
A practical suggestion, to be sure, but one could *also* peek into
news.lists, where Brian Reid has posted "USENET Readership report for
Mar 93." Another posting called "USENET READERSHIP SUMMARY REPORT FOR
MAR 93" gives the methodology and caveats of Reid's survey.  (These
postings failed to appear for a while-- I wonder why?-- but they are
now back.)

Reid, alas, gives us no measure of the "power/influence" of readers...
Sorry, Mark.

I suspect Mark, dangling out there on Fidonet, may not get news.lists
so I've mailed him copies of these reports.

The bottom line?

        +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide.
        |     +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population
        |     |     +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all
        |     |     |      +-- Recent traffic (messages per month)
        |     |     |      |      +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month)
        |     |     |      |      |      +-- Crossposting percentage
        |     |     |      |      |      |    +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr
        |     |     |      |      |      |    |      +-- Share: % of newsrders
        |     |     |      |      |      |    |      |   who read this group.
        V     V     V      V      V      V    V      V
  88  62000  1493   80%  1958  4283.9    19%  0.10   2.9%  sci.space 

The first figure indicates that sci.space ranks 88th among most-read
newsgroups.

I've been keeping track sporadically to watch the growth of traffic
and readership.  You might be entertained to see this.

Oct 91   55  71000  1387   84%   718  1865.2    21%  0.04   4.2%  sci.space
Mar 92   43  85000  1741   82%  1207  2727.2    13%  0.06   4.1%  sci.space
Jul 92   48  94000  1550   80%  1044  2448.3    12%  0.04   3.8%  sci.space
May 92   45  94000  2023   82%   834  1744.8    13%  0.04   4.1%  sci.space
(some kind of glitch in estimating number of readers happens here)
Sep 92   45  51000  1690   80%  1420  3541.2    16%  0.11   3.6%  sci.space 
Nov 92   78  47000  1372   81%  1220  2633.2    17%  0.08   2.8%  sci.space 
(revision in ranking groups happens here(?))
Mar 93   88  62000  1493   80%  1958  4283.9    19%  0.10   2.9%  sci.space 

Possibly old Usenet hands could give me some more background on how to
interpret these figures, glitches, or the history of Reid's reporting
effort.  Take it to e-mail-- it doesn't belong in sci.space.