About Usage Statistics, with hints This menu has stats about how people use the National Capital FreeNet. The tools here are very powerful, and can answer a myriad of questions. "Showcounts" is a service explained in item 2, and developed in 1994 by Jim Elder (aa456). By simply typing 'showcounts' at the Your Choice prompt below any menu, you will see usage stats for that menu, from the past week. Historical and newsgroup data is available too. Read the full help file about this, and about certain limitations. (Jim also developed the stats for popular services, newsgroups, etc., in the subsequent items.) If you want to see how busy NCF is over a 24-hour period, "Make your own usage graphs". Ian Allen (aa610) developed this graphing program, and Chris Portman of the Toronto FreeNet added the menu interface. You can specify the meaning of 'busy' and the dates to graph. Note that usage on weekends is quite different from weekdays; you can graph them separately. If you want to save one of these graphs (e.g. to post it in ncf.admin.stats for discussion), you currently need a work-around. Screen capture may not work properly. If you use a communications package with cut-and-paste abilities (Mac or Windows) this may be easy. Others will find that the easiest way is to use Multi-Windows, as follows: 1. If you haven't already done so, 'go screen' and learn about Multi-Windows. Start the program from this menu. You only need one window open to do the rest of this, but you do need the program running. 2. Make the graph you want. When it is displayed on the screen, type ^Ah to make a hardcopy. That means, type your prefix character (which could be Control-A, or Control-something-else) and then type 'h' (without Control). A copy of the graph on your screen will be stored in your work directory, as 'hardcopy.0' if you are in window 0, 'hardcopy.1' in window 1, etc. 3. Start writing your discussion article, mail message, etc. Exit the editor and choose the "Append a file" option. Type in 'hardcopy.0' or whatever the graph is stored as. 4. You can now go back to editing your article, to remove any junk, such as the prompt at the bottom (which was captured by 'hardcopy.0'). Then post the article. There are a number of types of analysis possible, of login data and other usage behaviour. Currently they are not generated automatically or on a regular schedule. Please ask in ncf.admin.stats if there is usage data that would be helpful to you. Chances are, Ian or Jim or some other Unix guru can produce the data. Alana Boltwood (ad097) 1995-07-20