basically, it's a collegiate sausagefest over at the Mises Institute. Quite a few youngsters and old people, too.

Stormfront

Greatly Over-represented: Males (again, not surprised)
Over-represented: 18-24 age group, no children, no or some college (well, that explains some things!)
Similar: 25-34 and 45-54 age groups, college
Under-represented: 35-44 and 55-64 age groups, with children, graduate school, browsing from work
Greatly Under-represented: 65+ age group, females, browsing from school

Storfmfront doesn't fare too much better than the Mises Institute in the male-female ratio. The biggest difference is that Stormfronters, unsurprisingly, do not tend to be college-educated or have a full college education.

Free Republic

Over-represented: 45-64 age group (of course), males, browsing from home
Similar: 25-44 and 65+ age groups, children and no children, some college to graduate school
Under-represented: 18-24 age group, females, no college, browsing from work
Greatly Under-represented: browsing from school

It's like I'm really in a nursing home for Republicans! Lots of older, well-educated people. I imagine many of them actually have families, unlike the other sites so far.

Democratic Underground

Over-represented: 45-54 age group (!), males, no children, college education, browsing from home
Similar: 18-44 and 65+ age groups, graduate school
Under-represented: 55-64 age group, females, with children, no or some college, browsing from work
Greatly Under-represented: Browsing from school

Well, this took me by suprise. Quite a few middle-aged people, and a sizable number appear to have graduate-level education. Lots of younger people as well, of course.

Political Crossfire

Greatly Over-represented: 18-24 age group, males, no children, college education
Over-represented: 55-64 age group (wat), browsing from school
Similar: Browsing from home
Under-represented: 25-44 age group, some college or graduate school, browsing from work
Greatly Under-represented: 45-54 age group, females, with children, no college

If you thought Revleft was a magnet for young college students, get a load of this. Most of these people browse from school, even! What surprised me was the sizable number of older people, though.

The verdict of all this?

At least we don't fail as hard as Political Crossfire in e-reputability! :D

[9]

I think, in this age, the left needs to get creative. It needs to think up new ways of stating its message and reaching groups and individuals that presently are not being reached. Exactly what the method for this might be, I am not sure. But I think there needs to be more discussion about it, if we are really serious about advancing our cause, that is.

[Revy]

RevLeft needs moar mudkipz :tt2:

http://booru.paintchan.com/image/2046.jpg

[which doctor]

RevLeft needs moar mudkipz :tt2:
and fewer /b/tards.

[ls]

and fewer /b/tards.

The unfortunate default Revleft answer to the universe; purge all trots (these quasi-memes are why the site rank is so low).

[Il Medico]

RevLeft needs moar mudkipz :tt2:

http://booru.paintchan.com/image/2046.jpg
Que? What is that? Besides a communist.... Elvis impersonator I am guessing.

[9]

I have no idea what mudkips or /b/tards are.

[Sugar Hill Kevis]

I have no idea what mudkips or /b/tards are.

I envy you.

[ComradeOm]

Does alexa.com give demographic info now? If not where did those "Over-represented" sections come from?

Also, it would be interesting to know just how MIA fares. I'd imagine that it would get a lot more traffic than RevLeft

[Module]

Great, so RevLeft is just full of young male students. Who didn't know that? :rolleyes:

[Killfacer]

It's interesting.

The problem is so many new members just post an introduction and leave it at that. It's a shame we can't get many to stay and become valuable contributors to the forum like me.

[bellyscratch]

It's interesting.

The problem is so many new members just post an introduction and leave it at that. It's a shame we can't get many to stay and become valuable contributors to the forum like bellyscratch.

:rolleyes:

[Angry Young Man]

I think it would be good to see ratios cancelled down to 10, or perhaps 100 to show more fairly each forum's inbalances, or percentages for the age groups. Also the terminology skews things a bit: women are only numerically under-represented here on RL, because ideologically marxism is feministic. Plus, when it's wholly statistical (albeit collected poorly), all forums have an unrepresentative female contribution.

ED: Plus, you could rearrange it from far-left to far-right, with the titles bolded or something. Makes referencing that little easier.

[revolution inaction]

I'm not sure that numbers from alexa.com are that useful, how many of you would want to instal a tool bar that monitors what you look at on the internet?

[Yazman]

Just for interest, I figured I would give some breakdowns for a popular conspiracist discussion site that has its own entire subset of political forums (which are just political, there are revolutionary leftists, libertarians, cappies, etc.), sort of like political crossfire. Mind you there's a lot of other forums too (conspiracy related ones). But it might be interesting anyway:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/

Traffic rank: 6,363
Average time on site: 7.1 min/day
Sites linking in: 1,796
online since: 18-May-1997

Demographics:

Greatly over-represented: Males
Over-represented: Some college, no children, browsing from home
Similar to the internet average: No college, college, 45-54, 35-44, 25-34, 18-24
Under-represented: 65+, 55-64, females, browsing from work, graduate school, has children
Greatly under-represented: Browsing from school

Interesting stats. This is a very broad site, as it has a lot of boardss for discussion about legit topics and politics, but also has a lot of conspiracy-related boards.

Its extremely popular. More-so than many of the strictly political sites - I would say this is because it accomodates legit political discussion as well as conspiracy discussion. There are way too many males, most of whom have no children and "some" university education. There are not many people who are 55+, but other than that there's a fairly average amount from 18-54. There are hardly any people browsing from work, and not many people with children or graduate school education. There's also virtually no underage people browsing the site at all either.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I have a question.

is this website advertised at all?

Mises.org would no doubt have professors and politicians throwing the name around.
Free Republic and any other conservative board are probably linked. Stormfront and all the Fascist/Racist boards are also probably linked. What im getting at is there are many communities that make these places intertwined which gives them more views. (this isnt merely about views but views makes members)

Are therer any other leftist boards we could make contact with? ask admins to post links to here from other websites?

The downside to greater advertising is the aforementioned /b/tards and meme crazed kids. (i admit though, i love lolcats and punditkitchen)

With greater viewers, it may lower the quality of the site, but also bring in more information and so on.

[redSHARP]

there is nothing wrong with /b/tards! (most of the time).

we should advertise better with banners and attach them to member's websites if they want. can we do that already?

[Yazman]

Yeah I hate /b/tards. I would rather have fewer members than have more and have them be /b/tards.

[scarletghoul]

I get more pissed off with people that think anyone who enjoys memes and stuff is a /b/tard

Memes are an unescapable part of the internet, and you must learn to accept this.

[GPDP]

How did memes even come into discussion at all?

By the way, I checked out MIA's ranking, and it's way higher than I thought it'd be. Something like 23,000. I can't be arsed to look right now.

I propose a Revleft/MIA merger IMO.

[Edelweiss]

The statistics provided by alexa.com are very far from being remotely accurate. The statistics base on users who have the "Alexa toolbar" installed, which is a very marginal and not at all representative user group. the figures are more like vague guesses than actual accurate visitor statistics.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

What about Quantcast (http://quantcast.net/)? Is that any better?

[Fidelbrand]

Sorry for the stats, i didn't play my part well.

[Edelweiss]

What about Quantcast (http://quantcast.net/)? Is that any better?

The statistics seem to be a bit more realistic, but still are far from being accurate as well. But especially their estimation of RevLeft's relevance and ranking in comparison to other sites seems to be much more accurate than Alexa. Their traffic rank is 87.838 for Revleft.

http://www.quantcast.com/revleft.com

Their numbers:
Estimated Monthly Traffic
14.2K Estimated US People

True, accurate number (Google Analytics):
33.6k US People Monthly

Also, their summary of RevLeft's demographics seems to be surprisingly accurate:


The site attracts a teen, mostly male audience.

It's a bit worrying that unlike Alexa, it remains only vague where they actually got their data from. They say from ISP's, advertising companies and so on. I doubt however that those whose data is being collected are even knowing about it...

[Nwoye]

At least we don't fail as hard as Political Crossfire in e-reputability! :D
:crying: I post at Political Crossfire, it's actually a decent site. There are of course of bunch of absolute retards, but the Radical HQ (a special subforum for just socialists) generates some great discussion.