Re: DEN status

[Bob Clements <clementz@kos.net>]

JD wrote:

>>>Quite frankly my control chart of  the number of posts per month since 7/97
suggests that maybe we should  discuss on the DEN the possible reasons for
the decline in volume during the  last year.  After reviewing my posts from
pre-June of 97, and recollecting  over the last five years of the DEN,
maybe we've finally come around to having collectively written on just about
every potential DEN topic.>>>

and John Hamilton asked how he arrived at his "conclusion that the DEN has
covered every potential topic."

I read JD's suggestion as an hypothesis, not a conclusion. The operative word for
me was "maybe". JD has plotted the data and determined there has been a decline
in volume, an indication that the process which generates the volume has changed.

John proposes an alternate hypothesis, that there is an ebb and flow of volume
which may be fitted to a non-linear trend:

>>>It has been my experience, that all conversations have a lull in them.  I've
always compared them to a sine wave, where every seven minutes or so (or so I've
noticed and read somewhere), the conversation lags until another topic line is
brought up and the conversation continues.  Could it be the same with written
conversation?>>>

I'm tempted to say "maybe, how does the data plot?" and wonder if perhaps some
larger non-linear trend might better fit the product life cycle, and that
discussions about the DEN's mission, management, and status might be better,
possibly necessarily, fitted into a marketing analysis.
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