Whey… Feb 2024 Forums stats. Most of them are a smidge down, but then again there’s been month upon months of growth up to this point. (thinking more about it… some of these stats will be 29 days vs 31…)
Stats from the forum software (Discourse)
419,000 hits, a little down from from 431K in Jan. We’re still on track track for 5m hits this year. Sidenote: Apparently the KP forums rank higher than Williams F1’s website. From this, I’ve concluded that karting > F1.
Daily active users (A measurement of community health and “stickiness”) hit a peak of 42% (again), with average at 38% (again) . (Insert blurb about anything above 30% DAU/MAU is considered absolute unicorn status for internet forums.)
Stats from Google Analytics…
2m 49s is the average time all visitors of the site spend here.
Visits 51K 54K in Jan.
32,000 people paid a visit (Users) of which 29K were “new”. No change. (Honestly not 100% sure how to read into that metric anyway)
Let me know what other kind of geeky stats are of interest to you. As always thanks for your contributions that continue to help the karting’s presence on the internet, helping people get involved and stick around in the sport
This is slightly tangential to forum stats specifically, but since mentioned the whole “help the karting’s presence on the internet, helping people get involved and stick around in the sport” part at the end, I’ll stick this here:
This site does a great job of providing information about wheel-to-wheel competitive sprint karting, but the quantity and quality of the content goes down pretty quickly from there (which honestly, could be just fine and is “enough”, depending upon goals and objectives).
That said, I feel like there’s untapped interest/potential as well as a ton of room for growth in non-wheel to wheel karting (competitive and non-competitive - i.e., “track days”, time trialing, auto-crossing, time attack - e.g., things that use sprint karts, but aren’t about direct wheel-to-wheel competition.
If could clone myself I’d take the time to spearhead trying to promote this activity online as well as in person (e.g., via events at local tracks), but it’s not a currently realistic goal for me. Therefore, this post is likely just me peeing in the wind, but none-the-less, I do see those activities as low hanging fruit to pick at for someone, somewhere.
Interestingly, the little bit I’ve pecked at the edges of these subjects, the biggest challenge in getting something like this up and going (in terms of discussions or actual events) is likely to be direct and somewhat aggressive rejection from people that are only interested in competition karting. (e.g., it has been my experience that some folks interested in wheel-to-wheel competitive karting can be very quick and loud to dismiss any other use of a sprint kart as both pointless and less serious, which while a valid viewpoint, also becomes substantial layer of negative noise for anyone trying to create threads/platforms/promotions around something different, and which ends up creating a self-reinforcing situation in terms of participants both here and at kart tracks)
I agree 100% that this area of karting in underrepresented in general. To an extent, the over-emphasis on “competition” in the sport (activity?) of karting leaves opportunities on the table. Lots of people turn up during the week in old karts just to pound laps with their friends and AutoX often provides driving opportunities closer to metropolitan areas than some kart tracks.
I haven’t observed that kind of pushback\negativity towards these forms of karting here on the forums? If that’s happening then it should be called out.
I haven’t observed that kind of pushback\negativity towards these forms of karting here on the forums?
Maybe I’m overstating this. The “What is karting anyway” thread, definitely showed that depending on the context different people could have positive and less positive thoughts about each other’s chosen expressions of “karting”, but that’s probably a bad yard stick to use.
I agree. I think my approach has been that while many on here think rental racing is silly stuff, it’s important to many others, as that’s what they’ve got available or can afford or whatnot. So I talk about that because it’s what I know/love and I’m pretty sure that some folks appreciate it. (I have no metrics to support this, I’m not sure anyone even clicks).
And while some folks feel it’s irrelevant, the nature of the forum allows us to speak of/promote whatever aspect of karting is of interest to us individually. Folks here are polite enough to not put down rental racing for example, and get on an elitist high horse.
I think KP is what the contributors make of it, what they choose to talk about. And, the forum has been consistently open to all comers. Anything goes (to a point) and it’s understood that there’s no room to demean or disrespect forms of karting/racing that don’t interest you. We just as a group don’t allow it. That’s kind of the secret sauce.
Content is made by us for our friends and for those who are seeking said content. It’s up to us to do and make said content. It takes a village to go racing and make racing good, but it’s kind of up to us to make our interests heard so that others can find it.
I don’t know what the answer is and I don’t know that getting granular with content is the answer. I don’t know that there’s enough of us to support a site/community dedicated to rental racing or whatever.
In a way I think James is doing the right thing not creating stickied stuff and segmenting the content.
