Our new search capacities let us look at ourselves in new ways. I spent a little time peeking around and thought others might find the results interesting too. For December of several years, I look at total new users added that month, the number of users from that month who have five bars today, and the number of banned users. Here are the numbers:
Year Users 5B Banned %5B %Banned
2003 826 4 50 0.48% 6.05%
2004 2168 13 86 0.60% 3.97%
2005 2035 9 68 0.44% 3.34%
2006 2156 7 597 0.32% 27.69%
2007 1912 2 99 0.10% 5.18%
2008 1716 7 82 0.41% 4.78%
2009 2160 3 590 0.14% 27.31%
2010 7114 1 4950 0.01% 69.58%
Clearly in 2006, there was a troll storm; many of those banned never made a comment, much less wrote a diary. The troll attacks that started after Obama was elected got worse still - check out December 2010. Again, almost all of those banned had no activity. Odd difference: the trolls of 2006 mostly had nonsense names, while those after 2009 tend to have a number embedded in the middle, often of two real names.
My hat is off to ct and the staff; they are obviously wrestling on a daily basis to stay ahead of the troll attacks.
It's also clear that five bars are indeed a rare distinction - no one should feel bad if they don't have them!
I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts ---